My Essay Collection

ENL 133: “Scandalously Aesthetic: The Flaws of Modernism in Wilde’s ‘An Ideal Husband’”

2010-06-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. K. Frederickson

ENL 133

3 June 2010

Scandalously Aesthetic:

The Flaws of Modernism in Wilde’s An Ideal Husband

In his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde writes “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. / Books are well-written, or badly written. That is all” (3). Though The Picture of Dorian Gray was written almost three years before his publication of An Ideal Husband, his philosophy of keeping morality separate from his art continues to shine through. The idea of an impending scandal permeates the construction of the drama but the reader must realize that it is not the scandal that is important to the understanding of the novel. It is the balance of the individual within society and the beauty of the “modern” individual: his portrait of a scandal is a way of representing the aesthetic of relationships between people, for even the worst of relationships represents the best of what it is to be human. In showing his characters in the worst situations he is testing their morality it is true, but it is not the morality that is the key to the drama itself. Wilde is not supplying the reader a parable for right/wrong or good/evil; the drama is way of viewing the beauty of society with all its flaws included, not hiding anything from the public yet still managing to find social acceptance. A society that can embrace its flaws is, according to Wilde, a truly beautiful, and thus modern, one indeed.

Scandal within the novel is a very real threat to those who would suffer to lose position—be it political or moral. The morality of a Victorian politician is deeply connected to their political clout, especially if that clout is deserved through the claim of a higher moral standing, such as that of Sir Robert Chilton. It is important to define exactly what a scandal is, especially in terms of Victorian politics. In the essay “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde,” Art Adut defines scandal as “the disruptive publicity of transgression…The norm audience is a public united by some level of identification with the norm that has apparently been violated, and it is in some capacity attentive and negatively responsive to the publicized transgression” (219-220). Adut also attributes the emergence of scandals to an “underreinforced” rule that broken in private is acceptable, but once broken in public it becomes unacceptable because it is against a social norm (214). Part of living a modern Victorian high-lifestyle is walking the line between private controversy and public morality. Sir Robert Chiltern understands that the norm of the society in which he lives revolves around the wealth that people have; to gain power, especially at a young age he must be wealthy enough to purchase it: “Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The god of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth” (Ideal II.66-69). Wilde challenges modern morality by placing Sir Robert in a position that the reader should recognize as an ethical dilemma involving the sacrifice of individual morality in order to do a greater good for society: Sir Robert married and overly-moral woman after his moral sacrifice, and does his best to do only the best for his people, and yet his one flaw returns to haunt him despite his current good-doings. It does not matter that he is a good person now, and only matters that his past returns to harm him—his past sin endangers his current endeavor for good, and indeed he sacrifices himself for the sake of morality, even at the risk of losing his wife in the process.

In the drama An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley is representative of all that is corrupt in politics but even she realizes the importance of perceived virtue to the public-at-large:

In old days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbours. In fact, to be a bit better than one’s neighbour was considered excessively vulgar and middle-class. Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues… (Ideal I.543-547)

Her observation in this passage is a paradox of what she calls the “modern mania for morality,” as it seems her implication is that those who “pose” to have the most incorruptibility have the most virtue—but “virtue” in her sense takes on a different context. Virtue for Mrs. Cheveley is more like a coat one puts on at certain times to look a certain way for the sake of public opinion. Further, modern morality is different from “old” times in that the public now appreciates those who are “better” morally: to be better than one’s neighbor is to have a kind of moral authority that is otherwise absent among equals. Class is an important distinction is Victorian England, and for one to not only have a class distinction, but also a moral distinction only serves to put more distance between the modern aristocracy and the public it is supposed to serve.

One critic, Gregory Mackie, argues that instead of a moral basis, Wilde is arguing for an aesthetic basis for what is considered “good” (148). This argument would give more depth to Wilde’s seemingly uncaring and superficial characters. Consider Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband, who is portrayed for most of the play as an everlasting bachelor but in the course of events he is realized to be the ideal husband, for it is him who maintains and encourages “morality,” though in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to a modernist: he gives in to social-connections in order to maintain the best outcome for all those involved.

Well, the English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong. It is one of the best things in them…in England a man who can’t talk morality twice a week to a large, popular, immoral audience is quite over and a serious politician. There would be nothing left for him as a profession except Botany or the Church. (II.186-196)

In this passage, Lord Goring’s advice is sound for he realizes that a public apology would only create more problems for the grieved Sir Robert. Goring’s avoidance of a scandal, however, is not to be read as a deception of the public, and instead should be seen much the same way that Sir Robert imagines his own fall: “I did not sell myself for money. I bought success at a great price” (II.85-86). It is the spin that the characters use that the reader can imagine an over-sensitive public using to turn against Sir Robert. It does not matter what he has done since his rise to power, for that power was built on a foundation of lies and corruption.

It is however, significant that precisely what gets Sir Robert into trouble—namely hiding his past transgressions from the public—is exactly what will get him out of trouble. This is the paradox of modern culture, according to Wilde. To reiterate the point made by Mackie, Wilde’s interest in morality has nothing to do with what is good or what is bad, and instead depends on how it is perceived in accordance to the laws of aesthetics. Scandal, though it might jeopardize an individual’s reputation has a way of bringing together the public, and making them notice things about themselves and their culture that might otherwise escape their view. Scandal becomes an opportunity for scrutiny; an individual in a spotlight becomes one of two things to the general public: they are either someone to admire and emulate regardless of their transgressions, or someone to scorn. Either way, what counts is the reaction; reaction is always dependent on the perspective of the viewer—beauty is thus thrust into the forefront of public opinion: even scandal has elements of the aesthetic. It is, then, the job of the artist to present that beauty to be seen and appreciated.

“The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist,” Wilde goes on to say in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, “but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything” (3). The controversial lifestyle of Wilde might have been subject to speculation, but he fought strenuously to keep that same speculation out of his art. Scandal, as it is presented in An Ideal Husband, is a way for Wilde to explore what is beautiful about even the most precarious of social situations. The aesthetic quality is such that it is what the viewer does not see that is actually beautiful: the viewer instead turns the scandal inward, asking themselves if their own past might not represent their current state. Wilde’s drama might be a small world of people who have little in common with the common reader, but their fears are the same. It is the aesthetic in Wilde’s work that allows the reader to find the way to embrace society’s flaws—having nothing to do with the “moral or immoral”—the beauty instead being found, as Wilde claims of his books, in how well-written and well-presented those flaws are.

Works Cited

Adut, Art. “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 111, No 1. JSTOR, (July 2005). Web. 25 May 2010.

Mackie, Gregory. “The Function of Decorum at the Present Time: Manners, Moral Language, and Modernity in ‘an Oscar Wilde Play’”. Modern Drama. Vol. 52, No. 2. Project Muse. Summer 2009, pp. 145-167. Article. 25 May 2010.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. J.W. Edwards, Inc.: Ann Arbor, MI. 2006. Print.

--. The Importance of Being Earnest and other Plays. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 2008. Print.

ENL 10C: “A Metafictional History: New Historical Context through Metafictional Narratives”

2010-05-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Stratton

ENL 10C

27 May 2010

A Metafictional History:

New Historical Context through Metafictional Narratives

History is made up of perspectives; an event recorded in history becomes entirely reliant upon the perspectives of those who witness it, and then record their memories of the event for future generations. As historical events become more global it is harder for art and literature to represent the scale of perspective necessary to give the impact of an event, and make a reader understand the magnitude of an event on a massive scale. Literature until the twentieth century was (generally) limited to one perspective which can portray only one memory of an event. To more accurately portray an event like the bombing of Dresden with more depth and accuracy an author would need to explore a different way of giving perspective to it in order to more fully represent what the author feels is the true event. Since one cannot incorporate thousands of perspectives into a single narrative, the author can instead explore the event by using metafiction and temporal distortions. These literary tactics serve to disorient the reader, thereby giving an emotional reaction necessary to make the reader more aware of the disorientation of the event being narrated. The novel Slaughterhouse-Five distorts the reality of the reader and the novel precisely because the author wants to make the history of Dresden more real: by establishing a chronology that cannot be represented in reality, Slaughterhouse-Five challenges the reader to piece together not only the events of the novel, but also the events of history itself; a process that gives the reader more insight into the challenges of representing history as more than a single story from a single perspective. “In postmodern fiction, thematic and plot devices are designed specifically to question linear history and temporality,” (179) writes literary critic Catherine Burgass; history is more than one timeline of events from one perspective, and should be represented as such. The use of metafiction and plot disruptions in the form of temporal “time-travelling” allows a reader to imagine history as multi-dimensional—as large-scale, global events should be represented—instead of flat and singular-perspective.

Then novel starts out by making the reader question the truth within it: “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true” (1). It turns out that the “novel” itself has not really begun, and will not begin for the fictional author until page 29 in the second chapter. Vonnegut makes use of metafiction in order to disrupt what the reader knows of the book itself. He puts us in the hands of an unreliable narrator who tells the reader from the beginning that his story is only “pretty much true” and that it all happened “more or less” without telling us what exactly the true parts are. It is significant this line occurs at the beginning of the novel, as explained by Burgass:

…beginnings and endings have a special function in postmodern metafiction, marking the entrance and exit of the fictional world and its parallel time. There is a structural circularity in these novels which confounds linear time…the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five is particularly taken with those songs whose last line repeats the first line…” (183)

The first claim of Slaughterhouse-Five cycles through the rest of the novel endlessly as the reader questions the reality and the fiction of each scenario as presented by the speaker. From a historical perspective, the history within the novel repeats itself endlessly the reader questioning the author who, in turn, questions the novel he is writing which is a novel that questions the nature of reality itself. In many ways the Vonnegut is feeding us that old line “history repeats itself” but doing so in a way that utilizes literary devices, rather than words, to show us the cliché.

Historical perspective is really not singular, and instead should be considered plural. It is not the memories of one person that make up what is known as “history;” it is the combined memories of many people—indeed thousands of people—to create what we know as a “historical record.” As populations grow and technologies make it possible for more people to witness singular events, representing the “truth” about an event becomes more complicated. With an event as large and globally-impactful as World War II, and the bombing of Dresden, Germany, even history would have a hard time encompassing all the sides in a way that reflects the horror of war. Literature would have a hard time with this as well, since literature does not deal directly with the perspectives of reality and instead turns to fiction to represent reality:

“Did that really happen?” said Maggie White…

“Of course it happened,” Trout told her. “If I wrote something that hadn’t really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That’s fraud.”[…]

[Maggie:] “It’s like advertising. You have to tell the truth in advertising, or you get in trouble.”

[Trout:] “Exactly. The same body of law applies.” (Vonnegut 218)

This conversation between Maggie White and the elusive author Kilgore Trout at Billy Pilgrims eighteenth wedding anniversary party calls into question the original author’s claim of semi-truth. An author is instead compared to an advertiser out to market his own version of the truth and though this conversation seems to single out only one author and one truth that is not necessarily the case. This author, Kilgore Trout, is a fictional character in a novel written by yet another fictional novelist written by Kurt Vonnegut. The separation between the reality of the reader and the fiction of Kilgore Trout lends itself to a symbolic interpretation: Trout is all authors represented in a novel that explores reality as fiction. Indeed, Vonnegut’s claim is here rendered futile in the fact he wrote this book itself; the reader is forced to question why an author would write an anti-war novel about a man who learns that war itself is unstoppable, and cannot be prevented, and that same novel says that fictional books are truth. Instead of history, Vonnegut gives us fiction; instead of anti-war he strips us of our free will—or does he?

The reader’s ability to distinguish between the reality and the fiction presented by a metafictional text is something discussed in Burgass’ article, and she argues that metafiction itself, though it intends to disorient or disturb the reader, is rendered powerless by “average” readers:

‘Real’ readers can often quickly neutralize metafictional devices so that their ontological (and chronological categories) remain intact…The fact that readers temporarily suspend disbelief and imaginatively enter the alternative fictional world with its alternative temporality, renders them immune to metafiction. (184)

It might seem counter-intuitive to present a chronological event, such as a bombing in a war during specific period of time, in such a way as to take the emphasis off of the chronology itself by using a technique like metafictional narrative. What the literary device does, however, is force the reader to piece the events together for himself and instead of confusing or disorienting the reader, the reader is instead put in a position to become a witness to history being remade within the fictional text. In being a witness, suddenly the reader is allowed to become part of that same history—the distance between the historical event in reality and the historical event in literature is thus minimized. Instead of being “neutralized,” metafiction allows the reader a neutral stance; to take in the events presented, and incorporate the multiple perspectives presented within the metafictional text, with an invitation to provide the reader’s own (new) perspective.

The use of literary devices that are often seen as isolating to the reader, such a metafiction, are used in Slaughterhouse-Five to the opposite effect. Vonnegut represents history in a single-perspective, yet through the use of metafictional narrative allows it to be interpreted in a multi-perspective and multi-dimensional way. The generation gap that occurs between the time the novel is set, the several authors within the novel, the author Vonnegut, and the reader are collapsed into a new history, giving the reader first-hand experience of a fictional history and allowing for new perspective into history.

Works Cited

Burgass, Catherine. “A Brief Story of Postmodern Plot.” The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 30, Time and Narrative (2000): pp. 177-186. Web. 18 May 2010.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. The Dial Press: New York, NY. 2005. Print.

PHI 162: “Aristotle’s Solution to the Science of Being qua Being”

2010-05-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Wedin

PHI 162: Aristotle

25 May 2010

Aristotle’s Solution to the Science of Being qua Being

In contrast to his claim in the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle makes a case for a science of “being qua being,” stipulating that is a science to investigate the forms of all other sciences, and the forms of those forms (1003b.20-23). This claim is counter that made in the Posterior Analytics where he makes an argument against the idea that a science would be able to capture all genus as a form of study: to simultaneously study what “is” in all forms of matter would be impossible, and instead there are specific sciences that break down all the genus of things into categories; it is those categories taken together that make the whole of being. For example, there is “a man” and a man is made up of all different qualities and quantities that come together to make up the whole of the form of a man; a man has two arms, two legs, a head, a brain, a capacity to reason; he has certain qualities that differentiate him from other mammals and other qualities that differentiate him from other men. A man is a sum of all the qualities he has, and each of those qualities, Aristotle argues in the Posterior Analytics, is part of a separate genus, or science. A man himself is only a culmination of different forms and materials that come together as “a man.”

In the Metaphysics however, he seems to reverse his claim, and instead chooses to argue for a science that encompasses what he calls “being qua being” that encompasses all other sciences as well as forms and matter. The problem of a science of being, as Aristotle describes it, is that it is completely counter to what he describes in his Posterior Analytics; the idea that there is one universal that covers all other universals would only serve to inflate the problem of infinite regress of cause. He begins Posterior Analytics with the claim that “All teaching an all intellectual learning come from already existing knowledge” (71a.1). This claim, and others he makes about the existence of knowledge, led to a problem of infinite regress that is not altogether explained: if all knowledge is based on already existing knowledge, then one must continue going back to find the causes of all knowledge thereby becoming circular or impossible. By claiming that there is a science of being he asserts that by studying being qua being one can understand these causes without succumbing to the infinite regress that he postulates in the Posterior Analytics.

There are two solutions to the Aristotle’s problem of the science of being. First, he distinguishes between what it is to be a substance and what it is to be a non-substance. He postulates this at 1003b.16-20: “In every case the fundamental concern of a discipline is with its primary object…So if this thing is substance, the philosopher will need to have the principles and causes of substances.” It is the philosopher who studies substances, in relation to substances being the primary object of being, since it is substances that encompass the categories which make up being. What Aristotle puts forth as evidence of this is in regards to affirmations and negations of things: namely oppositions in the form of contrarieties.

Practically everyone agrees that the things-that-are, and substance, are composed out of contraries: at any rate, everyone describes the origins of things as contraries… It is therefore obvious from this too that it falls to one discipline to study that which is qua thing-that-is. For all things either are or are made up of contraries, and contraries originate in the one and plurality. (1004b.29-1005a.5)

To make a claim about an object is, simultaneously, to make a claim about what it is not. Take, for example, to say a man is sitting: by claiming that the man is sitting you are also claiming that he is not standing, since one cannot both stand and sit at the same time. The same can be said of qualities since to claim that all men are mortal is to simultaneously claim that there is not a man who is immortal: the claims are simultaneous of one another but contrary in that they supply information about a substance.

Furthermore, substances have the capacity to change, which is unique among the disciplines. A man who is sitting has the ability (at least under normal conditions as long as he does not suffer from bodily injury that prohibits him otherwise) to stand; a horse that is white might have offspring that are all black, and indeed there are horses who are of many colors and yet despite the color differences they are still considered “horses.” This ability to change is different from other disciplines, such as mathematics, in which stay constant and reliable regardless of the situation. An example of this would be an arithmetical example such as 2 + 2 = 4; this equality is true in any sense, and does not change. The numbers themselves are not substances and cannot, therefore, have qualities like substances such as “white,” or “sitting,” or “in such and such scenario.” Those qualities would be irrelevant for mathematics otherwise 2 + 2 would equal different things under different “qualities” but it is clear that numbers and arithmetic are not subject to claims of quality.

His second solution to the science of being he equates the science of being with the study of the origins of things:

…we shall find other things called what they are in ways similar to these: just so that which is may also be so called in several ways, but all with reference to on origin…For it falls to one discipline to study not only things called what they are by virtue of one thing, but also things called what they are with reference to one nature… Plainly, therefore, it also falls to one discipline to study the things that are qua things-that-are. (1003b.5-7 and 1003b.11-17)

To study being qua being is to study the origins of all that is such that substances are those things that encompass the categories that Aristotle is so interested in. Much like in Posterior Analytics when he says that “All teaching and all intellectual learning come from already existing knowledge” (71a.1) he begins the Metaphysics by explaining that experiences make up the “memories of the same thing [producing]…the capacity for a single experience” (980a.25). It is then, Aristotle argues, through experiences that man can know something, and the combination of experiences combine—much like the qualities that make up substances—to create memories and, ultimately, more knowledge. Substances work the same way, for the combination of qualities make up substances, such as man, horse, table and those things we know to be substances are known through experience. Those experiences are combined to form memories and humans in particular have the capacity to reason with those memories, which is yet another quality that distinguishes the substance “man” from other substances, like “animal.”

ENL 133: The Search for Love: The Poor Victorian Citizen’s Struggle as Represented by Oliver Twist

2010-05-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. K. Frederickson

ENL 133

5 May 2010

The Search for Love: The Poor Victorian Citizen’s

Struggle as Represented by Oliver Twist

The novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is an exploration of roots and family that takes place in a culture that values those things to the highest degree. The tragedy of Oliver is not that he is without a family, for indeed many children in the novel are without a family, but instead that he is a child deserving of a family who must find a family deserving of him. Oliver’s travels from the moment he loses his mother to the time he is adopted by Mr. Brownlow is a search for a family, and the reader is sympathizing with Oliver because he manages always to fall into the wrong circumstances, namely the wrong kind of families. The combination of his naïve innocence, his constant illnesses in times of stress, his aversion to crime, and his appreciation of positive attention render Oliver a sympathetic character to the reader; we want him to find a home and a family to care for him and nurture his innate good qualities. The idea of a family becomes a metaphor for the state of Victorian government and its lack of sympathy for poor citizens. As children were turning to crime in order to survive—and thus punished by the state—the root of their corruption was not poor upbringing, or a flaw in the poorer classes. The state was driving the criminals to a choice between punishment (by toiling in the workhouses) and crime (which ends in punishment). What the poor of England are looking for is the love of their state: sympathy from the government instead of constant punishment. With a little help from their rulers, then, in the words of Nancy to the kind Rose: “If there was more like you, there would be fewer like me, —there would—there would!” (Dickens 333).

A child without a family, raised in an environment depriving him of not only physical care but also emotional care, would be hard-pressed to care for himself. In being taken to the workhouse Oliver experiences loneliness for the first time (11), despite the terrible treatment of where he was raised. It is only a short time later, when he is in the juvenile workhouse, that Oliver finds himself in a scenario that signifies his search for familial love:

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity –

‘Please, sir, I want some more.’

…The assistants were paralysed with wonder, and the boys with fear…

‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’ (15)

Even though it is food that Oliver is requesting, the metaphor is clear: what he longs for and what he desires is really the love of a family. It is no coincidence that Oliver is taken from the one family he knows, as “Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind” (11), then speaks up for more food when he reaches the uncaring environment at the workhouse. Being forced to leave what little love he has with his friends, and brought to a place for children considered “offenders” of the law of poverty (6) is a jarring change. Instead of finding a place of camaraderie among the boys of the workhouse, he finds a place of misery and competition that is devoid of any nurturing that his nature requires.

In the article by Larry Wolff, he cites sources that compare the camaraderie of juvenile criminals a kind of sibling relation:

…in an older tradition of writing about juvenile crime, for already in the 1750’s the magistrate John Fielding…proposed a sibling relation between the two criminal cases: “These deserted Boys were Thieves from Necessity, their Sisters are Whores from the same cause.” (231)

The environment that Oliver finds among the thieves is a welcome one precisely because it offers a kind of comfort and protection that he desires and has not found in his short life. He sees Fagin as a “merry old gentleman” why plays games with a group of young boys: the game brings Oliver to tears with laughter; probably one of the first moments of joy in Oliver’s life (Dickens 70). The game is performed in such a “funny and natural manner” (71) on the part of Fagin that Oliver sees it as a ritual of belonging, and on the very next page participates in the game himself. Through this game Oliver is brought into a family structure of criminals, and though he does not realize they are criminals he is nonetheless impressed with the brotherhood enough to want to join it. It is not until he realizes the nature of their family that he decides he does not want to belong: it is not the criminality that attracts him; it is the opportunity to belong to a family.

It is through intervention by Rose that Oliver is first allowed the luxury of a family. Rose shares with Oliver the status of being an orphan, so she understands what it is that he seeks. She comes to his rescue when he is most vulnerable, and cannot defend himself because he is near-mortally injured, and in their care:

‘…think that he may never have known a mother’s love, or even the comfort of a home, and that…may have driven him to herd with the men who have forced him to guilt…I have never felt the want of parents in [Mrs. Maylie’s] goodness and affection, but that I might have done so, and might have been equally helpless and unprotected with this poor child, have pity upon him before it is too late’ (239)

Rose recognizes Oliver’s search for love and familial companionship as one she would have had to do if it were not for the care and love of the Maylie family. Indeed, she was also rescued from a family who “began to sicken…of their fine humanity,” (437) by Mrs. Maylie, who treated her as her own daughter. Rose realizes how fortunate she was to find a family who would treat her as a daughter, a friend, and—in the case of Henry Maylie—future wife, and because she has not forgotten her luck, wishes to show that same pity to Oliver. Oliver only too happily accepts, and though he is not immediately reunited with Mr. Brownlow, he has found a family who cares about him and, more importantly, has faith in him enough to believe that there are evil men out to do him harm, and this family protects him.

The Victorian audience would appreciate Oliver’s longing for familial love, and recognize their own struggle within the country, especially those people of the lower and middle classes. Much of this novel is a protestation against the over-punishment of crime in England. Even the smallest crimes run the risk of death by the state. The struggle is between the choices made to commit a crime—a child is forced to a criminal lifestyle when there are no other options for survival, but the punishment for a child in that struggle outweighs the crime itself. The argument is then one of pity: it is wrong for the state to punish a child for maintaining their survival; Oliver struggles for survival and does not need to turn to crime to do so because he finds a family. The state must take in those poor criminals who struggle to survive and help them, like Oliver’s new family helps him; otherwise the criminal continues to wander and run the risk of getting into—or causing—more trouble.

Poverty was a crime at the time of publication, yet the wealth remained in the hands of a select few, while the vast majority of the population struggled with everyday living. What Oliver wanted more than anything was the love of a family to nurture his natural inclination to do what is right for himself and for society. The poor-houses of England were full of people who wanted nothing more than to survive, but had no way to do support themselves. Wolff cites this behavior as well in the story of a boy and a gentleman, as first related by another author Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor:

“…[the boy] went up to an old gentleman, walking slowly in Hyde-park, and said to him, ‘Sir, I’ve lived three weeks by begging, and I’m hungering now; give me a sixpence, or I’ll go and steal.’ The gentleman stopped and looked at the boy…in whose face was no doubt starvation, for without uttering a word he gave the young applicant a shilling” (241)

Instead of turning to crime, the good poor citizens turned to the state: the government-run work houses. Instead of a gentleman to give them more than they asked, like the young man in the passage above, they found themselves punished unjustly and disproportionately for their “crime” of poverty. The metaphor runs deep between the love of a family and the love of the state; the illusion is one is born with both a family and a country to care for them, but in reality neither love is a guarantee.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. London: Penguin Publishing, 2002. Print.

Wolff, Larry. “The Boys are Pickpockets and the Girl is a Prostitute: Gender and Juvenile Criminality in Oliver Twist.” New Literary History 27.2 (1996) 227-249.

ENL 10C: Manliness and Repetition in “The Blue Hotel”

2010-04-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Stratton

ENL 10C

30 April 2010

Manliness and Repetition in “The Blue Hotel”

In Stephen Crane’s short story “The Blue Hotel” there is a depiction of the relationships between men that calls into the question the sincerity of connections between men in times of stress. The story itself is simple: a man running a hotel brings three patrons from the train station to spend the night during an intense snow storm, and the consequences of their brief interaction. The outcome is far from simple and, in fact, illustrates an inherent mistrust between men who struggle for control, which is amplified when placed in unfamiliar surroundings. The story is a criticism of modern hospitality between men represented by the show of the hotel owner for the sake of reputation, and the misunderstandings that occur when communication is avoided for the sake of manliness. By using repetition, Crane makes a statement of the circularity, and futility, of over-exerted manliness in situations where survival is the most important goal: much like the repetition of certain phrases in the story, the society of men repeats their own follies of misguided assertions of power and control thereby bringing tragedy on themselves, and others, that otherwise could have been avoided.

The Palace Hotel is an actor on the stage of Fort Romper, Nebraska. The hotel “then, was always screaming an howling in a way that made the dazzling winter landscape…seem only a gray swampish hush” (376) which prompted the passengers, as a chance audience, to be “overcome at the sight” to which they “expressed shame, pity, [and] horror, in a laugh” (377). The owner of the hotel, Pat Scully has painted the hotel precisely for this reason: to attract the attention of the passengers who will spend their time, and their money, in his hotel. Scully himself is putting on a show for his guests, creating an environment that is hospitable in order to promote continued growth of his business. It is clear from the beginning of the story that Scully’s hospitality is an act put on for the benefit of business: “It was notable that throughout this series of small ceremonies the three travelers were made to feel that Scully was very benevolent. He was conferring great favors upon them. He handed the towel from one to another with an air of philanthropic impulse” (377). The passage states that the travels “were made to feel” and that Scully had “an air” is suspicious because it is not claimed by the speaker directly that Scully is either benevolent or a philanthropist. Instead, these qualities of the host are presented as an act; Scully, like his hotel, are putting on a show for the passengers who have sought refuge from the overwhelming storm outside.

The significance of “acting” in this story is far-reaching, as all the characters are putting on an act, though some are more convincing than others. The Swede is also putting on an act, like the host of the hotel, as described by the speaker: “His eyes continued to rove from man to man…he said that some of these Western communities were very dangerous…It was plain that the demonstration had no meaning to the others” (378). The Swede in this passage is sizing up the men around him, evaluating the dangers he believes to exist in “Western communities” and presents a “demonstration”—an outward show of manliness with his “wink and laugh” (378). The Swede winks again on the following page, initiating a repetition of both gestures and phrases that continue throughout the story, creating a cyclical pattern of behavior that only escalates the show of the men inside the hotel as they continually struggle for control of the situation. The character of the Swede suffers greatly for his over-confidence by cutting himself off from the companionship of the other men in the hotel.

The repetition of gestures and phrases creates a loose camaraderie between the cowboy, the Easterner, Scully and his son, Johnnie, but serves only to isolate the Swede who continues to assert his own manliness as a defense against the men he believes want to kill him. A turning point in the story occurs on page 385; in this passage Scully becomes a metaphor for all men, as even his speech takes on an almost universal quality becoming a “combination of Irish brogue and idiom, Western twang and idiom, and scraps of curiously formal diction taken from story-books and newspapers” (384). His speech at this moment asserts his control over his hotel through repetition:

“What do I keep? What do I keep? What do I keep?” he demanded, in a voice of thunder… “I keep a hotel,” he shouted. “A hotel, do you mind? A guest under my roof has sacred privileges. He is to be intimidated by none...” He wheeled suddenly upon the cowboy and the Easterner. “Am I right?”

“Yes, Mr. Scully,” said the cowboy, “I think you’re right.”

“Yes, Mr. Scully,” said the Easterner, “I think you’re right.” (385)

What is significant about this passage is that Scully claims to provide a haven that is free of intimidation, yet he intimidates his guests into agreeing with him. He asserts himself at this moment as the man in control of the situation, but instead comes across as just as intimidating and irrational as the Swede; the cycle of intimidation and the struggle for power escalates into the fight between Johnnie and the Swede, and ultimately the death of the Swede. Scully repeats the word “keep” four times, which signals to the audience (the reader as well as the men in the hotel) that he intends to recover his claim to authority that has been called into question by the men who seek to throw one of this guests out of the hotel. Though it seems strictly a business decision, the outburst is more than that as it is a reassertion of his manliness—his power and control as the owner and host—threatened by his son and his guests.

It is not until the final scene that we are presented with the definition of manliness, realizing that their manliness was only an act and that there were no “men” in the hotel that night. The Easterner explains to the cowboy: “Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I know. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man…Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems to be only five men…” (396). Here the idea of masculinity is made clear as the Easterner not only denies himself the role of a man, but he also compares the four men in the hotel that night to a large group of women who, he claims, are “usually…involved in every murder.” To be a man, by this definition, is not to commit murder, for that is the role of a woman, and a man instead would have stood up for the Swede; would have pointed out that Johnnie was cheating; would not have encouraged the fighting that ended in the death of a man. True manliness is not power or control over a situation: instead is the power and control of oneself with regards to a situation, and making the right decision based on what is right and not what is dictated by others. This is significant about the repetition in the story: the men fall into the trap of repeating the mistakes of one another instead of making their own decisions.

The combination of “putting on a show” of manliness and the constant repetition in this story proves deadly. None of the men shows true character, instead choosing to look to each other for guidance for behavior, continuing the escalation of the power struggle throughout the story. If even one man had walked away from the fight things might have turned out differently. The hotel itself, a painted actor on the stage of Fort Romper, Nebraska, will continue its show as the men inside will continue theirs. Manliness becomes a form of crowd assimilation instead of individuality, which is precisely the problem being addressed in the story.

PHI 162: “The Problem of Scientific Knowledge through Demonstration” (according to Aristotle)

2010-04-26T22:42:00.001-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M.V. Wedin

PHI 162: Aristotle

27 April 2010

The Problem of Scientific Knowledge through Demonstration

Aristotle claims that scientific knowledge can only arise in the situation that one can demonstrate what they know by presenting the knowledge in a coherent form with specific rules. In this way, his definition of scientific knowledge can be compared to a syllogism: it takes two true premises, argued together, to be able to claim new true information in the conclusion of the argument in the form of the syllogism. Like a syllogism, scientific knowledge consists of true claims that one must understand, and have seen demonstrated, taken together in an argument to be a conclusion that consists of scientific knowledge. He writes:

…it is necessary for demonstrative understanding in particular to depend on things which are true and primitive and immediate and more familiar than and prior to and explanatory of the conclusion… (71b.20)

In the above quote he states four dependencies that must be necessary for understanding of scientific knowledge to occur: a premise must be true, primitive and immediate, more familiar and prior and explanatory. These dependences are important because without them a conclusion would suffer from inconsistency, false claims, and a lack of demonstration that would be necessary for knowledge to be obtained.

Each of the four dependencies represents some form of demonstration in and of itself. The truth dependency, the first one on his list, is that which claims that the premises must be true in order for the conclusion to be true: truth in the premises demonstrates the relationship of truth in the premises to the truth contained in the conclusion, rendering the information in the conclusions as true. The second dependency, primitive and intermediate, refers to the relation of the premises to the conclusion for the information in the premises must precede the information in the conclusion or otherwise entail the conclusion. It would not be possible for a premise that that contains information that is, for instance, chronologically later than the information contained in the conclusion. This dependency demonstrates the relationship of the information in the premises to the information contained in the conclusion and the importance of entailment and logical following as going from premise to conclusion in the course of the argument. The third dependency is more familiar and prior which refers to the relationship between the information and the individual who knows it. One must be familiar with the information contained in the premises in order to use it to make a claim about that information in a new way, such as in a conclusion. “Being prior and more familiar” is that which is “nearer to perception”—something that can been demonstrated to the individual in such a way as to produce knowledge, which can in turn be used as premises to form even more knowledge in the conclusion (72a.1-5). The last dependency is that the premises must be explanatory, meaning that the information contained in the premises must explain the information contained within the conclusion, thereby demonstrating the connection between the relevance of the information in the argument.

The problem with Aristotle’s claim of demonstration as a means of obtaining scientific knowledge is that there is a regress of circularity that occurs in the rigorousness of providing demonstration for all knowledge beginning with the premises that precede the conclusion and extending back to the “first premises.” If Aristotle is correct, there will be no “first claims” that would be found underlying all other claims leading to a conclusion: if there were it would create a problem because either those first claims would not meet the criteria of the dependencies, or one would have to continue their demonstration in a circular argument that would quickly become non-demonstrable. Aristotle makes an argument against the circularity of knowledge by stating that “if demonstration must depend on what is prior and more familiar…it is impossible for the same things at the same time to be prior and posterior to the same things” (72b.25-30). We must remember that being “prior and more familiar” demonstrates the relationship of the information to the individual, and in this way Aristotle is correct: for an argument to be circular, then the individual would both have to know and not know the premises simultaneously in order for the argument to complete itself in a reciprocal fashion. Since the ability to simultaneously know and not know is impossible, the idea that all arguments are circular is not an option.

Instead of pressing for more justification of demonstration as the only means of scientific knowledge, Aristotle then explores the idea that the immediate, or that the dependency between the premises and the conclusion, is not necessarily demonstrable and that instead knowledge at a certain point can be obtained through familiarity by definition (72b.20-25). Aristotle earlier defines “definition” as a “posit…but not a supposition” (72a.20), meaning that unlike a supposition that “assumes either of the parts of a contradiction”—like an assumption—a definition gives information that one must assume but that does not nullify either part of a contradiction. Instead, a definition outlines the meaning of a premise in such a way that it maintains truth, and allows the formation of new information in the conclusion thereby creating new premises for argument: the first “first claims” needed to source scientific knowledge. In claiming that it is possible for some premises, namely those that are immediate, to originate from definitions, Aristotle almost convinces the reader of the definition as a solution to the problem of infinite regress, but even that falls short. The problem with the idea of definition is thus stated:

Since one should both be convinced of and know the object by having a deduction of the sort we call a demonstration, and since this is the case when these things on which the deduction depends are the case, it is necessary not only to be already aware of the primitives…but actually be better aware of them. (72a.25)

By this explanation it is not sufficient that a definition might allow a premise to exist as a primitive, since it is necessary for an individual to be already aware of the premises, but “better aware” of them than the conclusion itself. Since it would be hard to take the definition of a very abstract idea and construct an argument such that the conclusion would not only include information from both definitions, but also create a new idea that is concrete seems impossible. A definition would need to be so well-known by the individual that it would become another premise that would need another demonstration in order to prove all the points of the definition in such a way as to create a conclusion, leading back to the original circular pattern of demonstration needed for scientific knowledge.

Unhappy with the options he presents about the source of knowledge Aristotle instead rejects all accounts, and claims there must be another way for one to achieve knowledge. His options as they stand are to concede to circular reasoning, resort skepticism, or have an infinite explanation that no one would ever be able to conceive. None of these options present a case for scientific knowledge as he would like to accept—in demonstration—so instead of claiming one over the others, he rejects all of them as false, and by doing so implies the option of something unknown even to him: “…hence, since there are few such things in demonstrations, it is evident that it is both empty and impossible to say that demonstration is reciprocal and that because of this there can be demonstration of everything” (73a.15-20). By rejecting all those things he denies are the sources of truth he does not explicitly state what it is that is the source of truth, and instead makes an oblique claim that there is something else that is unknown at this point that is the source. Scientific knowledge, therefore, can be had, but we reach a point in demonstrating the truth of it that knowledge itself remains source less.

ENL 10C: The Use of Metaphor in Pound’s “In the Station of the Metro”"

2010-04-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Stratton

ENL 10C

9 April 2010

The Use of Metaphor in Pound’s “In the Station of the Metro”

Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” uses metaphor to assist description in the poem that might otherwise be limited by the imagist ideal of “strict verbal economy” (Mikics 152). By using an extended metaphor, Pound is able to give the maximum amount of images to the reader with the minimum number words. The content of the poem consists of two major metaphors: the first being between the station of the metro and the “wet, black bough”; the second being the comparison of the faces of the crowd and the petals on the bough. The metaphor conveys maximum imagery with minimal words, and it extends from the title and continues through each line in a continuous flow of linked ideas. Each line changes the image in the mind of the reader to form a more complete idea of what exactly the speaker is seeing: a description of what the speaker sees with his eyes in an urban metro station and turns it to what his mind interprets that vision.

Metaphors play an important role in the form of the poem by allowing the speaker to give a maximum number of images while using the least number of words necessary to convey what the speaker sees. In the first metaphor the metro is indirectly compared to a “wet, black bough” and one can imagine the station and the metro consisting of a long, well-lit tunnel with shining tracks, and people peering from windows that reflect the light. The wetness is the light of the station; the black the shadows created by that same light. The urban, man-made metro station is thus transformed into an object of nature. This same transition is what happens in the second metaphor as well: the crowd of human faces on the metro is transformed into a row of petals with only the use of a trope and a semi-colon.

The semi-colon at the end of the first line of the poem offers the reader the comparison between the contents of the title and the first line, and the final line of the poem, to be juxtaposed side-by-side as equal images in the mind of the reader. As a continued sentence, instead of one broken up by a period, the metaphor is given more weight; the last line of the poem is offered as a parting thought to send the reader away with the final image birthed by the vision of the metro. In using metaphor, Pound gives “two ideas for the price of one…offer[ing] the reader a bonus of meaning” (Mikics 181) all while realizing his goal of using only the most necessary words. The metaphors he uses show the reader what he sees, yet maintains a sense of reader imagination: the reader is allowed imaginary freedom without the extra description, while the speaker maintains the control of what is being described. Both freedoms lie in the use of metaphor, which turns an otherwise ordinary metro station into a wet, petal-laden bough.

Works Cited

Mikics, David. A New Handbook of Literary Terms. London: Yale University Press, 2007. Print.

PHI 178: "Response to ‘Discuss Frege’s conception of logicism. What is a number and how are they defined?’”

2010-03-23T19:14:00.001-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. R. May

PHI 178: Frege

17 March 2010

Response to ‘Discuss Frege’s conception of logicism. What is a number and how are they defined?’

Frege’s conception of logicism is beautiful in its simplicity. He set out to prove a link between logic and arithmetic; arithmetic meaning the branch of mathematics that is concerned with counting. More specifically he wanted to capture the Peano postulates of arithmetic in logic, prove that all arithmetical functions can be shown true in purely logical proofs. Frege’s concerns at the beginning of the project included several frustrations about the seemingly superficial way in which many of his contemporaries were exploring mathematical proofs in general. In his search for logicism, Frege managed to give definitions to mathematical concepts that, until he defined them, were ambiguous at best—at least in definition.

Both as a professional mathematician and as a philosopher Frege considered it scandalous that the foundations of ‘the most exact of all the sciences,’ mathematics, should be treated in the cursory and superficial manner…He embarked, therefore, upon a programme of investigation which was designed to fulfill two basic theoretical needs: to explain the concepts, and to secure the truths of arithmetic and analysis. (Bell 141)

Despite such huge mathematical leaps being made during Frege’s life there were still many mysteries surrounding the “elementary” mathematics of arithmetic. In setting out to find a link between logic and arithmetic that Frege was certain existed, the managed to give more depth to the definitions, and led to a revolution in the way mathematicians and philosophers alike approached math, science, and language.

One of the fundamental questions that had not been under scrutiny before Frege was the question ‘What is a number?’ Arithmetic is taught to school children every day with the emphasis that counting and arithmetical functions are easy to understand, with little to no explanation beyond what those functions do to manipulate numbers. Beginning with the premise that arithmetic reduces to logic, Frege took the first step in showing that every step in logic, or mathematics, must follow the highest standard of logical precision and proof. If something “follows logically” from (a) premise(s) then it is being held to the highest certainty in order to be called “knowledge.” This is the same standard that science adheres to in its theoretical postulates. Mathematics, until this time, had not this standard of logical certainty, and instead allowed themselves the flexibility of semi-ambiguous inference and even unscientific “intuition” to permeate its claims:

Since it is arbitrary what reference one wants to give to a sign, it follows that the content of the sign will have these or those properties, depending on the particular choice made…Mathematicians…are very peculiar people; instead of investigating the properties a thing really has, they don’t care about them on iota, but using so-called definitions, ascribe all sort of properties to a thing that have absolutely no connection with the thing itself, and then investigate these properties. (Frege “Formal Theories” 115-116)

In being critical of his colleagues’ intuitive claims about the definition of number, Frege realized that the numbers have a seemingly arbitrary quality: for example an army could be called “one” army, “ten” regiments, or “five-thousand” men, depending on the “concept” that is in question. His realization allowed him to make a distinction between the name of the number and the number itself. He outlines this in Sinn and Bedeutung when he makes the distinction between the morning star and the evening star. Since the term “morning star” and the term “evening star” each refer to the same point in the sky, they both represent the planet Venus, there is something significant that is to be learned from which term is thus used. The claim “the morning star is the morning star,” however, seems trivial; Frege then asks the question: what about the statement “the morning star is the evening star” gives information when the the statement “the morning star i the morning star” is deemed trivial? The answer lies in the what the sign is referencing: the signified. In logic this is represented through the use of identity; a = a is trivial because it is obvious (under normal conditions) that a thing is equivalent to itself. The claim a = b, however, gives information beyond the trivial: it signals to the thinker that there are two objects that are identical, and that those objects have a sign that is not the same—the significance in the difference of the sign is what makes the information important instead of trivial.

Numbers work the same way: the name “two” refers to a number, but that number has no meaning unless it refers to a concept that can be linked to the number itself. Numbers, then, are concepts—not objects with properties—and those concepts have different levels that signal the thinker to the meaning of the concept. An example is given in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “The concept being an author of Principia Mathematica falls under the concept being a concept under which two objects fall” (Malpas). This claim involves the concept two, much like the statement “There are two authors of Principia Mathematica” but the emphasis in the first claim distinguishes the conceptual nature of “two.” “Two” is not an object with properties that can be pointed out in space. Instead, “two” acts like a column on a table whereby claims such as “being an author of Principia Mathematica” might be filed under as being true when placed under “two.” Concepts themselves have properties, but, to quote Frege,

By properties that are asserted of a concept I do not, of course, mean the marks that make up the concept. These are properties of the things that fall under concept, not of the concept…In this respect existence is similar to number. Affirmation of existence is indeed nothing other than denial of the number zero. (Frege “Foundations” 103)

The properties of numbers are such that they are attributed to the objects within the concept. To know a number is not just a case of pointing to it: you would have to know something about it. For example five is the sum of two and three it is the second prime number. Each of these examples tells what “five” is, but each one is also a relation to other numbers. In other words, numbers are only “known” through their relation to other numbers, such as the successor function which orders numbers according to the number that comes before it.

When Frege conceived of logicism as a way to link logic and arithmetic, but his idea, despite its flaws, was so well-formulated that it affected philosophy of mathematics and language in ways he never intended.

Frege’s…’logicism’ essentially involves establishing (i) that the primitive concepts of arithmetic and analysis are logical concepts, i.e. that numbers, arithmetical functions, and operations can be reduced to, or defined exclusively in terms of, purely logical notions; and (ii) that the truths of arithmetic are logical truths, analytical statements which can be known a priori. (Bell).

In looking at the very foundations of “simple” arithmetic with such a scrutinizing eye, Frege helped to define things that, until he attempted it, did not have definition. Part of what Frege discovered in his exploration of logicism is that language is inherently flawed in describing his “most exact of all sciences” and that in order to accurately portray logicism, arithmetic, or logic he would have to build his own system in order to give the kind of accuracy he demanded. His attention to detail and high standards for proof led to a revolution in the way philosophers and mathematicians considered language, be it natural, unnatural, or mathematical. Despite his failure to prove a link between arithmetic and logic, the standards to which he held himself managed to reshape modern though: his short-term failure to prove logicism was a long-term success in that this rigorous standards paved the way for a higher mathematical standard that raised the bar for philosophy of mathematics, as well as creating new philosophical movements such as analytical philosophy and the philosophy of language. The fact that his seemingly narrow goal has shaped so much modern though has become more evident over time.

Works Cited

Bell, Davis. “Appendix: Frege’s Philosophy of Arithmetic” from Frege’s Theory of Judgment. From PHI 178 course website. Winter 2010.

Frege, Gottlob.

“On Formal Theories of Arithmetic.” From PHI 178 course website. Winter 2010.

“The Foundations of Arithmetic.” The Frege Reader. Ed. Michael Beaney. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997.

Malpas, J., “Donald Davidson.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2003/entries/davidson/

ENL 10B: "A Close Reading of "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville"

2010-03-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. T. Morton

ENL 10B

15 March 2010

A Close Reading of “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville

In reading “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, the first thing one notices is the repetition of certain words and themes that permeates the work throughout. This repetition occurs right at the beginning of the story with the narrator:

I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor, a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. (4)

It is the sound f the word that the narrator enjoys, but one must remember that the opening of the story takes place after the other events in the story. The narrator is looking back and writing from the memory the events of Bartleby as he remembers it and by the end of the story it is suspicious that the narrator has this fondness for word or name repetition.

The most obvious example of this is Bartleby himself who has little more to say than “I would prefer not to.” Bartleby’s insistence upon only using these words to turn down his boss’ requests becomes almost a mechanical response, devoid of emotion or any humanistic quality. Indeed, everything that Bartleby does lacks human qualities as the narrator does not see him eat, has no idea what he does with his free time, and his work style is unquestionably different from that of other scrivener:

At first, Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. AS if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candlelight. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, paley, mechanically. (11)

The narrator is not bothered by the amount of work that Bartleby is performing, he is bothered by the way in which he does it. “Silently, paley, mechanically” are not words used to describe a living being: they imply a robot, an automaton without any human characteristics, who works on without regard for his surroundings and regardless of who witnesses. Bartleby, unlike Turkey or Nippers, is not putting on a show for anyone else; he only continues his work for his own purpose which seems to be no purpose at all.

Turkey and Nippers both adhere to cycles that are predictable but emphasize their faults as people. These cycles are outlined early on in the story by the narrator, who describes in detail the cycle between the two scriveners in great detail, even going so far as to describe them and their habits over the course of 5 pages (page 5 to halfway through page 10) . This duration and attention to detail on the part of the author signals the reader that the predictable natures of Turkey and Nippers cycles are integral to understanding how Bartleby does not fit into this predictability. This creates a sense of irony: Bartleby is predictable, but not in the way that Turkey and Nippers are predictable. Turkey and Nippers are predictable in humanistic ways because they allow their imperfections to control their cycles by alternating when each one does his best work, even though they do not necessarily consciously control their cycles. Bartleby, however, has no humanistic cycles of imperfections. Instead, he is predictable in his unwillingness to do those things that are requested of him. The only predictable thing about him is his use of the word “prefer” which becomes so predictable that it becomes inhuman: he becomes a machine that continually repeats “I would prefer not to” with such reliable predictability that it becomes mechanistic. It is unpredictable precisely because it is so predictable, losing all familiarity to the more imperfect beings around him.

Repetition is an important part of this whole story from beginning to end. The author uses repetition to make a point about Bartleby himself, and how Bartleby affects his surroundings. Bartleby’s use of the word “prefer,” for instance, begins to affect those in the office, including the narrator and the other two scriveners.

“That’s the word, Turkey,” said I--”that’s it.”

“Oh, prefer? oh yes--queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer--”

“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.”

“Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should.” (26)

In this passage Turkey calls the word prefer “queer,” and claims he never uses it, but he then, immediately uses it not once but twice: the second time in such a way to be exactly contrasted to the sense in which Bartleby uses it. This opposition between Turkey and Bartleby is important, as even the narrator himself realizes the affect on his office: “I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads, of myself and clerks” (26) The repetition of Bartleby is more than just a significance of preference and it quickly becomes contagious in nature. Bartleby himself embodies repetition, not just in his words, but in his life as well, as he goes from working in the dead letter office to become himself a “dead letter”: his dying at the end of the story is also repetition.

The speech in the story is mostly tagged direct speech, with the exception of Bartleby, who has untagged direct speech for most of his responses. The differentiation between tagged being the more human characters in contrast to Bartleby’s untagged speech is significant for the subject position: by not supplying tags for Bartleby’s speech the reader is isolated from Bartleby, and Bartleby becomes an outsider, much like his relationship to those in the law office. When the speech is tagged, the effect is unnerving, and usually emphasizes some of emotion that is not normally attributed to Bartleby, since his character is such that he rarely exhibits “emotion” in a way that is familiar to the reader. His emotions, furthermore, are usually those of indifference, such as on page 26:

The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall reverie. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing. “Why, how now? what next? exclaimed I, “do no more writing?”

“No more.”

“And what is the reason?”

“Do you not see the reason for yourself?” he indifferently replied.

The emotions expressed by Bartleby and by the narrator are not evenly matched, as the narrator describes his reaction as an exclamation--usually showing a shock or dismay--whereas Bartleby does no more than to show indifference to his statement. This tagged and untagged distinction only helps to emphasize the disconnect that Bartleby has with his humanity, and gives the reader that much more reason to be disturbed by the narrator’s portrayal of Bartleby, even though the narrator goes out of his way to familiarize the reader with the good qualities that Bartleby may have.

ENL 159: “Married or Single: Marriage as a Means of Instigating Environmental Change”

2010-03-13T19:48:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Word Count: 3092

Dr. J. Marx

ENL 159: Global City Fiction

12 March 2010

Married or Single:

Marriage as a Means of Instigating Environmental Change

In Zakes Mda’s novel Ways of Dying there is a constant emphasis on the relationships between people, men and women in particular, as being integral to the state of their surroundings. “I believe the salvation of the settlement lies in the hands of women” says Toloki on page 176. This observation is striking because one realizes the disjoint in the balance between the sexes that must be remedied in order to fix the social problems the characters endure. The roles of the sexes are changing dramatically in African cultures and people struggle to care for themselves and their families in an increasing competitive world with less access to ever fewer resources. Since traditional gender roles can no longer supply families with what is needed for survival, a new unification and understanding must occur at a cultural level which can, in turn, affect the whole of society. Personal relationships are an important tool to use in order to bring change to large-scale social networks and by involving oneself in society a person can do more in instigating change than if they were to take a more independent, self-involved approach. This change, however, must begin at the individual level as people must take it upon themselves to become actively involved in their communities and change their own role, setting an example for those around them, much like Noria and Toloki in Ways of Dying.

Toloki begins the novel as an outsider. Though he is well-known in his neighborhood and within funerary circles, he still isolates himself from others because he "decided to follow a new path that involved sacrifice, self-denial and spiritual flagellation" (Mda 119). When he is reunited with Noria, however, he quickly reintegrates himself into society by integrating himself into Noria’s settlement. Toloki was not born in the city, he came into it later after he left his village to escape his father and the ill-treatment of other young people in his village. At first in the city he manages to get a place in a settlement, much like what Noria has, but he ends up leaving it to live in the waiting room at the train station when his house is burned down. Toloki elects at first to deprive himself of interpersonal connections by leaving his village, then by doing the same thing in the city, choosing instead a life of solitude in the name of the “holy” profession of mourning. Life in the settlement is hard, and he leaves because a perceived lack of unity:

It is strange how things don’t change in these shanty towns or squatter camps or informal settlements or whatever you choose to call them...The situation is even more complicated these days...But today people are strongly united. None of these groups are ever able to gain any lasting foothold in the settlements and in the townships. People fight back. (147)

The difference in the current settlement is that people overcome the oppressors, so Toloki no longer needed to “eschew forever the company of men. And of women” (147).

In meeting up with Noria, Toloki slowly reintegrates himself back into society. At the outset of the novel Toloki has no personal connections but by the end of the novel he manages to become, along with Noria, a central figure within the settlement. The example of companionship that Toloki and Noria show to the settlement impacts dramatically the face of the settlement. This is an important move for Toloki and for the settlement itself because by choosing to be a part of Noria’s home, Toloki chooses to belong to the settlement. In the article “Spatial Stories: Photographic Practices and Urban Belonging” by Carol Magee, she describes what she calls “elective belonging”:

…one may be born into that community, or one may move to it, but in either case, when one chooses to stay, one elects to belong. This belonging does not depend on formalized recognition by the community, even if it engages with the community…elective belonging does not depend upon one’s acceptance by one’s elected community: instead…one uses the visual to assert and represent belonging. (110)

Though Toloki still imagines himself an outsider he still moves his material possessions into Noria’s shack and into the settlement. Immediately afterwards people see this as a link between Noria and Toloki, assuming of course they are lovers. This move and recognition, however, is more than nosiness: it is symbolic of the link that is being forged between Toloki and the community. The transition from outsider to member of the community can be slow process unless one becomes active within the community. Toloki is not active at first, and it is only through Noria that he is able to assert himself and contribute to the community.

His role as a “professional mourner” seems to give Toloki a sexless status at the beginning of the novel. He represses his sexuality for the sake of his profession because he intends to emulate a holy man but this isolation and repression allows him access to a perspective that is unique: “[Toloki] attributes his keen sense of observation to the fact that he has not lived with other human beings for many years. He therefore sees things with a fresh eye” (176). The perspective he gains in this practice is important later in the novel when Toloki watches the men and women of the village, especially when he goes with Noria to inform the community about the strike. Toloki notices the “women are never still...always on the move...always on the go” (175), in sharp contrast to the men who “sit all day and dispense wide-ranging philosophies on how things should be...then at night they demand to be given food” (175). The division of work between the men and women is notably unfair as women are expect to cook, clean, and care for the children while the men seem to not have jobs and do not do their share of the housework. The roles at home mirror the roles in community action: it is the women who go out into the communities and rally for change while the men only philosophize their “empty theories” (176). The division in these gender roles within the community is in contrast to the relationship between Toloki and Noria who have a balanced relationship, and who support one another equally. It is not beneath Toloki to meet Noria’s women friends, or to assist the women with cooking or setting up for the community meeting (171).

The roles of men and women in Africa are important to the establishment of local government. Marriage itself is a tool people can, and do, use to establish themselves within the community and to gain access to material or money. For example, there was a custom in the 1920s- 1960s called “The Hats” where young women and young men would enter themselves into a marriage “lottery”:

While the women waited outside, the men were instructed to remove their hats, and leave the room. The hats were lined up on a table, and the women filed in. Each [woman] selected a hat, and was married, there and then, to its owner...This...entitled the newlyweds, together with their dependants, to occupy a township ‘family house’...the official permission to inhabit this cramped and inhospitable space offered a stake in the life of the city which many were desperate to seize. (Posel 57)

As the quote suggests, the people who chose to participate in this seemingly absurd marriage ritual were desperate to participate in the life of the city even at the cost of marrying someone they know nothing about. The article calls this the “logic of partnership” where the emphasis is not on marriage for the sake of love but instead to gain access to life within the city, reserved only for people who were married (58). By participating in marriage people were granted access to a luxury not everyone could have: the links created in marriage became an incentive to participate even at the cost of marrying someone who is entirely a mystery and may not be the best match. This participation in the social structure of marriage that is important for the evolution of communities because marriage, whether done for love or other reasons, is a form of participation in social structures that enables people to become more aware of their own social conditions. By marrying, people choose to participate in their communities thereby linking themselves to it in an intimate way and building ties that allow them more access to material and personal freedoms. The decision to marry under the custom of “The Hats” is then not so absurd and instead takes on a more important role as a form of social participation: sacrificing individuality for the sake of social connectivity, with the promise of easier access to urban luxuries.

The status of single women, and the children who are often with them, is one of poverty in Africa. Building a society that includes women who are not married, especially those who have children, has proven challenging. Cities come bundled with a variety of social problems that are not as easily solved in reality as they are on paper. Cities themselves are almost a paradox of wealth and poverty, as they seem to harbor both equally but also as degrees that mirror one another:

While cities are centers of wealth, they are also the focus of intense poverty...there are high concentrations of poverty within particular cities, making poor urban areas...the highest concentrations of poverty in the country. Moreover, the generally accepted notion that women and children are more vulnerable to poverty holds equally well for urban areas...in fact African women and children make up the bulk of the total urban populations. (Parnell 26)

It is a telling statistic that women and children are the “bulk of the urban populations” and not families or, specifically, male-headed households. Cities are centers of wealth, which is part of the lure to people who are on the other side of the spectrum, the poorest of the people. To be close to those people who have money and to attempt to claim some of that wealth for themselves. Women, however, do not have the same opportunities as men do in the work force: there is an obvious disadvantage for women who are unmarried especially if they have children because they cannot find jobs that pay enough for them to care for themselves and their children. Women are thereby encouraged to marry in order to find security for themselves and their (future) children and men become a woman’s only way to find security within communities.

The emphasis of the novel, however, is not that only one sex embodies the desirable characteristics that enable a community to thrive. Instead the argument is for cooperation and cohesion of the sexes to create a more unified community through the strengths of women and men working together, beginning with individual people, to families, to large-scale community projects. This political identity that is built by the unity of the sexes can be seen as an “effect of belonging” which Aimee Rowe discusses as an aspect of the politics of relation:

A politics of relation is...to tip the concept of “subjectivity” away from “individuality”...rather something called “subjectivity” may be thought as an effect of belonging--of the affective, passionate, and political ties that bind us to others. (18)

As Rowe says, there should be a distinction between the idea of “individuality” and “subjectivity,” and this distinction can be seen in Ways of Dying. At the beginning of the novel Toloki was a single individual who had little impact on his environment and he preferred to keep it that way:

...[Toloki’s] role had been to mourn, and only to mourn. He must keep his priorities straight... The work of the Professional Mourner was to mourn, and not to intervene in any of the proceedings of the funeral. It would lower the dignity of the profession to be involved in human quarrels. (Mda 24-25)

Toloki in the beginning is an individual: he does not concern himself with the living community in any way and is more concerned about the dead. In fact, he is so far outside the social realm he does not consider himself “human.” He is not selfish, and in fact seems quite generous, but his material generosity is countered by a political individuality. Politics for him are an inconvenience, only for humans, and should not interfere with Toloki’s “inspired mourning” (24).

Toloki gains “subjectivity” later when he begins to see the impact that Noria has on her community through personal interaction and outreach. Toloki is still maintains his individuality but through Noria he begins to build interpersonal relationships throughout the community, based on those Noria already has. Their relationship itself begins to shape each of them in different ways, as Noria and Toloki both realize. On page 151 Noria tells Toloki that she wants him to teach her how to live and forgive; later Toloki comes to the conclusion that is it Noria who knows how to live (169). Noria and Toloki share a mutual respect that is not seen among others of their peers, and each one learns from the other ways of living that would not have been apparent without the other. Noria does know how to live just as Toloki knows how to die. This dynamic between them seems odd, however, because Noria has experienced death first hand--such as the tragedy of her two sons--while Toloki seems to draw in all people living with his charisma, despite his awful smell. The importance is not is not what Noria and Toloki have experienced as much as it is the connection between them that brings forth the “effect of belonging” (Rowe)--the connection they form as homeboy and homegirl, and then cohabitating creates a dynamic of respect between men and women that permeates the community in subtle ways. The effects on the neighborhood become evident in the novel when Shadrack acknowledges the partnership between Toloki and Noria:

[Shadrack] had heard from Noria’s homeboys and homegirls of the power she used to have back in the village, and he had never believed the stories. But what he has seen with his own eyes this afternoon has left him dumbfounded. He has never had to much good feeling swelling in his chest before.

‘I cannot spoil things between you two. Yours is a creative partnership.’ (200)

The relationship between Toloki and Noria is more than friendship: it is a connection of artistic inspiration that manages to bring together the community at the end of the novel. The women and children gather around the two of them to marvel at Noria’s singing and Toloki’s pictures.

This community gathering at the end of the novel coincides with the new year’s celebration giving an element of rebirth to the characters and to the community. This rebirth consists of the cohabitation of Noria and Toloki, which links them to the community around them, but also the shared artistic link between them that allows Toloki to draw faces--something he could not do before. In the article “Writing the World from an African Metropolis,” Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nutall discuss the problem with presenting Africa in written form:

To write...is the same thing as to form. To a large extent, to write is to bring to the surface something that is not yet there or that is there only as latent, as potential...the ongoing negotiation...between what is and what could be. (348)

Mda’s novel is a perfect example of this negotiation of potentialities because he creates a world that is fiction, of course, but also manages to capture the struggles of a people who teeter between life and death. The art of Toloki and Noria also captures this negotiation as it manages to “bring to the surface” the question of existence within their urban unit--their art is as much a form as the writing of the novel itself. Even the figurines of Jwara capture the joy of the neighborhood, especially that of the children:

Everyone is absorbed in the figurines. The children are falling into such paroxysms of laughter that they roll around on the ground. Toloki is amazed to see that the figurines give pleasure to the children in the same way that Noria gave pleasure to the whole community back in the village. (210)

Existence, in the case of Noria’s neighborhood, is one that consists of walking that line between “between what is and what could be” (Mbembe 348) precisely because these are a people who live on the outside of the city life, and who are working their way into it. By giving pleasure to these people Toloki and Noria allow them access to a luxury: the ability laugh despite their condition, and the opportunity to laugh whenever one feels like it, which is why it is significant that Toloki and Noria choose to keep the figurines at the end of the novel. In setting up a place where the “children could come and laugh whenever they felt like it” (211) Noria and Toloki bring luxury into the settlement--a luxury made possible only by the unification of Noria and Toloki.

To conclude, personal relationships might seem self-serving as they tend to give people more reasons to care about themselves, but they do serve the communities. When people unite with others they create for themselves networks within the community that communities can use to combat oppression and bring forth large scale change. The unity between people can be a powerful tool in petitioning for change: governments find it easy to ignore small-scale movements but it is hard to ignore larger-scale movements that can often begin with small family units banding together. Individuals have little power without support from others, and that support often arises from the immediate networks people have, beginning with families and moving outward through ever-expanding familial groups. Basically, families provide easy access to large-scale mobilization and this is most easily accessible through establishment of still more families with marriage. Toloki and Noria are successful in their community precisely because they unite--man with woman--forming a family structure that links them to each other and to their community. As individuals they were helpless, but with each other their power to create change increases dramatically. Singularly a person is at the mercy of their environment, but with even one link to a person that changes and suddenly people have more control over everything around them.

Works Cited

Magee, Carol. “Spatial Stories: Photographic Practices and Urban Belonging.” Africa Today, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Winter 2007), pps 109-129. Project Muse. Web. 25 February 2010.

Mbembe, Achille and Sarah Nuttall. “Writing the World from an African Metropolis.” Public Culture, Vol. 16, No. 3, pps 347-372. Project Muse. Web. 28 February 2010.

Mda, Zakes. Ways of Dying. South Africa: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

Posel, Deborah. “Marriage at the Drop of a Hat: Housing and Partnership in South Africa’s Urban African Townships, 1920s-1960s.” History Workshop Journal, 61 (2006), pps 57-76. Oxford University Press. Web. 25 February 2010.

Parnell, Susan. “Constructing a developmental nation--the challenge of including the poor in the post-apartheid city.” Transformation, Vol. 58 (2005), pps 20-44. Project Muse. Web. 25 February 2010.

Rowe, Aimee Carrillo. “Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation.” NWSA Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer), pps 15-46. Project Muse. Web. 28 February 2010.

ENL 177: “Relationships: the Ties that Bind in A Mercy and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison”

2010-03-09T17:48:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown
Dr. J. Rose
ENL 177: T. Morrison
9 March 2010

Relationships: The Ties that Bind in
A Mercy and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Now I am thinking of another thing. Another animal that shapes choice. Sir bathes every May. We pour buckets of hot water into the washtub and gather wintergreen to sprinkle in. He sits awhile. His knees poke up, his hair is flat and wet over the edge. Soon Mistress is there with first a rock of soap, then a short broom. After he is rosy with scrubbing he stands. She wraps a cloth around to dry him. Later she steps in and splashes herself. He does not scrub her. He is in the house to dress himself. A moose moves through the trees at the edge of the clearing. We all, Mistress, Lina and me, see him. He stands alone looking. Mistress crosses her wrists over her breasts. Her eyes are big and stare. Her face loses its blood. Lina shouts and throws a stone. The moose turns slowly and walks away. Like a chieftain. (Morrison, A Mercy 82-83)

“When we were little girls, before you were born, he took us to the ice-house once. Drove us there in his Hudson. We were all dressed up and we stood there in front of those sweating black men, sucking ice out of our handkerchiefs, leaning forward a little so as not to drip water on our dresses. There were other children there. Barefoot, naked to the waist, dirty. But we stood apart, near the car, in white stockings, ribbons, gloves. And when he talked to the men, he kept glancing at us, us and the car. The car and us. You see, he took us there so they could see us, envy us, envy him…First he displayed us, then he splayed us. All our lives were like that: he would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon.” (Morrison, Song of Solomon 216)

Relationships are an important theme in Song of Solomon and A Mercy by Toni Morrison. They give a foundation to the events in the novel and allow Morrison more avenues with which to fully explore the dilemmas she presents the reader. In building relationships between people, time periods, and places the reader begins to understand the dynamics of the novel more clearly: by emphasizing relationships, or a lack thereof, Morrison reinforces the disconnect that her African characters often endure in the course of the novel. In depriving her characters of familiar places, times, and people Morrison recreates slavery in an emotional arena, forcing them to construct connections without a cultural context and enter into relationships based on what they see around them, instead of what is taught by close relations. These connections are much like those forced upon slaves who are uprooted from their homes, fighting to survive in an institution that views them as little more than cattle, and forming relationships with people that would not have formed without the institution of slavery in the United States.

In A Mercy, Florens learns much of what she knows from those people she encounters around her. The passage on pages 82-83 gives the reader a glimpse into what Florens sees as choice: Florens is desperate for social context, and sees “choice” as dictated by objects, like an animal, which is the case in this passage. The images in this passage are mixed in origin, creating a crossroads of culture in what Florens witnesses. First is the bathing ritual that occurs once a year for Jacob and Rebekka. This is symbolic of the white culture during this period, consisting of a people who are working hard to establish their own customs in a land that is foreign to them. In bathing, Jacob first has his wife scrub him, washing from him a year’s worth of dirt, but also a symbol of baptism or rebirth. The dynamic between Jacob and Rebekka is unequal as he does not reciprocate the scrubbing, instead going indoors to dress leaving Rebekka alone with only slaves and nature. It is not, however, the slaves that bother Rebekka, it is nature. A moose, a symbol of nature, wanders from the woods and watches as Rebekka “crosses her wrists over her breasts” (83) protecting herself from the view of the animal: Florens recognizes the indifference of the animal towards Rebekka, but Rebekka only sees the animal as a threat. The moose also represents the Native Americans during this time, who wanted nothing more than to be left alone and live in peace. Whites were always encroaching on tribal lands to make more space for farming and agriculture, but at the fringe of those settlements were the Native lands.
In this passage Florens relates the interaction between several people who have influenced her life: Lina, Mistress, Sir, and nature, represented by the moose. The un-reciprocated washing of Sir sends a message of uneven duty and respect, since Jacob is not obligated to wash Rebekka in return. The moose witnesses Mistress’ own washing of herself, but seeming voyeurism attributed to this act by Rebekka is meaningless to Florens because she does not comprehend the importance of physical privacy, something that slaves were not accustomed to. Instead of seeing the moose as a threat, Florens compares the moose to a “chieftain,” no doubt a word she learned from Lina who, as a Native American, would have used that vocabulary in front of Florens naturally, since a “chieftain” is a head of a native tribe (OED).

This memory is an intersection of cultures, between the white cultures represented by Jacob and Rebekka; the Native American culture represented by Lina and the moose; the culture of women and that of men; the older generation and the new. It is Florens who is watching this scene, a young black woman who is looking back on this memory as she interprets her first ideas of love. “Another animal that shapes choice” (82) is significant to the opening of this memory: the moose “shapes choice,” as she describes in the passage. The ability to choose, to a slave, is a luxury because slaves were not allowed choice in their lives. A choice is “That which is specially chose or to be chosen on account of...excellence” and “care in choosing, circumspection, judgment, discrimination” (OED). Rebekka chooses to run to her husband at the end of the passage instead of choosing to continue cleaning herself: the choice is one of comfort, not available to slaves regardless of how well-treated they are in slavery. Rebekka can choose; Florens cannot because she is a slave and her life is without choice whether that choice is for place, comfort, even where she can go or what she can do.

In the close of the passage Florens begins to disagree with her original memory and interpretation of choice. Lina, at end of the memory, separates the “world" from the individual, which Florens suddenly cannot understand:

We never shape the world she [Lina] says. The world shapes us. Sudden and silent the sparrows are gone. I am not understanding Lina. You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose. (83)

Florens does not need to choose because of her love for the blacksmith, which turns what she has known until this point into a fiction: the blacksmith is kind to her, reciprocates her love, and his watching her has meaning. For Florens, the Blacksmith is her world and her shaper, and Florens feels this was not a choice on her part, or that of the world. The truth of the Blacksmith lies in his embodying all things for Florens and becoming all those things she desires. All of what she has seen in her youth is suddenly wrong because the context has changed, and she finds herself closer to that which she should have known all along: a connection to Africa and a person who embodies the traditions and cultures she has come to lack.
In the second passage, from Song of Solomon, Corinthians tells Milkman of a memory she had from her youth when her father took his daughters so others might envy them. Two words in this passage stand out immediately: “displayed” and “splayed.” According to the OED, “displayed” is “unfolded, unfurled, spread open to view” and also “To disclose, reveal, or show, unintentionally or incidentally; to allow to be perceived, to betray.” Macon I took his daughters to show them off to a crowd of men who would, according to Corinthians, “see us, envy us, envy him” (216). By “displaying” his daughters he betrays them to those men, making them objects, like his car, that would inspire desire. “Splayed,” in the OED, means to “spread out in an awkward manner” but also to “have the ovaries excised.” In showing his daughters as objects Macon I deprives them of everything that makes them people, but also of their rights as women. The relationship between father and daughters is jeopardized, and also jeopardizes the relationships between these women and their future men, as neither woman later marries and has children.

Corinthians and Magdalene are placed on a pedastal by their father, but instead of making them feel good about being women it deprives them of their femininity and, by objectifying them, disconnects them. There are several instances of physical disconnect that occur in the passage including between Macon and his daughters, Macon and the Men, the girls and the other children. The disconnect, however, goes beyond the physical: there is a distinct disconnect between these characters socially that might not have occurred except for a need to escape the confines of the slave-mentality. Macon intended to put on a show for those men in order to have the men envy him: his position is superior to their own, as demonstrated by his two beautiful daughters, his nice car, and his willingness to “share” the view with his neighbors. The display is only a ruse, and as soon as the physical boundary is breached--the little boy reaching out to Corinthians’ hair--the social boundaries are then raised to compensate for the lost distance.

The example that Macon I sets for his children isolates them and, in turn, sets an example for Milkman in the way to treat women. Corinthians describes that “he [Macon] would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon.” Women became objects of envy and jealousy, to be displayed when one needed to show superiority over others, regardless of the need to. Objectification of women was not uncommon during slavery:

There was a marked sexual component to the assaults: rape was common. Kinship was disregarded, particularly the paternity of children. Their status reflected the enslaved status of their mothers, no matter who their father might have been. Slave owners treated their unpaid, overworked labor forces as mere chattel. (“The Transatlantic Slave Trade”)

Milkman “pisses” on everything, according to Magdalene, not because he intends to or even wants to; his pissing is an unconscious disrespect for everything and everyone around him because he has no direct comparison to see that his behavior is unacceptable in a respectful culture (216). Corinthians realizes his objectification and it is what Milkman’s only example is his father, without context otherwise, who teaches his only son that there is no past, and that the future is void of any real ties outside one’s own needs and desires.
In emphasizing the relationships between characters Morrison is effective in building a case for the importance of cultural history by emphasizing the loss that occurs when history is unknown. Milkman Dead’s father, Macon Dead I, kept his son ignorant of almost every aspect of the past which forced Milkman to go in search of his past at the close of the novel. The discoveries he makes not only gives him an insight into his family’s past, but helps him realize his shortcomings as a son, a brother and a lover: “As Milkman watched the children, he began to feel uncomfortable. Hating his parents, his sisters, seemed silly now” (301). His change in attitude is a shift from an earlier scene with his sister, Magdalene, who confronts him about his need to piss on everything in their house (216). Her accusation is not literal--with the exception of an event in their childhood--and instead is a metaphor for his need to control the people in his life, much like his own father strove to control people.

This error on Milkman’s part to continue the unfortunate legacy of his father can be blamed on the institution of slavery and its effect on black family and community structure in the United States. In the article “Transitioning the Caregiving Role for the Next Generation: An African-Centered Womanist Perspective," Rhonda Wells-Wilbon argues that

The institution of slavery attempted to weaken African family ties and the sense of community through the purchasing of Africans from different tribes and separating of blood parents and extended kin from their children: however, enslaved Africans reinvented kinship ties as they held on to values and elements of African family life by connecting with non-kin and forming fictive kin relationships. (89)

The same could be said of Florens, who lacks the personal relations of family to give her life context. Florens imagines herself abandoned by a mother who preferred a son, and despite an upbringing without the traditional slave-abuse attributed to most owners, she still struggles to find a way to build her identity.

What occurred with slavery is that an entire race of people were stripped not only of their familiar locations, but also of their identity within kin groups, within a culture, and within a structure that educated them in ways not available to them once they were in the mercy of slave owners. Consider how children were raised in traditional West Africa:

Children were not considered the sole possessions of biological parents; rather, they belonged to and were accountable to the larger kin network that consisted of surrogate fathers and mothers...all whom worked collectively in building the tribal community. These kinship arrangements provided a foundation to the care giving system as members worked as interdependent and cooperative units for childrearing, and socialization, group survival, and collective identity. (Wells-Wilbon 88)

In African society children were not considered “possessions," and would not subsequently carry that mind set of physical ownership with them into adulthood. In being uprooted from their culture, Africans become a people without a context, suddenly left to create for themselves an understanding of the world. They no longer have an older generation to emulate and instead must create their own ideas of kinship, building networks with those around them. Without proper guidance, many young people can only mimic those things they immediately see around them whether or not the example is one of quality.

The networks created among these displaced Africans were not always trusted, and did not serve the same purpose as those found at home in their native culture. In some cases the networks were nothing more than a way to participate in the discrimination imposed upon them by creating competitions in power and seniority.

The loss of context that occurs when a people are uprooted from their culture to be planted into a new one can be jarring for physical and emotional realities. In an interview with Cecil Brown, Morrison reflects on the idea of a name:

[the name ‘Dead’ in Song of Solomon’] shows a mistake...a clerical error...the carelessness of white people...and the indifference when they...they don’t pay much attention to what the records are. My mother doesn’t even have a birth certificate. My aunt has a birth certificate and her name is not even on it. It says, Negro Child, that’s all. (461).

The white culture into which they were thrust left Africans without a course of action to protect themselves from loss of identity. Their former lives in Africa gave them a structure to fit themselves into, a context within which to operate, giving their lives a meaning that belonged to them, and no one else. The people around them influenced them in ways that were relevant to their own culture, instructing them on the best ways to live and the best adaptations for their surroundings.

Works Cited
Brown, Cecil with Toni Morrison. “Interview with Toni Morrison.”The Massachusetts Review, 36.3 (Autumn 1995): 455-473. JSTOR. UC Davis Library, Davis, CA. 28 February 20010 <http://www.jstor.org>.
Catherine Packer-Williams. "Understanding the Impact of Maternal Messages Given to Single, Educated African American Women about Relationships." Black Women, Gender & Families 3.2 (2009): 48-67. Project MUSE. UC Davis Library, Davis, CA. 24 February 2010 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
OED
“The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” inmotionaame.org. InMotion. March 5, 2010. Online. http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=1&topic=10
"displayed, ppl. a." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 Mar. 2010.

"splayed, ppl. a." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 Mar. 2010.

Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. New York: Vintage Publications, 2008. Print.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Vintage Publications, 2004. Print.

ENL 10B: “A Close Reading of “The Tyger” by William Blake”

2010-02-07T19:43:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown
Dr. T. Morton
ENL 10 B
8 February 2010

A Close Reading of “The Tyger” by William Blake

In reading “The Tyger” by William Blake the first thing one notices is that the lines are all uniform on the page whether typed in an anthology or seen directly on the original plates done by Blake. The lines are short and simple, organized into six quatrains of almost equal length. The lines that might be considered longer, though only slightly, occur in the middle of the poem in quatrain three due mainly to word length and not as much to increased number of metrical additions. The sentences in the poem are mostly hypotactic consisting of long strings of words that build more details of the image as the sentence goes on. An example is in the first quatrain:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? (1-4)

The speaker begins first by describing what he wants to discuss, where it is located, only to end it with a question who might create such a creature. The first two lines frame the subject of the poem and the last two lines frame the question the speaker hopes to ask in his words but since they are locked into one long question the syntax is considered hypotactic.
The rhythm of the poem consists of lines that are trochaic tetrameter with a catalexis at the end of each line: there are three trochees per line, consisting of first a stressed syllable and then an unstressed syllable, with a stressed syllable at the end of each line. There are few variations from this pattern but not many. One instance of variation occurs in lines 10-11 when the speaker inquires about the heart of the tiger:

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet? (9-12)

Line 9 consists of three trochees followed by a catalexis at the end of the line (the stresses notated above with underlining). Line 10, however, reverses the stress to iambs, at the exact line in which the speaker refers to the heart, creating a heartbeat-like effect that continues through the next line. There are two other places in the poem where the speaker switches to iambs: in line 20 when he asks if the creator of the Lamb is the same of the tiger, and i the final line of the poem when the speaker changes the fourth line of the poem to the word “dare” calling for an emphasis on the word that replaces “could.” Each of these lines refer to a power higher than what the speaker would possess which is why he might want a heartbeat effect: the sound of the iamb shows a humility towards the creator of the tiger, emphasizing his weakness of heart compared to something so great to have created so much.

The rhyme of the poem is two couplets in each quatrain in an AABB pattern which have perfect rhyme with the except of two couplets that occur in the first and last quatrain which are imperfect rhyme. The unmatched couplets are identical to one another, since the second quatrain is only a repetition of the first with the exception of one word. The unmatched rhyme occurs between the words ‘eye’ and ‘symmetry’ which, though they end in a e sound, do not rhyme perfectly as the other couplets in the poem. All other couplets consist of perfect rhymes such as bright/night (1-2), and aspire/fire (6-8). Each of the rhymed couplets, whether they are perfect or imperfect, are masculine rhymes because they rhyme on a stressed rather than unstressed syllable. There are many instances of repetition throughout the poem, the most significant is the first and last quatrains which are identical except for the substitution of the word “could” in line 4 with the word “dare” in line 24. There are several instances of consonance throughout the poem with such words as burning/bright (1, 21), frame/fearful (4, 24), distance/deeps (5), stars/spears (17) which occur on the first line of each quatrain. This repetition and consonance unifies the sound structure of the poem for the reader, making the lines easy to read, yet they complicate the meaning of the poem subtly, especially the imperfectly rhymed lines that change in the last quatrain: that slight off rhyme and then the word change in the last line of the poem creates an unsettling feeling for the reader. There is very little change in the rhyme throughout the poem except for the lines already discussed.

The poem is a series of questions about the tiger; there are no statements to answer the questions posed to the reader. There are especially enlightening images within the poem that shed insight into the speakers answers to his questions without giving direct thoughts. The first occurs in the fourth quatrain when the speaker wonders:

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp?
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? (13-16)

Here the speaker imagines the tiger being forged, perhaps out of metal, by a hand that would “dare its [the tiger’s] deadly terrors" with a “dread grasp” in a place hot enough to be called a “furnace.” The image is given to the reader with a dark connotation with words such as deadly, terrors, dread and dare which challenge the idea of the tiger having a benevolent creator. Instead one imagines a hell-like domain and is forced to consider the tiger being created by a more sinister force. The tiger itself is described in the first and last quatrains as “burning bright” so this idea of it being forged in a hell-like place only helps to reinforce the original image.

This idea is continued in the next quatrain in which the speaker presents an image of warrior-like stars who “threw down their spears/ And water’d heaven with their tears” (17-18). The creation of the tiger would strike these warrior-stars in heaven into such awe and fear they would be impelled to tears; then the speaker wonders if the creator would smile. The most interesting line is the final one in this quatrain: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” The question is one of doubt: could the same benevolent creator of the Lamb, capitalized so instantly linked to Christ, be the same as the one of the tiger? “The Tyger” presents the reader with a series of questions regarding the form of the tiger and a curiosity about its beginnings.

ENL 177: “Fear, Realization, Actualization: A Comparison of Nel and Newly-Freed Slaves”

2010-01-31T11:06:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. Judith Rose

English 177

2 February 2010

Fear, Realization, Actualization: A Comparison of Nel and Newly-Free Slaves

Late that night after the fire was made, the cold supper eaten, the surface dust removed, Nel lay in bed thinking of her trip. She remembered clearly the urine running down and into her stockings until she learned how to squat properly; the disgust on the face of the dead woman and the sound of the funeral drums. It had been an exhilarating trip but a fearful one. She had been frightened of the soldiers' eyes on the train, the black wreath on the door, the custard pudding she believed lurked under her mother's heavy dress, the feel of unknown streets and unknown people. But she had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. There was her face, plain brown eyes, three braids and the nose her mother hated. She looked for a long time and suddenly a shiver ran through her.

“I'm me,” she whispered. “Me.”

Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant.

“I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me.”

Each time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut.

“Me,” she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, “I want...I want to be...wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.”

The many experiences of her trip crowded in on her. She slept. It was the last as well as the first time she was ever to leave Medallion.

For days afterward she imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious. Leaving Medallion would be her goal. But that was before she met Sula, the girl she had seen at Garfield Primary but never played with, never knew, because her mother said that Sula's mother was sooty. The trip, perhaps, or her new found me-ness, gave her strength to cultivate a friend in spite of her mother. (28-29)

In Toni Morrison's novel Sula there is a passage on pages 28 and 29 which contains a psychological passing of Nel through three stages of maturity that culminate in her discovering herself outside the world of her mother. Much like those freed slaves who could not fully grasp the meaning of “free,” Nel is learning what is hers, what is her mother's and what is her community's. Boundaries between freedom and slavery, joy and fear, pleasure and pain become clearer through experience and time. Though she does not fully realize her potential in this passage, she does embark on goals that are strictly hers alone: to leave Medallion, to be someone other than “Nel,” and to make a friend in spite of her mother's rules. Her transition through these stages mirrors those of the newly freed slaves who had to decide between a what they knew as home and the promise of a better place outside of that known world; the fear they had to overcome, the ideas they had about themselves and their dreams, and then putting those dreams into reality.

The first stage of the passage is fear, like the slaves who have not yet understood what it means to be free, Nel is embarking on a road not yet traveled as she tries to imagine a life different from her own. Nel catalogs her fears from the recent trip with her mother and the fears she lists all have one things in common: they deal in her fear of being judged by others, such as the urine on her legs, the disgust of the woman's face (28). She describes the trip as both “exhilarating” and “fearful,” as she remembers the world of unknowns that she was thrust into by her mother. Instead of being terrified Nel decides that a life of travel is what she desires; the exhilaration, fear, unknown—all these things gave her a new perspective which she desired to keep close to her. Nel is a girl controlled by her mother, Helene, and it is no surprise that she desires to find some other version of herself that is separate from her mother. Nel is at a point in her life where she must start to exercise her freedom from Helene but because of her Helene's controlling nature she must be careful in those things she chooses to do.

Comparing Nel's situation to that of freed slaves, the reader recognizes that a newly-freed slave will have little idea of what it is like beyond the captivity of his master. In freeing the slaves, but not providing them with an education or some means of supporting themselves outside of slavery, the slaves were left to decide what freedom means for them and how to pursue it. Jim Crow laws, set in place to discourage the rights of blacks, only reinforced the desire to move on to a better place, as this song illustrates:

I'm tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna leave this Jim Crow town,

Doggone my black soul, I'm sweet Chicago bound,

Yes, Sir, I'm leavin' here, from this ole Jim Crow town.

I'm going up North, where they think money grows on trees,

I don't give a doggone, if ma black soul should freeze

I'm goin' where I don't need no B.V.D.'s. (“The Great Migration”)

Like Nel, the song's singer longs to be gone from the world of “Jim Crow” where the rules are rules only for the sake of the rulers, and not for the good of those who are ruled. The comparison between Nel's mother and a white former-slave owner is easily compared in this passage when Nel's mother refers to Sula's mother as “sooty” (29). According to the OED, the word sooty is “an offensive name for a black person” which implies being “foul or dirty with soot” and also “foul with sin” (OED). Helene, though she is also black, fills the role of the oppressor well by using language that is derogatory to blacks in order to maintain the power over her daughter.

The next stage in this passage is Nel's realization that she does not have to live strictly under her mother's rule; she is her own person and can visualize herself in her mind as what she is: “I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me” (28). This move from fear to realization is important in breaking away from her mother and, for slaves, breaking away from the rules imposed on them by their former masters. They realize themselves as a separate entity from those who had them in captivity, finding who they are beyond the chains that kept them bound. The fear is still there for Nel but she embraces it as a “discovery” about herself and asks Jesus to make her “wonderful” (29). Nel has had an epiphany in which she sees herself not how her mother would have her see herself, but as she chooses to see herself. She is no longer “Nel” or their daughter: she has become a “me.” This same move is made by freed slaves who begin to see themselves not as slaves any longer, but as people who can make their own futures freed from slavery, Jim Crow laws, and outside the perspective of whites. They become something more than just former slaves and though there might be fear, that same fear is coupled with joy, and power. The joy of freedom and the power to choose what is best for their own future, instead of being told what to do—both Nel and former slaves have new, although unclear, paths ahead.

The final move in the passage is of Nel's actualization. She takes what she has learned and uses it to create goals for herself—mainly to leave Medallion. What really happens, however, is she meets Sula and despite her mother's disapproval decides to “cultivate a friend in spite of her mother” (29). This move on Nel's part to envision a life for herself outside of her mother's realm, and to do something that she knows her mother will disapprove of takes her from the realization that she is her own person, to actualization where she becomes her own person. The same can be said for the blacks who made the migration North: instead of waiting for the future to happen, they took steps to move themselves and their families to what they felt would be a better, more inviting, and prosperous place. Though Nel's action might seem small compared to the move from South to North, it is a big move for her to make on her own, with no support from anyone else to help her do it. In her own way, Nel migrated from the realm of her mother to her own, and though she ultimately decides to stay in Medallion her friendship with Sula proves to be the one thing to change her life forever.

Nel goes through three stages in this passage that are mirrored in the lives of former slaves during the reconstruction period in the South: fear, realization and actualization. In only a few lines, Morrison manages to capture the predicament of a generation of people who must decide between what they know and what they dream; what that need and what they want; who they are and who they want to be. It is not an easy struggle for either for Nel is up against her mother and her community, and the former slaves are up against a community as well: one that consists of hate, oppression and a tradition of bloodshed dating back hundreds of years. Both will succeed in small ways at first by taking those steps Nel goes through in discovering what she she fears and finding ways to realize her strengths and seek out those things she desires, even if it is something as simple as friendship from a girl her mother disapproves of.

Works Cited

“The Great Migration: Leaving the South.” inmotionaame.org. InMotion. January 30, 2009. Online. http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=8&topic=2

ENL 159: “The Problem of Identity”

2010-01-30T15:09:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Word Count: 1225

Dr. J. Marx

ENL 159

30 January 2010

The Problem of Identity

In the novel Portrait With Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked, Vladislavic gives the reader an exhilarating and surprisingly thorough view of the city from the perspective of one man. This single perspective manages to give a panoramic view of Johannesberg; it can be considered an argument against what LaTour presents in his work Paris:Invisible City when he argues against the ability to capture all of Paris. Despite their difference, Vladislavic and LaTour both present problems of personal identity in ways that are relevant in any social environment be it Paris or Johannesberg, urban or suburban. The problem of personal identity is complicated because identity is determined by perspective: one can know who they are and convince others of who they are, but in society the individual means nothing without validation from the constructs that determine a person's social identity. LaTour describes it best: “Either I really see and I see nothing; or I see nothing directly, I look at a trace and I begin to really see, I gradually become someone” (11). These problems are framed in both texts in such a way as to change with the perspective with which it is presented and such changes can manipulate the environment within the text giving the reader the illusion of security (or insecurity) that Vladislavic and LaTour explore within their writings.

Vladislavic frames identity in terms of keys and their relationship to security. The presence of keys in the novel is one that signals security be it personal or material but in one instance keys are shown as proof of insecurity:

...she takes out her bunch [of keys] and shows us the mysterious black key... At first, there are tipsy jokes about alien abductions and love nests, but soon their conversation turns serious. It's an unsettling idea, already people are fidgeting in their pockets, where their own keys are beginning to weigh more heavy...Dave suggests that someone might have put it there with a more serious purpose, to provoke some thought about security. Or rather insecurity. Less a practical joke than an object lesson. (142-143)

Keys are sources of power because they can lock up objects, such as steering wheels and houses, and people, such as criminals. This unsettling feeling of having an extra key on a ring reminds the individual that even their own keys might betray them to unfamiliar new routes of identity. The problem with the unknown key is the potential it brings with it; with each new key a new trace, as LaTour would call it, is unlocked for the user and those traces might lead to a danger that the user may not even be able to imagine. By placing the reader into this scene where keys suddenly pose a threat to the person the perspective now shifts and the setting is no longer one of security and instead replaced with suspicion of those things that normally bring security and with that a question of identity.

The individual in Vladislavic's novel is defined by their keys:

She fans them out with her forefinger, flips over the immobilizer jack for the car, takes another shot. They shame me now, lying there like keys to my psyche, a feeler gauge for every insecurity...I have threaded them on to the rings with their profiles facing in the same direction, like a dressed file of soldiers. Their noses and chins familiar to my fingertips, I can find them in the dark. (115-116)

The narrator in the above passage notes the insecurity that his keys represent to an outsider who does not understand the security those keys bring him. The keys can be both secure and insecure—or even both—depending on the way in which the text is interpreted by the reader. The individuality of the characters stems not from the person—the body—of the character but by their connections in the world. This is what is so important about the keys; they give the individual access to those things that make him who he is: his home, mailbox, car, safe, important documents, houses of his relatives and friends, his job. They are “a dressed file of soldiers” protecting the identity of the owner by granting him access to it. A known key is a source of power and security bringing to the user a sense of control in a world that does not allow him any control but an unknown key does not allow the user that power and instead robs him of the one thing he might claim: knowledge of his links to the world around him, thereby leading him to question the basis of his own identity.

LaTour is very interested in those things that make a whole and in terms of identity, it is only obtained through the links of an individual to the world around him. A person might believe he knows who he is but identity can only be determined by the documents our society uses it to grant it to us (LaTour 17). Identity is not who we think we are nor is it who others tell us we are. Our identity is a determined network of social constructs which give depth to our physical existence by granting us a social existence. It is still more than that:

As soon as we follow the shifting representation of the social we find offices, corridors, instruments, files, rows, alignments, teams, vans, precautions, watchfulness, attention, warnings—not Society. By tracking the token of the social it's as if we never met the two venerable figures of good sense: the actor and the system, the individual and its context. We don't even discover something that might fall in-between the two, a sort of dialectic or hybrid. No, we find ourselves following a movement that bears no relation to either the individual actor or the social context. (17)

The individual is not an individual without the context within which is exists; the context does not exist without the individual to give it meaning: the two things that give us identity are mutually dependent on one another for meaning and though they can be thought of separately they cannot be separated without destroying both parts.

What might seem a clever joke can quickly take the form of something more ominous, just as a few questions from an authority figure can quickly make one question their very own identity: “No matter how convincing we are about our own existence, we receive our identity via another alignment of circulating documents” LaTour writes shortly after his scenario of a traffic officer questioning a mysterious individual (16). Identity is not defined by one, two, or even three claims of existence. Instead it is the connections that one makes with the world in which he lives that gives depth to his identity but also validation by Society. The word society is capitalized here to represent the institution of society itself: it is not just the connections we make in our small inner-circles of family, friends and neighbors, it is the Society of all connections we make networked with those connections ours tie into, and still more connections that those make, creating the network in which society can thrive. With only one small change in perspective however, these same connections can undermine themselves, such as Vladislavic's mysterious key.

Works Cited

LaTour, Bruno and Emilie Hermant. Paris: Invisible City. Trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht. 2006. Online.

Vladislavic, Ivan. Portrait With Keys: The City of Johannesberg Unlocked. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 2009. Print.

ENL 159: "Jacob Flanders as a Self-Appointed Public Character"

2010-01-19T19:12:00.000-08:00

Jacob Flanders is a self-appointed public character in this novel because so much of the novel is centered on his actions. The fact that Jacob has no voice of his own--he is represented through the eyes, perspectives, voices of other people--attests to this observation. Jacob himself, however, has certain qualities that make him a public figure in the society of the novel, and in the metaphors used to paint his character.

J. Jacobs defines a "public character" as one "who is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character...[they] need not have any special talents or wisdom to fulfill his function...he just needs to be present...His main qualification is that he is public, that he talks to lots of different people" (Jacobs 68). Jacob, by this definition is a public character. He manages to interact with people in ways which affect them deeply, like his mother who cannot understand her son's penchant for trouble; the sea captain who chooses Jacob over his older brother for a higher education; and even the woman in the carriage, Mrs. Norman, becomes lost in a reverie about him: "Nobody sees any one as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway carriage. They see a whole--they see all sorts of things--they see themselves..." (Woolf 31).

More important than these interactions with people are Jacobs interests, as he finds himself attracted to butterflies and other insects which, one might argue, could represent his fascination with people who, like insects, pervade his life. Even the way in which the book is written gives emphasis to his character as the characters around him are inclined to watch him, speak with him, speak for him; Jacob's character is so public he never has to explain himself to the reader.

ENL 177: “Journal Entry #1—Reaction to Sula by T. Morrison”

2010-01-11T19:15:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 177: T. Morrison

January 12, 2009

Journal #1

Toni Morrison's work is highly political especially in terms of race relations (white/black) and sex relations (male/female). The marriage of Jude and Nel is an important marker of sex relations as well as race relations within the novel because Jude longs to be a “man” yet cannot consider himself a man until he finds a man's job, but those are reserved for whites:

It was after he stood in lines for six days running and saw the gang boss pick out thin-armed white boys from the Virginia hills and the bull-necked Greeks and Italians... that he got the message. So it was rage, rage and a determination to take on a man's role anyhow that made him press Nel about settling down. (82)

Jude longs to be a “man” and to do work that will give him a man's status, not “women's work” that he was performing in the kitchen at his job.

The more he thought about marriage, the more attractive it became. Whatever his fortune, whatever the cut of his garmet, there would always be the hem—the tuck and fold that hid his raveling edges; a someone sweet, industrious and loyal to shore him up...Without that someone he was a waiter hanging around a kitchen like a woman. With her he was head of a household pinned to an unsatisfactory job out of necessity. (83)

His dilemma—longing for manhood in a society that denies it—enlightens the predicament of many men but especially those of color because, unlike the “thin-armed white boys” and the “bull-necked” Europeans, he is not allowed the opportunity for manhood even if he seeks it out for himself. He is forced into a feminine position in white society: relegated to wash dishes in a kitchen; a job usually reserved for a woman. The message sent to him is that he is not man enough to do a man's job and it is his determination to change his forced feminine status to marry. By marrying Nel, Jude can force his way into manhood outside of the control of the white men. He dreams of being a “man” in terms of white men had failed him and “He needed some of his appetites filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he wanted someone to care about his hurt...And if he were to be a man, that someone could no longer be his mother” (82). By having a wife and, ultimately, a family to care for Jude can make that leap into manhood without the requirement of a “job” to grant him that status. It may be harder to care for his family because his job prospects are less-than wonderful, but he can take the “man's role” to care for his family.

ENL 122: Raphael’s Blunder: The Hope of Ascension and the Fall of Man

2009-11-24T15:47:00.000-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 122: Milton

24 November 2009

Raphael’s Blunder:
The Hope of Ascension and the Fall of Man

Satan’s temptation of Eve begins long before his captivating her as a talking serpent in the garden in book IX. The dream sequence in which Satan first gives Eve the tantalizing fantasy of humans revered as gods puts the idea of ascension into Eve’s mind, but it is Raphael’s speech that allows that fantasy a hope for reality. Raphael is the first to mention the possibility that God might one day raise man up to join the angels in heaven, and by doing so, leaving room for an ambiguous interpretation of the promise. Adam and Eve are left to wonder whether it must be God only to elevate man higher in the heavenly hierarchy, or if the Tree of Knowledge might bypass that route altogether. Raphael is not explicit in his warning to Adam in the first place, but by sending Eve away, Raphael leaves opportunity for miscommunication—and assuredly ambiguity—of the warning between Adam and Eve. This ambiguity would spell disaster for the earthly pair giving Eve an excuse to taste of the fruit of knowledge, damning the pair to eternal strife.

The dream that Satan inspires in Eve in Book V crescendos just after he promises to Eve that, should she eat the fruit, she would “be henceforth among the gods / thyself a goddess, not to earth confined” (V.77-78). This dream was obviously disturbing to Eve, as she slept with “tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, / As through unquiet rest” (V. 10-11) as well as her reaction to Adam as she wakes with “startled eye,” to embrace him (V. 26-27). When Raphael tells Adam of the possibility of man’s ascension to Heaven, it must have triggered an immediate memory for Eve when Adam passed the message to her. The similarity of Eve’s evil dream to Raphael’s musings on the potential of man is subtle:

…time may come when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare:
And from the corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend
Ethereal, as we, or may at choice
Here or in heav’nly paradises dwell… (V.493-500)

Perhaps Eve, Adam, or both, wondered that since they might ascend as angels, if there was a possibility they might also ascend as gods. After all, making the jump from man to angel would seem almost impossible from their perspective, especially considering Raphael had already put a distinction between the physical form of man and the physical form of angels. The substance from which each is made is vastly different, man of flesh and angels of ether; even the way man reasons is different from that of angels, man discursively and angels intuitively. With all these differences between man and angel it does not seem possible that one, namely man, would be able to make the switch into the other, and even the purpose for such a switch is odd. If God wanted man to be angels eventually, it would seem he would just create more angels instead of implementing a plan for eventual ascension. With all these unusual questions that Raphael leaves open in posing the opportunity for ascension it is no wonder Adam and Eve become tempted by a quicker rise through the ranks by choosing to eat the apple.

Eve is a curious creature: she wonders about the night and for whom the stars are for; she wonders about God, the hierarchy they are a part of, and her place within it. There is no reason why she would not also be inherently curious about the one forbidden tree in the garden, and though she may not have set out intending to eat of it, it can be argued that she was giving herself time away from her two guardians, God and Adam, to satiate her curious appetite. When Eve decides to venture out on her own to work she convinces Adam by arguing that fear in the garden is unfounded, and even if there were something to fear, God would protect them:

“If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit straitened by a foe…
How are we happy, still in fear of harm?
…Let us not then suspect our happy state
Left so imperfect by the Maker wise,
As not secure to single or combined.
Frail is our happiness, if this be so,
And Eden were no Eden thus exposed.” (IX. 322-323, 326, 337-341)

This is an important decision in the garden because it gives Satan the opportunity to exploit the curiosity in Eve’s mind on his own terms without interference from Adam. Eve’s argument seems well-founded: she would rather not “suspect” their happy state, for true happiness would not be experienced in fear. Her separation at this point, however, seems suspicious as their purpose in the garden is not solely for work, as argued by Adam, and certainly God would not have given Adam a partner in the garden only to mandate they work separate from one another. Her motive at this point is questionable, and one wonders if she was naturally curious about the tree, intending to investigate it whether or not the snake was there to tempt her. She does not realize that God is omniscient at this point either, for after she eats of the fruit she wonders if God might have missed her sin because “Heav’n is high, / high and remote to see from thence distinct / each thing on earth” (IX.811-813).

Eve’s dream turned to reality in book nine as the serpent, in place of Satan, reminds Eve to the hope of godhood. The serpent subtly hints to the promise of the dream: that a bite of the fruit will allow her ascension into a goddess-like status, as it moved the serpent to a man-like status. He begins to worship her as if she were already a goddess, which only heightens the excitement of ascension to come:

Fairest resemblance of they Maker fair,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine
By gift, and they celestial beauty adore
With ravishment beheld, there best beheld
Where universally admired; but here
In this enclosure while, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,
Who sees thee? (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen
A goddess among gods, adored and served
By angels numberless, thy daily train. (Book IX.538-548)

The language the serpent uses is one of seduction with words such as fairest, ravishment, beheld, adored, with which the snake pays tribute to her beauty claiming it is beyond the sphere she currently occupies. Her beauty is “celestial,” and belongs to Heaven, not on the earth where it can be enjoyed by only one man and “rude” animals. There is an echo within these lines as well from her original statement to Adam recalling her dream: “A goddess among gods” which is eerily similar to Book V.77-78 mentioned above. The echo here is important because Satan seems almost hypnotically seducing her by worshipping her, assuring her of beauty, and reminding her of the promise of ascension within her dream. The warnings from God, through Raphael, would only confuse her further, for she would remember that ascension might very well be possible even if it means disobeying the orders of God to attain it.

Raphael gave Adam and Eve the reason to believe that the hierarchy of heaven is fluid, and moving between realms is possible. Unfortunately, he is ambiguous enough in his explanation of this ascension that it leaves room to believe there might be other ways to ascend beyond those offered by God. He only exasperates the problem by excluding Eve from direct communication of the warning, exposing the earthly pair to the blunders of miscommunication between one another. Also, has she been present during this conversation, her curious nature might have forced Raphael to be more direct in his warnings, thereby subverting the possibility for ambiguity altogether. By allowing the curious Eve to imagine a world in which man and woman might attain heavenly bodies closer to God, Raphael gives her a reason to try to fruit to speed up that progress. If Adam and Eve had not thought it possible to change the status of the hierarchy they probably would have reconsidered eating the fruit, wondering if the snake was instead an evil enemy of God’s.

ENL 10A: Samson’s Captivity: A Reawakening of Purpose

2009-11-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 10A: English Lit to 1700

19 November 2009

Samson’s Captivity: A Reawakening of Purpose

Milton explores the captivity of man in Samson Agonistes as more than the jail and slave labor that Samson must endure at the hands of the Philistines. Captivity is the fallen condition of man, Milton argues, as man is born with obstacles that must be overcome before he can reach his full potential as a servant of God, which turns out to be another form of captivity. The example of Samson, from the biblical book of Judges, allows Milton to write make this argument from the perspective of a man who was born with gifts bestowed on no other man by God. This is an important perspective from which to write because if a great man can be held captive by his own imperfection, then all men can. It is only through recognition of man’s potential failings that one can reach their full potential despite their post-lapsarian condition.

Samson is captive to the Philistines because he is chained, and forced to do slave labor. This is his most obvious form of captivity: forced physical labor. Samson is forced to slave for those people he was born to destroy, and by doing so is also forced to consider all his failings: “From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm / Of Hornets arm’d… / rush upon me thronging, and present / Times past, what once I was, and what am now” (19-22). For Samson, it is not the physical labor that is the worst part of the slavery. With nothing to do but work, he is forced to consider all his failings by his “restless thoughts” and he dissects his own fall from grace, which makes the physical work a form of “ease” from his thoughts (18). He comes to an important conclusion: that strength, though useful, is not immune to failure unless there is wisdom.

But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall…
God, when he gave me strength, to shew withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair. (53-55, 58-59)

Even his great gift of strength is a form of captivity for Samson because he did not have the wisdom to guard it properly. God endowed the strength with an inherent weakness by placing it in Samson’s hair thereby rendering Samson strong but not invincible. The captivity, therefore, is Samson’s false sense of security brought on by his lack of wisdom and overabundant strength which he does not realize until it is too late and he is physically captive to the Philistines: “Immeasurable strength they might behold / In me, of wisdom nothing more then mean; / This with the other should, at least, have paird, / These two proportion’d ill drove me transverse” (206-209).

The Philistines have also blinded him, depriving him of the light of the world and the light of God:

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains…
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull’d, which might in part my grief have eas’d… (67-68, 70-72)

His blindness is a sensual captivity as Samson finds himself not only a slave to those he was intended to slay, but also without the guidance of his sight. It is sight that guides man in his daily life, without which one would wander hopelessly lost; without his sight Samson cannot make his way alone in the world. His blindness also implies he is without his God—another form of sight—as it is God who has, until now, guided Samson through his exploits against the Philistines. The sight that Samson has lost is multi-faceted: it is the physical sight in the world that allows him mobility and success in his battles against his enemies, but also the sight of God who has guided him in those battles. The loss of sight is a double-tragedy because he is deprived of a sensual pleasure and a spiritual pleasure, both of which are unbearable to Samson.

Before his captivity by the Philistines, Samson was captive to his passions as a man by allowing himself to be weakened by the love of a woman who is loyal to his enemy. Samson realizes he had fallen into service to woman, instead of in service to God when he states:

The base degree to which I am now fall’n,
these rags, this grinding, is not yet so base
As was my former servitude, ignoble,
Unmanly, ignominious, infamous,
True slavery, and that blindness worse then this,
That saw not how degenerately I serv’d. (414-419)

Both the physical captivity and the sensual captivity that he faces now in service to the Philistines is, he claims, better than his service to woman he paid before his fall. It is this captivity to woman that is another captivity that Samson is subject to, and another that he does not realize until he is already taken prisoner, betrayed by the woman he loved.

Though he ultimately takes responsibility for his own fall in admitting that “She [Delila] was not the prime cause” (234), he still laments his failing to identify her as a “specious Monster” and his “accomplisht snare” (230). The description of Delila as a “specious Monster” is especially telling, as the word specious, according to the OED, means “Having a fair or attractive appearance or character, calculated to make a favourable impression on the mind, but in reality devoid of the qualities apparently possessed” and “Of falsehood, bad qualities.” Samson is captive to her appearance, and his weakness for Delila echoes that of Adam’s for Eve in the garden of Paradise Lost, as both men allow women to have power over them. In Paradise Lost God was forced to remind Adam of the original hierarchy of subjection after the fall:

Was she [Eve] thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice, or was she made they guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her
Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the place
Wherein God set thee above her made of thee
And for thee, whose perfection far excelled
Hers in all real dignity: adorned
She was indeed, and lovely to attract
They love, not thy subjection… (X.145-153)

Like Adam, Samson’s perfection “far excelled” that of Delila’s, for she not only was an idolater according to the Hebrew people, but she was also a woman, and therefore inherently imperfect and subject to man. The Chorus recognizes this shortcoming of woman as well: “Is it for that such outward ornament / Was lavish’t on thir Sex, that inward gifts / Were left for haste unfinish’t, judgment scant, / Capacity not raise’d to apprehend / Or value what is best / In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong (1025-1030)? Further, like Adam, Samson became enchanted by a woman and allowed himself to become subject to her, overturning the hierarchy of power that should be God over man, man over woman.

Samson is also captive of God, and God’s plans. Samson was a gift to his parents, who could not conceive a child on their own, in order to free the Hebrew people from the Philistines. Samson’s responsibility is to his people and to his God and by allowing himself to be overthrown and taken prisoner by those he is supposed to slay, he has shirked his duties. This is his final captivity, and one that he must embrace and accept before death, though this captivity is one of service to God and not of to man, be it the Philistines or to women. Samson reawakens to his calling, slowly, through the visitations of his father, his wife, and a giant who refuses his challenge:

But come what will, my deadliest foe will prove
My speediest friend, by death to rid me hence,
The worst that he can give, to me the best.
Yet so it may fall out, because thir end
Is hate, not help to me, it may with mine
Draw thir own ruin who attempt the deed. (1262-1267)

At the end of the poem Samson accepts that to be a man in the fallen world is a life of captivity be it captivity to sin, women, slavery, senses or captivity in service to God. It is, however, within man’s power to decide what they will be captive to, and that is when Samson reaffirms his service to God, killing the Philistinian Lords:

Be of good courage, I begin to feel
Some rousing motions in me which dispose
To something extraordinary my thoughts…
If there be aught of presage in the mind,
This day will be remarkable in my life
By some great act, or of my days the last. (1381-1383, 1387-1389)

Captivity in this post-lapsarian world is can be chosen, and what man chooses to be captive to determines his end, be it in shame or in heroism. Samson, because he chose ultimately to be captive to God, became a hero and is remembered to this day for his feats in saving the Hebrew people. Though captivity can deprive man of his gifts, it can also give him strength, depending on the captivity he chooses.

I WANT TO GO TO THIS--who wants to go with me?

2009-11-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

MACBETH!

Studio 301 Productions brings you this famed Shakespeare classic with a whole new twist. Stylistically as well as visually, this will be Macbeth like you've never seen it before. It will be at the UC Davis, College of Letters and Sciences (also known as The Death Star) Courtyard. That's right, outdoors! Intense fighting, love, and language. That's pretty much the essence of Macbeth, and directors Steph Hankinson and Gia Battista have revved all these elements up even more! This show will surely be an intense and highly fulfilling experience for all type of theater goers. Whether you've seen the play a million times, or never even heard of it, you're sure to find a wonderful and pleasant surprise with this production! The courtyard is located directly across the street from the ATMS at the Memorial Union. The weather will be cold, so we advise bringing some warm clothes, and perhaps a cushion to sit on. There is a possibility of rain so be prepared for that too. There will be hot drinks served as well! To assure yourself you got a spot, make a reservation at Macbethreservations09@gmail.com and when you do, be sure to include your name, your phone number and number of seats desired. These reservations guarantee you a spot but it is still first come first serve so be sure to arrive at least fifteen minutes early. Also, there is a deadline to reserve, make sure it is by 11:59 pm the night BEFORE your desired show date you wish to attend. SHOW DATES: Wednesday November 11 (preview) to Sunday November 15 Wednesday November 18 to Sunday November 22 all shows start at 8pm EXCEPT for Sunday shows which start at 6pm. Adults: $10 Students: $9 (donation minimum) We can't wait to see you all there!

ENL 10A: “Rebirth in Passion: The Fall of Othello and Iago”

2009-11-03T08:25:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 10A

3 Nov 2009

Rebirth in Passion: The Fall of Othello and Iago

Othello is a tragedy of words. The sins committed by the various players are of ignorance, hardly deserving of the outcome of death and destruction at the end of the play, especially those of Othello and Desdemona. Their folly was not communicating with one another as a married couple should: not discussing the strange stories of Iago and thereby not discovering, before it was too late, that much of what they believed to be true was nothing more than hints of lies construed as truth. The echoing of Iago and Othello in act IV.i leads to both a convergence between Othello and Iago, and is a turning point in the play ultimately leading to Othello’s trance and the rebirth of both characters into passionate, revenge-induced rage.

The trance is the rebirth of both Othello and Iago within the play; it is what begins the fall of both characters and is a point of no return. Othello comes under Iago’s hypnosis and awakes to find himself in chaos, away from reason and love; embroiled in passion and hate. As a soldier, this is a dangerous place for Othello because his first instincts after the trance are for revenge on Desdemona and Cassio, which he acts on without rational consideration. His loyalties change after this convergence and rebirth as well, as Othello has performed an almost ritualistic ceremony of loyalty to Iago, comparable to a wedding, and Desdemona is no longer Othello’s “love” as it is now pledged to Iago. Iago is also reborn while Othello is in the trance: instead of only plotting against Othello, he begins to imagine revenge on Cassio by assisting Othello in his plans for Cassio’s death, and later the death of Roderigo. With all those out of his way, regardless of where that leaves him, Iago believes he will “win” and he also becomes overruled by his passionate desire for revenge.

Iago, it seems, did not originally plan to bring Othello down through Desdemona’s supposed infidelity. At the opening of the play his intentions are unclear and all the reader understands is that Iago hates Othello because Iago was passed over by Cassio for a lieutenant position. Originally, Iago’s plans only intended to embarrass, and hurt, Othello by denying him access to Desdemona. It is not until Brabantio warns Othello of Desdemona’s questionable decision to betray her own father that Iago realizes what might be the best way to hurt Othello: “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee” (I.iii.290-291). These words from Desdemona’s father are ominous, especially when compared to Desdemona’s own words about her loyalty to her father:

My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty…
…you are the lord of duty;
I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband;
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I my profess
Due to the Moor my lord. (I.iii.178-179, 182-187)

In her own words, Desdemona declares her loyalty divided between her father, to whom she owes for her “life and education,” and her husband. Though she ultimately chooses loyalty to Othello in marrying him without her father’s consent, by doing so she leaves her loyalty open to doubt and implies that her loyalty to Othello may ultimately waver. Iago most likely overhears Brabantio’s comment to Othello and it can be argued that it is this comment that sets off his plan of action to turn Othello against Desdemona through the use of suggestion. After all, if Desdemona had both loyalties to her father and to her love for Othello she would have attempted to work out the marriage through her father to show respect for both men. Instead, by pursuing it through subversive means, her loyalty comes into question and Iago will use this doubt against Othello throughout the rest of the play.

The idea planted in Othello’s mind by Brabantio festers in his subconscious as Iago subtly attempts to remind him of it. In act III.iii we witness the one of the first instances of echoing between Iago and Othello:

Othello: What dost thou think?

Iago: Think, my lord?

Othello: “Think, my lord?” By heaven, thou echo’st me

As if there were some monster in thy thought
Too hideous to be shown…
As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain
Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me,
Show me thy thought.

Iago: My lord, you know I love you. (III.iii.107-111, 116-119)

This conversation is where Iago finally breaches Othello’s secret fear and, taking advantage of it leads Othello to question Desdemona’s loyalty. At this point Iago is only leading Othello to doubt, and Othello supplies him with the ideas he needs only to affirm for him: Iago is hinting at a source of doubt and Othello is allowing himself to be manipulated. Though Othello is speaking to Iago in this passage when he wonders about the “monster” in Iago’s thought, it might be said that the “monster” is in fact Othello’s; he is really speaking to himself. Iago has successfully brought the “monster” of thought to the forefront of Othello’s mind and now he only needs to supply the evidence to drive Othello to chaos.

Throughout the story Iago uses subtle suggestion and echoes to bring Othello under his spell of lies. After Othello falls into the trance, Iago muses at his success: “Work on, / My medicine works! Thus credulous fools are caught, / and many worthy and chaste dames even thus, / All guiltless, meet reproach” (IV.i.45-46). Iago administers his words to Othello constantly throughout the play but never so directly that they might be called “lies.” Much of what he says hints at wrongdoing and infidelity, which only prompt Othello to consider them and at first Othello does not realize what is being implied. The idea is there, however, planted by Desdemona’s father, and Iago must only keep that thought at the forefront of Othello’s mind for him to become more serious about the implications of her behavior. Iago begins the play by plotting an attempt at “revenge” that he’s not even sure how he can carry out. By Act V, however, Iago has become a villain in the larger sense as he becomes enveloped in a depraved realization that regardless of who dies, he still wins: “Now, whether he [Roderigo] kill Cassio / Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other, / Every way makes my gain” (V.i.12-14). Othello’s trance is also a rebirth for Iago as he broadens the scope of his plans from revenge on only Othello to take revenge on Cassio and even Roderigo. His decision becomes one of multiple revenge and he is no longer only a minor villain and instead sees the death of all those who wronged him as a way of winning no matter what.

Othello’s trance is also his rebirth, but not one of innocence, as it strips him of his rational functions and places him in a world of chaos ruled by his passionate anger. When he awakens, he is under Iago’s control, whether he knows it or not. Iago already has what he wants at this point: the earlier convergence between Othello and Iago during act III.iv established Iago as Othello’s lieutenant:

[Othello]: …Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw
To furnish me with some swift means of death
For the fair devil. Now art thou my lieutenant.

Iago: I am your own forever.

Iago’s revenge would seem complete at this point except Iago continues what he has begun, consenting to kill Cassio as Othello swears he will kill Desdemona. Iago’s promotion is symbolic of Othello handing over control of his mind, and from that point forward Othello is only a shadow of his former self, and no longer has the beauty and dignity that he did before the trance.

The trance is the point of no return in the play as both Othello and Iago are no longer capable of ending the cycle of destruction that reader sees as the ultimate end. Unfortunately for Desdemona, she is an innocent victim of men who come under control of their passion for anger and jealousy. “Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?” Desdemona asks of Othello in IV.ii.71 and indeed this question can be asked by all the players. An ignorant sin is one that the sinner does not realize they have committed; it is not innocent, but there is a sort of innocence involved in ignorance. Even Iago, it can be argued, committed ignorant sins for he could not have predicted the outcome of Othello becoming a passionate murder, or that Iago himself would turn on all those around him. Each step in the play escalates the players to a realm of hate, and each of them are ignorant of the outcome. The convergence, however, is a potential stopping point that Iago refuses to allow, and by the time Othello falls into a trance it is too late to stop.

ENL 122: “Adam, Eve and Satan: Disaster in the Garden”

2009-11-03T08:23:00.001-08:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 122

3 Nov 2009

Adam, Eve and Satan: Disaster in the Garden

Adam and Eve are of one flesh; they share every part of their being and existence. By sharing one flesh they are not only of one person; they are one person. It is the ultimate partnership: physical, emotional and spiritual. They are born into a hierarchy that is established from the moment of their conception: there are no questions of authority as God is ruler over Adam; Adam over Eve; both over the animals and plants within the garden. As rational creatures it should be easy for both Adam and Eve to fit themselves into this preformed world, and it leaves no room for them to conceive of anything different. This eliminates the concern for an overthrow of the heavens by humans, since they cannot conceive of anything outside of the hierarchy. These are all strengths in their relationship that should be a recipe for success, however it is exactly these traits that give Satan an edge is his deception and temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden, leading them to make the sacrifice that Satan himself made.

Being created of “one flesh” they are equal and God did create Eve with a capacity for rationality equal to Adam. This is made clear by her tendency to ask good questions, and she takes what she learns very seriously. This equality among the pair makes it clear that by asking her to behave as a subject to Adam seems counter-intuitive. Her curiosity about night, for instance, is a great example of her tendency to think even at a grander scope than even Adam seems capable:

Of grateful evening mild, then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heav’n, her starry train…
But wherefore all night long shine these, for whom
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes? (VI. 647-649, 657-658)

Adam gives her an answer of nothing more than to say that to watch the beauty of the nighttime would take away from worship of God: “These then, though unbeheld in deep of night, / Shine not in vain, nor think, though men were none, / That heav’n would want spectators, God want praise” (IV. 674-676). This answer seems too simple for a question as thought provoking as Eve’s, for it does seem strange that God would spend time creating a beautiful nighttime world only to have his most prized creatures not take advantage of it.

The unity of Adam and Eve is what the narrator wants us to reflect on when he makes his hail on “wedded love” as a “mysterious law, true source / Of human offspring, sole propriety / In paradise of all things common else” (IV. 750-752). Any wedded pair should share a bond between them that is brought forth in a physical form by procreation. Marriage is, to the narrator, a unity on every level between two people that culminates in the creation of children. Satan interferes with the ultimate plan for Adam and Eve to create children within the garden. The interjection of Satan into this plan poses him as a threat to the unity between man and God, but also between man and women as the symbol of their unity—children—never come to fruition.

Neither Adam nor Eve understands the concept of evil. Being confined to a state of innocence allows them a freedom that no other human will have after them: ignorance without fear of sin. Because they do not know evil they will never commit, accidentally or otherwise, a sin against God because, in their present situation, they have no idea what a sin is or how to commit it. This innocence and ignorance of sin is implied by what is their sign of obedience:

…God has pronounced it death to taste that Tree,
The only sign of our obedience left…
Then let us not think hard
One easy prohibition, who enjoy
Free leave so large to all things else, and choice
Unlimited of manifold delights… (IV. 427-428, 432-435)

It is only through the outside influence of Satan that they are led into a temptation to sin and eat of the tree of knowledge which frees them of their innocence and ignorance. Indeed it is innocence which makes them vulnerable since they cannot conceive of evil and they cannot conceive of hypocrisy or trickery. Despite Raphael’s warnings to be on their guard against Satan, even that idea is beyond their scope of understanding. They have no concept of guile, mistrust, lies or ill-intentions. Asking them to be on guard against that which they cannot understand is like asking a child to know what is best for them: it cannot, in the best interests of the child, be done.

Satan’s primary motivation throughout these first books is jealousy. It is clear that he is jealous of the Son who was promoted above him by God, but his jealousy is rekindled when he realizes the love and joy that is shared by God and man in the garden.

Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two
Imparadised in one another’s arms
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss, while I to hell am thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,
Among our other torments not the least,
Still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines. (IV.505-511)

Satan sacrificed all that he loved for nothing more than a shot at a throne he would never achieve. In seeing Adam and Eve in their nuptial bliss he must be reminded of the joys in heaven of which he is now deprived because of nothing more than his own pride and jealousy. It is his jealousy, first of God and then of Adam and Eve, that continually drives him to make the wrong decisions: first to turn away from God and ultimately be hurled from heaven, and then to tempt Adam and Eve into sin. Both of his decisions were because he was jealous of what was not his, power in heaven and love on earth.

Satan deprives man of the one thing that would have saved him from temptation: unity, both between God and man, as well as between man and woman. Satan recognizes that the hierarchy of God/man/woman has changed as Adam declares Eve his “best image” and “dearer half” (V.95) and it is this weakness alone that allows Satan the opportunity to drive each pair apart. Satan does not want God, Adam or Eve to have what he has been deprived of: true love. Since God has already defeated Satan, the best Satan can do is to take away God’s prized new creation, and ruin the unity between the happy pair.

Adam and Eve had everything they needed to be happy in the garden, just as Satan had everything he needed to be happy in Heaven. Adam and Eve were innocent and ignorant of sin, and only had to show obedience through refraining from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The hierarchy of power only needed to be maintained between God and man/man and woman in order for authority to have stopped the tragedy to come. They were also given warnings from heaven about Satan, and a reminder that with knowledge, comes death. This, however, did nothing to stop Satan from deciding his pride and jealousy should bring ruin to Adam and Eve. Adam, by putting Eve above himself, changed the dynamic of power in the garden; Satan introduced sin and jealousy into the garden by showing Eve the dream of man as gods; suddenly ignorance is something to fear. All of these combine to create a perfect opportunity for man to fall from God, and Satan to take his revenge upon God, by denying him man as a perfect creation on earth.

ENL 122: "Words to Remind you: Milton's Subtle Reminders"

2009-10-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. R. Levin

ENL 122

15 Oct 2009

Words to Remind You: Milton’s Subtle Reminders

Beyond this flood a frozen continent

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land

Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems (590)

Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,

A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog

Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air

Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of fire. (595)

Thither by harpy-footed Furies haled,

At certain revolutions all the damned

Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,

From beds of raging fire to starve in ice (600)

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.

(Page 49, second edition.)

Words Defined:

Fierce (line 599): Fierce is a word that has two very different meanings according to the OED. In one instance it can mean a “formidably violent and intractable temper, like a wild beast” but it can also mean “high spirited, brave, and valiant.” These two definitions ring together in line 599, as the word is not mentioned once, but twice in the same line. Milton gives Satan all of these qualities: he rises against his creator violently, but he is also a hero among his men for his valor and heroism in battle. Hell, it seems, takes on the same qualities of its king in that the extremes of hell are such that those who are damned must suffer physically under the angry torment but also remember that which they lost. In hell one can have no valor, so the memory of such a grand emotion only compounds the terror and pain of existence in the place furthest away from God.

Extremes (line 599): An extreme is the “farthest from the center” and if two things are in extremes they are “removed as far as possible from each other in position, nature, or condition” (OED). This word in its line context reinforces the effect of the word fierce (above) creating a juxtaposition of God/Satan and Heaven/Hell. This reinforcement, especially as this word is also repeated in this line, contrasts one with the other setting them as opposites in the scope of the universe, and the reader is forced to see the good in heaven and the evil in hell. By doing this Milton has given no room to doubt that hell is, in every way, the opposite of heaven, and Satan the opposite of God. There is no confusing the two, despite the charisma and beauty that Milton might endow Satan and hell with, and the reader must look past the deception to realize that in being in opposition with heaven, there is nothing worthy or virtuous in hell.

Starve (line 600): This word was particularly interesting as it, surprisingly, is used specifically to describe a “pestilence” or “a pestilent being (esp. applied to the devil).” It is a usage that is described as rare in the OED but Milton, as well-educated as he was, probably had knowledge of the word in this form. The context in which it is used in the poem refers to being “brought gradually nearer to death” as well as “to suffer extreme cold.” Each definition ties in deeply to other words and ideas presented in the passage: Satan as a pestilent devil, the damned gradually dying of their suffering in hell, as well as the cold heat that is described. It is obvious that Milton used this word very deliberately in this passage, as the word has many definitions and meanings that are relevant to his vision of hell. It is also a word that raises fear in the reader since to starve is a terrible, prolonged way to die, so it would be appropriately used if Milton wants to make clear the torments that are waiting for sinners in hell.

Pine (line 601): Continuing the succession of words that reinforce one another in Milton’s description of hell, the word pine is, according to the OED a “punishment, torment, torture, suffering or loss…as punishment” especially in hell or purgatory, but it is also “suffering caused by hunger or lack of food” and the OED even calls it a “starvation.” The word gives strength to the word starve in the line immediately before it, but it also conjures the ideas of punishment for sins committed against God. It is not only the sinners who are suffering starvation, it is the fallen angels as well, who through their rebellion are forever punished, banished from heaven. Both definitions are integral in connecting the mortal sinners from the immortal; both sinners will suffer for their choices infinitely through the torment of hell.

Immovable (line 602): This word stood out among the other three descriptors in this line (infixed, frozen) because it implies the inability of the situation in hell to change. This damning of the sinners and the angels and their suffering is not changeable by just any being. In placing this word right after the word pine, Milton continues to make his case for the uncomfortable, unceasing torments that await sinners against God. Neither angel nor mortal will be able to change his own circumstances; it is only through the asking of forgiveness that hell will cease to exist and since Satan will not relent on his position, hell will continue, immovable, until the end of days.

Stylistic Devices:

Imagery (lines 587-590): Milton opens this passage in a surprising way: hell is not a burning, fiery place, but instead a place that is frozen, dark, wild and stormy (586). This image is different from what we now imagine hell to be with heat, fire and burning lakes. This contrast is important to note because hell is the furthest place from God and this implies that God is a source of heat. A frozen wasteland would be barren of life, uninhabitable by plants, animals and, of course, man. The imagery that he is presenting is one without life, pleasure, comfort and nothing like the warm paradise of heaven and that of the newly created earth.

Simile (line 592): The simile being used in this line compares the deep snow and ice of hell to that of a “Serbonian bog.” The deepness of that bog is one “Where armies whole have sunk” (596) and is an image of helplessness. The comparison that Milton is drawing is one of despair since the sinners cannot help themselves and, like a bog or quicksand, they only fall further into the depths. Hell is cold, but it also renders sinners helpless, and the more they fight the depths of hell the deeper they will sink into despair.

Paradox (line 595): I had a hard time deciding whether line 595 was a metaphor or if it was a paradox. I have decided that it is a paradox because Milton takes two opposing sensations and uses the comparison to enhance the meaning of the ideas. The comparison being made is between cold and fire: “cold performs th’ effect of fire” is an overwhelmingly simple paradox where the reader immediately can imagine the burning cold as much as they can imagine the cold fire. Those two things are contradictions, therefore paradoxical, signifying the true power of God over this hell. A true paradox cannot be solved by imperfect reasoning. God, however, is perfect so his reasoning would be perfectly capable of imagining and creating a world of paradox that would harbor both cold heat and hot cold. I believe Milton is using the idea of a paradoxical hell to indirectly show the power of God in comparison to the weakness of Satan.

Alliteration (lines 595-603): There is an immense number of alliterative words that occur in lines 595-603, especially words that begin with the letter f. It begins with the two words in opposition: frore and fire in line 595, and the word fire is repeated three times in the following lines. Other words include footed, Furies, feel, fierce (mentioned twice), From, soft, infixed, and frozen bringing the total of f-sounding words to eleven, in a very short nine lines. This is significant to the tone of the poem because Milton has just described hell as a cold, inhospitable place yet they are on a lake of fire. It seems Milton wants to remind the reader of the burning of hell with the series of f-sounds that do sound similar to burning when pronounced by the reader. The reminder is subtle but effective and the use of this recurring f also reminds us of the paradox of hell: the cold heat torture that awaits those who sin against God.

Repetition (lines 595-603): There are three words that get repeated in these lines: fierce, extremes, and fire. These words are significant first because of the words themselves. They are each words without a trace of ambiguity, as they conjure of definite images within the mind of the reader. They are words with which one might describe hell, as indeed Milton does here, but they are also words of passion that would be used in both good and bad contexts. The repetition is what makes the words all the more interesting. The words fierce and extremes are each used twice and in the same line (599). As in the definitions state above, I believe that Milton wanted us to ponder these words carefully and note the different ideas that are encompassed by those words. The word fire is used three times, reinforcing the fiery image of hell, and the repetition acts as a reminder, between the descriptions of ice, that hell is a wasteland of paradox, evil, and curses which one should avoid at all costs.

ENL 10A: "Light of Hidden Fire": Love and Change in Marlowe's Hero and Leander"

2009-10-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Jolene Patricia Brown
Dr. R. Levin
ENL 10A
13 Oct 2009

“Light of Hidden Fire”: Love and Change in Marlowe’s Hero and Leander

Home when he came, he seemed not to be there,
But like exilѐd air thrust from his sphere,
Set in a foreign place, and straight from thence,
Alcides-like, by mighty violence
He would have chased away the swelling main (605)
That him from her unjustly did detain.
Like as the sun in a diameter
Fires and inflames objects removѐd far,
And heateth kindly, shining lat’rally,
So beauty sweetly quickens when ‘tis nigh, (610)
But being separated and removed,
Burns where it cherished, murders where it loved.
Therefore, even as an index to a book,
So to his mind was young Leander’s look.
O none but gods have power their love to hide: (615)
Affection by the count’nance is descried.
The light of hidden fire itself discovers,
And love that is concealed betrays poor lovers.
(Page 1017)

Words Defined:
Sphere (line 602): A sphere is enclosed: it is a bubble, protective, perfect in its shape and circumference. Leander, having a beautiful outward appearance would take his beauty with him where he went. The OED defines sphere as “the apparent outward limit of space” which does not imply an end so the limits are apparent, but not definite. In using the word sphere, Marlowe is endowing Leander with seemingly limitless potential to love, as Leander—it is clear—is a lover. The OED also lists sphere as “a province or domain in which one’s activities or faculties find scope or exercise”: a sphere has unlimited potential within contained boundaries that are perfectly constructed. Leander’s sphere is expanding to include Hero and as he gains experience his sphere will come to include his maturation in his role as a lover. Leander was an individual, a lover without his beloved, until Hero was thrust into his sphere allowing him to pursue his full potential. The rest of the line “like exilѐd air thrust” implies this change in his sphere; the change is welcome and will expand his bubble expanding the limits of Leander’s potential.

Foreign (line 603): This word is in the line following sphere which only emphasizes the unification of two worlds. The OED defines foreign in one way as “proceeding from other persons or things” but also as “out of doors; outside.” Here’s sphere was foreign to Leander’s because she is outside of him, but the changes that are taking place in Leander’s sphere are a direct result of his meeting Hero. Hero is the trigger of foreign changes in the sphere: she precedes the emotions and desires that he is now facing from outside of his own sphere. It might also be cupid, whose golden arrows so effectively pricked both lovers, who is the outside force, while Hero is the one that proceeds. Both interpretations seem equally as valid; each introduces a foreign emotion to Leander, changing the balance within his sphere.

Swelling (line 605): Swelling is an interesting word because it has several meanings in this context. It is referring to a “swelling main” in this line; main, according to the OED is a form of “power.” Swelling, according to the OED, is “the rising of emotion” but it is also “an abnormal or morbid enlargement in or upon any part or member.” Swelling refers to the new growing emotions of Leander, but also has sexual connotations as he learns to manage his sexual desire that is enflamed by his sexual arousal. The power to which swelling refers could be either his sexual power to manipulate Hero into loving him or to his power as a lover that is growing with each experience he has.

Diameter (line 607): In using diameter here, Marlowe is reminding us of the sphere around Leander, but also using it to show opposition. According to the OED one interesting definition of diameter is “the diametrical or direct opposite; contrariety, contradiction.” This is especially enlightening as it immediately conjures up images of the opposite of the sun: the moon, the night, the darkness; all of these are realms of the lovers but also imply a darker side to their love. The sun in this passage is described as a “kindly” head, and the opposition to that would be a precarious place for lovers. In the first definition, the one which the modern reader is probably more familiar, the imagery of the sun as a circle in the sky and the diameter is the measurement across the circle. The second definition is far more enlightening: it draws opposition to a number of things in the poem such as the dark foreboding that is hinted at throughout the poem, but also as an opposition to beauty as stated in line 610 when Marlow writes “So beauty sweetly quicken when ‘tis nigh” taking the reader from the heat of the sun to the sweet comfort of beauty of a lover.

Affection (line 616): Affection is, according to the OED,“feeling (as opposed to reason)…a powerful or controlling emotion, as passion, lust” but it is also described as a physical “state, condition, or relation which is temporary or not essential to the object.” Affection has some ominous undertones implying the potential for unhappiness in the union of these two lovers. Affection is counter to reason and logic, limiting the rational decisions that man should make in situations involving love. It is also a physical state of discomfort, on that is temporary, even fleeting and the reader wonders if the love Leander feels is also temporary, one only driven by his physical desires. Leander might love Hero, feel affection for her in the most literal sense, but the other implication is that love is a temporary, physical ailment that will subside in time.

Stylistic Devices:
Simile (line 602): Marlowe compares directly Leander to “exilѐd air” and in doing so gives the reader an interesting juxtaposition to ponder. One wonders if air, an unseen, uncontrollable (at least during Marlowe’s time) substance can be truly “exilѐd” from anywhere, including the sphere that Marlowe claims. He may instead be referring to the force with which air can have as it escapes from an enclosure, or the force of the wind; in this context air can have a power to set one off-balance, and destroy objects. Further, the air is “thrust” from the sphere into exile which is a violent image, adding to the violence of the simile and giving depth to the invocation of the Herculean allusion that is presented in line 604.

Allusion (line 604): In line 604 Marlowe makes an allusion to Hercules in an indirect way by describing the exiled air as “Alcides-like.” In crafting the image of the exiled air, by using this direct comparison of Hercules to show the force of the exile it gives strength to the image and to the following description of “mighty violence.” Hercules is a masculine figure of power and strength, which is in contrast to how Leander is portrayed earlier in the poem being outwardly the lover who is confused as a woman. In giving Leander these power Herculean feelings, Marlowe attributes a masculinity to him that is both sexual, emotional and physical. By drawing this comparison the reader is privy to Leander’s change from boy to man.

Alliteration (line 608): Line 608, “Fires and inflames objects removѐd far” is beautiful because the sounds of the “f” in the words “fires,” “inflames,” and “far” sounds like a burning fire when the words are said out loud. This emphasizes the sensation of the “heateth kindly” in the next line for the reader. The sound of the alliterative “f” throughout the line adds a soundtrack to the image of a comfortable fire that burns to heat those around it. In using these sounds to add emphasis to the imagery of the hot sun and the sweet beauty, Marlowe is allowing the reader into the world of Leander’s love for Hero, showing the beautiful characteristics of it, despite some of the ominous signs were are seeing in other places throughout the poem.

Imagery (line 613): The image that is presented to the reader by the comparison of Leander’s mind to that of a book’s index is one particularly interesting and confusing. I have decided to call this short sentence “imagery” because I believe that Marlowe’s purpose was to draw a visual comparison between the index and the mind, however he does not seem to make a full commitment to the use of the simile. Instead he uses the words “even as” to introduce his index and in the next line turns Leander’s look inward to his mind. The image being presented is of an index to a book—a useful tool in locating information within the pages of a book—compared with Leander’s “look” into his mind. By using the index of the book Marlowe implies that the information that Leander seeks, perhaps moral guidance or romantic inspirations, will be found within his mind if he only searches what he already knows. Leander knows how to be a lover and will be successful in his wooing of Hero but only if he turns his questions inward and looks for those things he already knows and uses them to his advantage.

Personification (line 618): Love in line 618 is personified and done in such a way to impose an ominous foreshadowing on the love of Leander and Hero. Love is something that if concealed will betray those who conceal it. Betrayal, especially in terms of love, is significant because it undermines the trust that must develop between lovers and if love betrays the lovers then the lovers are left without their bonds.

ENL 178: “Growing Up”

2009-08-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

Jolene P. Brown
Prof. S. Magagnini
ENL 178: Crossing Thresholds
18 August 2009

Growing Up

The bench was cold, smooth, and hard. The beige velour blanket I was sitting on kept sliding underneath me with each shift of my body, no matter how slight, and did not keep the cold from seeping into my skin. A metal toilet, exactly like I had seen in movies but surprisingly clean, was straight across and seemed to stare me down from across the cell. I knew I would have to go eventually—I could feel the my bladder filling up, or perhaps I was just paranoid—and there was only a short wall, three feet tall or so, as a barrier between what needed to be done and the huge safety glass window where I could see the sheriff officer completing their nightly paperwork outside. The thought made me sick again, as I threw myself towards the toilet expelling only a foamy greenish bile that had more to do with my anxiety than any of the drinks I’d had prior to that moment. I was in jail, but this still was not the worst day of my life. I remembered a promise and tears came to my eyes as I returned to the bench: would I be able to keep that promise I had made so long ago? At that moment I was so afraid but determined not to let one mistake ruin everything I had done so far.
May 28, 2003.

My twenty-second birthday. I was excited because my birthday is my favorite “holiday,” as I like to tell my friends as a joke. I took the day off and made plans with my two best friends to go out drinking, partly to make up for the terrible twenty-first birthday I had the year before. All my friends were busy, and my boyfriend at the time had forgotten, so my ‘big’ 21st was nothing but a big disappointment. My two closest friends, Rose and Noelle, had promised that 22 would be so much better—we knew where to get the best drinks for cheap, the best dancing, and karaoke more now than the year before. That and we were all now above legal drinking age so we could enjoy more of the fun together since the year before that was not the case.
I was sitting on my couch in the one-bedroom apartment that Rose and I shared. It was originally my apartment but when Rose was kicked out of her sister’s house for one too many parties, Rose moved in with me and we were in the process of looking for a larger two bedroom apartment. Rose was at work and I was planning out the night in my head while watching reruns of daytime television. My phone rings: Mom. I don’t want to pick it up—“what on earth could she want now? It’s my birthday…she can’t chew me out for something on my damned birthday!” I roll my eyes and pick up the phone.

“Hi, mom.”
“Honey, grandma Brown is sick.”
“What? What do you mean sick?” panic sets in to my voice.
“Apparently it’s a tumor. In her brain. She’s having an operation at the end of the week. We just wanted you to know, ok?”
“Uh…. ok mom. Should I come over?”
“No, there’s nothing you can do now. Just come over later this week. Dad will need you; he misses you and I know grandpa will love to have you around more. Just come by, ok?”
“Alright, mom.”
“Happy birthday, honey. We have a card if you come by.”
“Thanks, mom.”

I end the call and drop my phone on the floor. “What a birthday, already” I think to myself trying to keep myself from crying. Grandma cannot die; but what if she did? Right after my birthday? I try not to imagine the possibility but I continue to let the thought pervade my mind. Not knowing what else to do I gather up my bag and head over to another friend’s house to hang out until Rose and Noelle get off of work. No sense is letting such negative thoughts upset me on my birthday. That night, like usual, I went out with my friends and drank until I blacked out. Another day, another round of drinks, another shift at my awful job: just another day.

Three weeks later grandma has pulled through the surgery better than any of us had expected. When she went under the knife the doctor told us that we will be lucky if she can eat on her own, let alone walk, talk, or even remember her name. We brace ourselves for the worse but within three weeks grandma has made an almost full recovery. Not only is she eating on her own but she was talking in complete sentences, getting up and walking (with assistance of course) to go to the bathroom, and she had no memory loss whatsoever. Relief sets in and everyone is overjoyed, including my grandfather even though he had to be sent home because of pneumonia. He promised my grandmother as soon as he felt better he would be back to see her at the hospital until they let her go. The only evidence of my grandmother’s brush with death was her shaved head covered by a mass of white bandages, changed every few hours by the charge nurse. “Oh, what will I do about my hair?” my grandmother asked one day while in the hospital. “Perhaps we can get you a wig, mom, it’ll be like it was never gone and in the meantime the wig will cover everything up!” one of my aunts attempted to make her feel better.

As grandma got better and returned home, grandpa got worse. Ten weeks after her brain surgery grandma was driving again, though her doctor was not pleased about it, taking grandpa to see a doctor after doctor to determine why he was not getting better. What had started out as a pneumonia diagnosis in early June quickly turned into “we need to run more tests” and grandpa’s health was fading. My car broke down at the end of July and I was afraid to tell my parents that I did not have the money to pay for the repairs. My dad was a wreck, though he never once cried it was obvious that he was upset, and my mom cried at me every time I called. Rose was kind enough to let me use her car for just about all my errands, so we were taking each other work and the other would use the car for the rest of the day to do what they needed to do. My mom would call occasionally to update me on the status of my grandfather but I shrugged it off. “Nothing can kill grandpa,” I told a girl at work one day “he’s the strongest man I know.”

September 15, 2003.

“Lung cancer.”

The words hung in the air as everyone stood silently at the doctor’s words. We were in the waiting room at Mercy San Juan hospital waiting to find out the verdict of the “exploratory” surgery. My grandma’s hair had thinned substantially because of her brain surgery but she was not wearing the wig: it made her head itch. She, instead, kept it tightly trimmed, almost military style, since it had started to grow back.

“Lung cancer? You’re sure?” my dad asked the doctor; it was obvious in his tone he knew the answer already. The doctor only nodded his reply as my grandma did her best to hide her eyes filling with tears. Her lips became a straight line across her face as she asked the doctor “so what do you think we can do about it?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it; the cancer started out in his lungs and is now spread into his heart, kidneys and bones. There’s not much we can do except make him comfortable.” The doctor’s words spilled out around us as disbelief turned to reality. I felt a disconnect more than I had ever felt before. Grandpa, a man I had never seen cry, a man I never saw sick (even when he had to do chemo for prostate cancer 10 years earlier), a man who held our family together was dying and there was nothing we could do about it. Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach and told my parents I wanted to go home. My dad looked disappointed but hugged me and I left. I remember thinking on the way home: “It won’t happen. Not to him. He’ll pull through it and we’ll all laugh about this.” I have never been more wrong.

Sitting in the jail cell I remember doubting the proof of modern medicine. It seemed so simple to me that grandpa would just will himself over the cancer and it would just disappear. All my youthful naiveté was captured in my mind in that one internal conversation, convincing myself that miracles can and do happen, and one of my very own was about to occur in grandpa overcoming this horrible disease. Never mind his lifelong tobacco pipe habit—a smell I still attribute to him to this day—that was only circumstantial evidence as far as I was concerned. I sat staring at that dreaded metal toilet taking small solace in that youthful ignorance, wishing that it would return in that moment and I might forget where I was, what I had done, and escape the punishment I knew was to come. I knew what it meant then, as I did looking back on that memory, to live in blissful ignorance: not accepting evidence, ignoring facts and building a world of lies to protect myself from the awful pain to come.

    After the diagnosis the next few weeks are a blur in my mind. I remember phone call after phone call as the news spread its way through the family, much like the cancer spread its way through my grandfather’s body. I received half a dozen phone calls a day from cousins, aunts, uncles, distant relatives and close family friends. I finally stopped picking up my phone, tired of hearing the same depressing story each time, and turned more and more to drinking as a way to cope. Rose was worried, even mentioning to me that I should lay off the bottle for awhile.
    “It’s not good to drink when you’re depressed; I know I read that somewhere” she said casually while flipping through a magazine one night.
    “Yeah, I’m sure it’s not. All the more reason I should do it, right?” I laughed at my own joke as she feigned a smile.
    “I guess…” she flipped through another page of the magazine.
    “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”
I grabbed the bottle of rum and went to the bedroom, the door accidently slamming behind me.

October 5, 2003, 4:30 pm.
Though it was expected, the news was sudden. On my way home from work, driving my roommate’s car, my dad called. My dad never called.
“Honey, where are you?”
“On my way home from work, why?”
“Pull over.”
“Dad, what? Just tell me, I’m almost home.” I knew what he was going to say before the words even left his mouth.
“Grandpa died. About ten minutes ago.”
“Are you sure?” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Yes, honey, he died. I have to go now, arrangements have to be made. Please come by tonight, ok?” I could hear my dad choking back tears. He doesn’t want to cry in front of me; not even on the phone.

I don’t say anything else and my dad ends the call. I pull into the median in front of a Raley’s supermarket. I sit there for a moment not knowing what to do. I take out my phone wanting to call someone flipping through my entire phone book. I don’t want to talk to anyone: I just want my grandpa back. I burst into tears in the car in the middle of road in front of Raley’s. I cry for ten minutes before I realize there is a car behind me honking. I manage to pull myself together enough to make the rest of the five minute drive back to my apartment, unlock the door and throw myself on the floor just inside. I cry for over an hour until my roommate calls me to pick her up from work. When she realizes what has happened she arranges a ride from a co-worker. She comes inside and hugs me on the floor.
Five days before he died there was a huge family gathering at my grandparent’s house. Relatives came in from as far away as Missouri to see my grandpa for what we knew would be the last time. His once huge frame had dwindled down to nothing more than bones covered by skin, flaps of which hung under his arms and on his chin. His bright grey blue eyes were dull now, and he would wince in pain each time he coughed. There were more than thirty people packed in to their tiny house, and my aunts tried to get people to leave and return later but my grandfather would not hear of it. “I love to have the family around again, it’s like old times!” He laughed, would cough and wince, though he would try not to show it. He took each of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in his arms telling each how much he loved them and not to cry. It was my turn as I was one of the furthest away and my grandfather was asking for me. I went up to him and he grabbed my hand pulling me close. He put his arms around me and told me how much he loved me. But then, whispering, he said
“Jolene, you’re my smartest grandchild. I want you to go to school. I want you to do well for yourself and I know you will. I have so much faith in you. I love you. Don’t forget that, and please go back to school.” He had tears in his eyes as he said this and I tried not to cry.
“I’ll go back, grandpa, I promise I will.”

Five days later he was gone.
I called in sick for three days, the longest they would let me call in sick without a doctor’s note. Then I burned through about a week and a half of vacation; all I had. After I was out of vacation I know I went to work but I don’t really remember much. I don’t really remember much of those weeks at all until just before Thanksgiving when Rose finally called my parents to tell them that I would not leave my bed except to go to work and all I would do is cry and drink until I would pass out: she was worried about me and told my mom she was afraid I was going to kill myself. My mom came over one day, picked me up and took me home to my parent’s house; I don’t even remember getting into her car. I remember waking up on my parent’s couch with the worst hangover of my life and my mom sitting in the easy chair watching me.
“How are you feeling?” my mom asked.
“Like shit,” I answered.
“You need to see a doctor. You’re depressed.”
“Really? Really, mom? Wow, thanks for the evaluation,” as usual I used sarcasm to deflect the pain. I held my head and got up to get some water. “I’m fine, promise. I’m just having a hard time with this. Death isn’t easy, right? This is just how I’m coping.”
“My mother had a drinking problem; I never told you that but it’s true. She went to AA meetings when I was young. Alcoholism runs in our family. I should have told you sooner.” Her confession struck a chord with me as I tried to piece together the events since my grandfather’s death. “I want you to see a doctor. I want you to get on anti-depressants. Your dad and I both want you to stop drinking. Please. We’ll do anything we can to help.”

I stood at their kitchen sink, looking out of the window into the front yard. At that moment it occurred to me that I had to keep my promise to my grandfather, no matter what I may have to overcome to do it. I realized that he never saw me reach my full potential, he never saw me do anything except screw up: I barely graduated high school, I fought with my parents constantly, I lived paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment I shared because I worked at a crappy job where I was underpaid and overworked, and I had dropped out of college failing two semesters in a row. I began listing off my failures in my mind one after another until, instead of making me feel worse, I started to feel better. If I could overcome all that and still be standing here at this sink, with my parents who still believed in me enough to offer their help; with my grandfather who still called me his “smartest” grandchild; if I could do all that, then I must be good for something.
“Ok, mom. I need your help.”
She hugged me and together we planned the next steps. She called Rose who threw out all the alcohol in our house. My mom made a doctor’s appointment to get started on anti-depressants and she went to all my doctor’s appointments with me, and my dad fixed my car. All this and all I had to do was ask for help.

How, then, did I end up in this jail cell? One party, a few drinks, after nearly a year of school, no drinking and doing my best to stay out of trouble. I did not hurt anyone and I did not get into an accident. A simple traffic stop for a “wide right turn” and here I was sitting in a concrete slab dreading the use of the metal commode. I cry, remembering all that I had done, all I had overcome, and I know my parents will be disappointed. Why am I here? The answer seems so obvious that I do not grasp it at first. I call up a friend and who bails me out of jail. I call my parents, break the news and though they are upset, they forgive me.
“What did you learn?” my mom asked.
I forgot for a moment how important it was for me to be responsible. I grew up a lot that year between August 2003 and August 2004, really grasping what it meant to be an adult and make adult decisions. I learned to ask for help when I needed it and I learned to trust those I love. It took me losing someone I cared about to realize my full potential, and every new achievement I make I think back to my grandpa and him pulling me close and encouraging me to take that next step. Not a day goes by I wish I could step back into that moment, just for a minute, and tell him all the things I’ve done.

He would be so proud.

ENL 178: “Dream Statement”

2009-08-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Jolene P. Brown
Prof. S. Magagnini
ENL 178: Crossing Thresholds
6 August 2009
Dream Statement
    Sometimes I cannot believe where I am today.   It was only six years ago that I decided to go back to school, five years ago that I decided I want to get an AA, four years ago that I decided that I should transfer to a four-year university, and three years ago that I finally set my hopes on UC Davis. I come from a retail background, a typical high school C student who was too cool for college, who wanted nothing more than to move out of her parent’s house and live life on her “own” terms. Given my history, it has been hard for me to see past my current goal. It seems as though my A.B. has been on the edge of a perpetual horizon for a decade, and though each day it gets closer and closer, it is hard for me to see beyond it.
    Only recently have I discovered something that may be my calling. I am applying for UCLA’s MLIS (Master’s Library/Information Science) program this year. It has always been a dream of mine to live in a small beach town in southern California. That dream became even more persistent when my best friend moved to Long Beach two years ago, and I’ve made twice yearly trips to see her.
    In five years I want to have finished my Master’s in Library Science. I want to be working at a two year community college library, assisting students with their research, giving library tours, and answering “silly” library questions from incoming high school students who feel they are “too cool” for school. I want to change the minds of young people about the library: it’s more than just a place for old, musty books and librarians who “shush” you when you drop a pencil. I would love to teach classes at a community college on how to do research for paper-writing, maybe an intro course for incoming freshmen, who only see the blank boxes and thousands of listings when they log on to the library website.
    I want to live in a small coastal town, maybe not in California, but perhaps Oregon or Washington. I’ve never wanted kids, but I’d love to be married by then (if my boyfriend ever gets around to proposing). I would still read every day, since reading is my favorite thing to do. I would make trips more often to see friends and relatives that I cannot see now because of my school schedule, and I’d finally go on vacations to places that are further than what one can drive in a car in less than 8 hours.

ENL 110B: "Why Read Literature: Literature, Science and the Problem of Subjectivity"

2009-07-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Jolene Brown

Dr. T. Morton

ENL 110B

30 July 2009

Why Read Literature:

Literature, Science and the Problem of Subjectivity

Those who cannot empirically measure the importance or value of literature have often questioned the value of it beyond basic storytelling or perhaps historical motivations or moral growth. It does seem counter-intuitive for a person to put a numerical value on the importance of literature in society, after all, the subjectivity that is implied by the idea of enjoyment is interpreted as a strict form of subjectivity, not reconciled to a single value that is the same to each person equally. Examples of this sort of subjectivity are found everyday in conversations about literature: people who will argue that one book is better than another for various reasons or an author is better than another because emphasis of certain stylistic qualities that change importance from person to person. It does seem absurd that the author would intend or even expect his text to have a "universal" interpretation for all readers. With the myriad of personalities in the world and the enormous potential for readership, the possibility of even two people identifying, interpreting and mentally constructing the text in an identical fashion is a statistical fantasy. It is, of course, up for argument that one can even distinguish intent of the author as an identifiable construct, or even that the ideas of the audience can be articulated in such a way to make them available for side by side comparison. It must be asked then, is there a certain particular, universal reason to read literature?

Superficially it would seem that science does not suffer the ambiguity of subjectivity as literature does. Instead, science maintains an attitude of ‘objectivity,’ expecting the same from all other studies. Biology, physics, and chemistry have descended upon the other disciplines as a merciless predator tearing away at the flesh of their victims with methodical scientific evidence, undermining all other superiority with the intended purpose of explaining and defining the world “objectively.” What the humanities, especially, have left are the few remnants of those things not yet explainable by science. Literature, which is at best an abstraction of reality, cannot compare to science with its powers of explanation, but literature has a strength that the sciences do not: literature can rule the realm of the imaginary because it is not limited by the numbers, empirical measurements and scientific method that bars science from exploring those things inside the realm of the mind. The measurements that science demands are exactly those things that literature can operate either with or without, so the flexibility of literature is exemplified in its flexibility of not demanding an empirical construct.

Of course it seems that literature has a certain inherent subjectivity in the way it is constructed that is eliminated in science by the use of methods and standards of measurements. For example, literature is often told from the perspective of one or two characters, which may or may not be identifiable with the audience for which the piece is written. This identification (or lack of) on the part of the audience seems to justify subjective interpretation: if each reader, ideal or otherwise, can cultivate their own an identity that either counters or cooperates with the identity of the character of the literature then is it hard to believe that the literature is creating an individual (subjective) experience for each member of its audience? Surely the author does not create his text with the intent that each reader should feel exactly the same way about the characters or the events. However, science may be expecting too much in their objectivity and find itself victim to the same kinds of subjective problems. Before any scientist can set out to measure his work he, must first establish a basis of measurement be it the meter, the ounce, the gram, another construct of comparison. Once he establishes a method for measurement accurate enough for his purpose, he must convince others of the accuracy and relevance of his measurement. This process, though mostly unconsidered by the scientific community, might be a cause for concern only because the implication may be that measurement itself is based on completely arbitrary objects or lengths.

It must be wondered how this gap between science and literature might be reconciled or if it can be at all. The Formalists took a step to create a “science of literature that would be both independent and factual” (Eichenbaum 1062). The Formalists subscribed to the idea that science maintained a conviction for truth, and would not compromise itself to falling short of finding the truth: “science lives not by settling on truth, but by overcoming error” (1062). At first glance it seems that the Formalists may have found the olive branch to science; by adopting its structure and formulating an approach that understood all literature through the same basic “method” there might finally be some way of organizing the value of literature based on a set standard of criteria. Critics would be able to ask the same questions of each piece and attempt to find the answers given, and there might be a direct connection between literature and science.

Can Formalism account for the broad spectrum of forms that are interwoven into so many literatures? Mikhail Bakhtin argues for the artistic formulation of the novel as both an aesthetic form and as a versatile use of language that exceeds poetry in its scope. The novel incorporates so many stylistic functions that it cannot be captured by only one set standard or subscribe to the same expectations of poetry.

The novel as a whole is a phenomenon multiform in style and variform in speech and voice. In it the investigator is confronted with several heterogeneous stylistic unities, often located on different linguistic levels and subject to different stylistic controls...These heterogeneous stylistic unities, upon entering the novel, combine to form a structured artistic system, and are subordinated to the higher stylistic unity of the work as a whole, a unity that cannot be identified with any single one of the unities subordinated to it. (1191-1192)

Formalism, because of its limited approach, cannot account for the multi-form structure of a work that is as complex as the novel, where there is more to the from than an algorithm or equation that dictates the placement of words in a kind of universal form.

Where might one turn to reconcile the ties between science and literature? Communication is necessary in both disciplines without which even the most basic of ideas cannot be constructed for consideration among peers or the public. The next place to look might be found within the one thing that both disciplines have in common: language.

At any given moment of its evolution, language is stratified not only into linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word…but also…into languages that are socio-ideological: languages of social groups, “professional” and “genetic” languages, languages of generations and so forth. (Bakhtin 1199)

There are, of course, different kinds of languages for different disciplines, made clear when one directly compares the words and styles used by science and literature when communicating within the disciplines. However, the fundamental elements of language are present, the syntax and grammar rules remain mostly intact, and communication can be maintained between two different people of two very different disciplines with mostly ease and only little explanation of terms. The reconciliation then, must take place within the structure of language itself and the recognition of the heteroglossia that permeates the language throughout, lending itself to constant comparisons and contrasts for the sake of importance or social relevance.

Though taking a scientific approach to literature does not seem effective in its empirical study of literature, at least in the way it has been explored by the Formalists, one might be inclined to wonder what would happen if science was explored through literature. Science fiction explores the ideas of science in great depth, but another way to look at science ‘literarily’ might be to take scientific theories and explore them not only as if they were fiction, but postulate them as fiction, removing entirely any links to the reality which they try to explain, and instead imagine the possibilities of a world where these empirical facts were deemed meaningless or unimportant. Given the arbitrary nature of measurement, as described above, it is not much of a stretch to imagine the shortcomings of science in such a way to render the discipline helpless in the realm of the imaginary. Literature, on the other hand, can operate both in the realm of science, as a tool for exploring hypothetical scenarios, and in the realm of the imaginary, by creating worlds where the laws of science are not only inapplicable but deemed completely useless or even unnecessary.

For example, in science the concept of time is an important tool of measurement to assist in the accuracy of experimentation and longevity of scientific measurement. Time is not questioned in science except to establish a ground for comparison between experiments, and it is not doubted that time is an influence on the outcome of experimentation. Literature, in the realm of science, is also subject to time—the time of the reader to sit and physically read the text—which constitutes participation in a sort of science experiment by timing the point at which a subject begins reading and finishes reading a text. Once the same experiment is moved into the realm of literature, the same rules do not necessarily apply: within the text what is postulated as truth is what is true, regardless of the experience of the reader. If an author writes, for instance, that there exists no concept of time within the frame of the novel, then it does not matter how much science attempts to interfere with the experience of the words on the page, the literature is impenetrable to the effects, and science is helpless to influence the experience of the reader since science cannot operate in the imaginary, enforcing absolute objectivity and adherence to its rules.

Why read literature? Literature is an opportunity to cultivate ideas in a realm free from the constraints of not only science, but also of subjectivity. Though it feels like a safe argument to say that all literature is subjective, due to the nature of language, without any inherent qualities, it can be argued that the perceived subjectivity is only a product of disciplines—like science—enforcing rules and methods on the world in an attempt to make sense of reality according to their own standards. The rules are an illusion to bring sense to an otherwise unpredictable world. Even the rules of language fall victim to the incessant rules and regulations of science, but they are only constructs of the human mind. These constructs allow us to see patterns, but they also enforce the rule of subjectivity—an interpretation that can only be conceived of within the constructs of the rules of both science and literature. Literature, however, offers more freedom for ideas, allowing the mind free reign and ultimately an escape of the confines of law and rules, which may be seen as a great reason to find one lost in a good piece of literature.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. From Discourse in the Novel. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. First Edition. Editors: Leitch, Vincent B., et. al. W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 2001. Pp. 1190-1220.

Eichenbaum, Boris. From The Theory of the “Formal Method”. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. First Edition. Editors: Leitch, Vincent B., et. al. W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 2001. Pp. 1062-1087.

PHI 38: "Selfishness or Cooperation: Properties of Units of Natural Selection in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene"

2009-06-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

Jolene Brown

Prof. V. Keyser

Philosophy 38

17 July 2009

Selfishness or Cooperation:

Properties of Units of Natural Selection in Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene

In the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins there is a case built for the importance of the genetic unit as the sole operator of natural selection. He claims that a unit of natural selection has three properties, and that the largest unit that exhibits all three of those properties is the definitive unit of natural selection. However, he does not account for all the things that would be required of a unit of natural selection, and his argument itself is based on a large assumption that one must accept before his argument can be seen as a good explanation for the gene being the unit of natural selection. In this way, his argument can be considered weakened since it is missing at least one fundamental element that would assist in natural selection, and that the argument that he makes cannot work without that fundamental assumption.

Dawkins argument consists of three premises and a conclusion which he draws from those premises. His first premise is that the properties of a unit of natural selection can be identified as longevity, fecundity and copying fidelity. He identifies these properties because, he claims, they support the stability of the unit:

Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. (Dawkins 12)

With this first premise Dawkins is identifying those things he feels contribute to the stability of those units of natural selection, and in turn, to the stability of the organisms. With this argument the emphasis is placed on the stability of the organism—the “survival machine”—that houses, protects and assists in the recreation of the natural selection unit.

There is, however, an assumption made in this first premise not addressed by Dawkins in his argument: that these properties (longevity, fecundity, copying fidelity) can be measured in such a way to determine whether or not they are quantitatively significant. For example, it may be argued that science cannot empirically study, or quantitatively measure the longevity of a single gene within a gene pool, or for that matter, measure the longevity of several hundred genes in order to create a wide enough sample to claim that genes that stay in the gene pool longer have more influence on natural selection than others. “It is [the gene’s] potential immorality that makes a gene a good candidate as the basic unit of natural selection” (36) and no amount of science can accurately measure or account for an “immortal” longevity: the longevity factor is rendered unfalsifiable with that assumption of quantification in place. The longevity property may be an important property to a unit of natural selection, but the inclusion of this property undermines the argument itself by making it impossible to be measured by any form of accurate science.

The second premise is that natural selection operates on the largest single entity that embodies these three properties. The importance of the largest entity, in contrast to the smallest, is that natural selection chooses traits that are deemed better for “stability” or survival. Natural selection cannot select a directly from the gene pool because the genes are so small and so ineffectual in the environment that instead natural selection looks at the effects of the gene on the machine that it builds. “If selection tried to choose DNA molecules directly it would hardly find any criterion by which to do so…The important differences between genes emerge only their effects” (235). Based on this argument, it seems likely that natural selection would need to have, at the very minimum, a unit that would have enough effect on the survival machine to allow selection in the first place. The property of longevity also rules out most other organisms beyond the gene, since the gene does last longer than all the organisms that it is a part of. It would seem this premise is a solid second premise in the argument. The third premise is the claim that it is the gene, and no other organism or entity that embodies all of these properties and is the largest one that can be acted on by natural selection. This claim, too, is a fairly straight forward claim, and does not seem to have any underlying assumptions, much like the second premise. Based on these three premises, the conclusion drawn is that the gene is the largest unit on which natural selection is acting, and that the phenotype of the genes are what is being selected for by natural selection.

The problem one is left with after analysis of Dawkins’ argument is not any invalidity of his argument, despite the assumption one must allow in the first premise. The problem lies in that there seems to be one major trait of the natural selection unit that he either did not take into account, or that he discounted altogether as a factor: cooperation. Cooperation, in this sense, does not refer only to the behavioral adaption of two entities working together (altruistically or not), but instead physical cooperation between two of the units to devise more and more extravagant and complicated survival machines.

…evolution is constructive because of cooperation…Cooperation allows specialization and thereby promotes biological diversity. […] Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of evolution is its ability to generate cooperation in a competitive world. (Nowak 1563)

Cooperation as a behavior begins at the physical level, similar to the selfishness that Dawkins argues for throughout his book. However, cooperation, it can be argued, is fundamental to the successful reproduction of genetic information. Without the fundamental cooperation between to replicators in the original “replicator soup” there would not be the “survival machines” to house the selfish units of natural selection. Though the genes may still be selfish, the individual unit does not have enough power on its own to become and maintain itself as a unit of natural selection: the Dawkins quote on page 235 (stated above) is clear in this claim. This property of cooperation can then be posited as another, if not the underlying, property that allows natural selection to operate in the first place. Through the combination of genes to form their survival machines, they not only allow natural selection to operate on their effects, but they also are able to reproduce themselves with other genes to form new and elaborate survival machines.

Dawkins may be right in that the largest single unit of natural selection is the gene. The evidence he presents in this way is fairly convincing, and other scientists tend to agree. What is up for debate is the idea that the genes are intrinsically selfish. Without other genes, the genes themselves cannot operate effectively as a unit of natural selection or as effective reproducers of their own genetic material for longevity because “…individual genes cannot be considered as replicators because they do not behave as separate units during reproduction” (Lloyd, Sect. 2.2). The genes may have started out as a form of replicator but natural selection immediately began favoring those replicators that could cooperate with other replicators to form large, more complex and protective survival machines. This leap from the selfish replicator to the cooperative gene seems to be one that Dawkins is either unwilling to make or has decided not to make because it would undermine some of his other ideas. Whatever his reason, it is important to realize that without cooperation, the at least one of the properties that he posits as important to the individual unit of natural selection, fecundity, does not operate without the important quality of the unit to cooperate effectively with other units.

Works Cited

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene: 30^th Anniversary Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Lloyd, Elisabeth. "Units and Levels of Selection." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Nowak, Martin A., et al. “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation.” Science magazine. Vol. 314 (December 2006). Pages 1560-1563. URL = http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5805/1560.

ENL 111: "The Power of Women in Malory's Arthurian Works"

2009-06-08T14:33:00.000-07:00

Jolene P. Brown

Dr. K. Smith

ENL 111

8 June 2009

The Power of Women in Malory’s Arthurian Works

The women of King Arthur’s world have two important attributes in the work of Malory. It is the women in the stories who establish gender roles between a knight and a lady or create ambiguous gender roles, raising questions about the significance of masculinity and femininity. As well as creating gender distinctions, a lady is often the key factor in determining the destiny of the knights and a knight’s relationship to a woman can be a determining factor is his success or failure in the sphere of the court. It is in this way that women have control over the masculine realm around them, and though their role is limited and very subtle, it is important to the overall continuum of Arthur’s court and his knights. The combination of establishing the gender role and determining the success or failure of a knight makes the women of Arthur’s world powerful creatures, which may explain the prevalence of mystical and magical qualities associated with the female realm, since the power that women wield is, at times, so subtle it is hardly recognized as power at all.

In Malory’s text, the women of King Arthur’s court do not often have a voice unto themselves. Instead of speaking, women use objects and attributes to communicate to each other and to knights in ways that are not altogether obvious. In her essay “Female Heroes, Heroines, and Counter-Heroes,” Maureen Fries argues that Arthurian women play one, and rarely more, of her three defined roles in connection to their femininity: a female hero, a heroine, or a counter-hero. However, she goes on to say:

All of these women, even the comparatively powerful counter-heroes, are limited by their inability to assume such traditional male roles as the warrior one of physical combat…female heroes and counter-heroes must use guile, both verbal and magical…As for heroines, they have only their beauty, a chancy weapon at best. (72)

Though it is true that women are limited to a certain numbers of tools at their disposal for moving up the social ladder they make effective use of what they have to further their cause. By making use of beauty, magical charms, spells, and companionship with other women, the ladies of the court are able to etch out an existence that, more often than not, works to their favor.

The goal of most Arthurian women is marriage and many of the women identify their future partners quickly by judging a knight according to his outward appearance, chivalrous character and family affiliations. Winning those partners, however, tends to be a harder feat than just the identification as there are often competitions among ladies for the best of the knights. The most obvious example of this is found in the overwhelming attraction to Lancelot and the lengths to which women go to seduce him for their own. Lancelot is pursued by four queens, who demand he choose one of them as his paramour (Malory p. 152); he is tricked into siring Galahad by Eleyne who drugs him (480); he is nursed back to health then given an ultimatum by another Elaine, who commits suicide at his refusal to be her husband or allow her to be his paramour (638). Each of these women uses their best skills in an attempt to woo or otherwise gain the favor of sir Lancelot. Despite their overall failures, their attempts should not be discounted as ineffective or frivolous. The power that each wields is strong, failing only because their choice of knight to enact it upon is Lancelot, the greatest knight of all. It can be argued that their failure in this capacity speaks more to the power of Lancelot than it does to lack of talent or power on the part of these very motivated queens and maidens.

Arthurian women play a vital role in the unfolding of Malory’s story despite their lack of voice and overall dismissal to the edges of the plot. There are several instances where women dictate not only the direction of the story, but also foresee and, indeed, enforce the outcome of the story. Through their use of their beauty, magic, magical items, feminine charms or even emotional appeals and ultimatums, women are able to manipulate the men around them to perform tasks that range from the menial to heroic. Even weapons, which are almost exclusively items that are identified with masculinity, are almost always associated with a woman through ownership or access, as discussed by Geraldine Heng:

Perhaps the most enigmatic and dangerous items of this material trove are swords, the instruments on which all masculine accomplishment must turn, and therefore pivotal to conceptions of male identity and personal force. These are so strongly associated with the feminine sources and ownership as sometimes to be only temporarily accessible to men. (98)

Women, though they do not wield the weapons, still have the power to dictate who will receive the weapons. For example, Excalibur belongs to the Lady of the Lake who claims ownership of it when Arthur wants it for his own: “’Sir Arthur,’ seyde the damsel, ‘that swerde ys myne, and if ye woll gyff me a gyffte whan I aske hit you, ye shall have hit” (Malory 35). The sword is hers, and it is hers to barter with in order to ask a favor—a gift—of Arthur at a later date. If it were not hers to trade, it could be argued, she would probably not be so quick to promise it away.

As the most obvious of the female figures in the tales of Arthur, Guinevere’s virtue lies in her beauty, as she holds the two most powerful men in the kingdom under the power of her beauty: Arthur, the king of England, and Lancelot, the greatest knight of the king’s court. Her beauty seems to have a magical element to it as a woman points out to Lancelot during one of his many adventures that “hit is noysed that ye love quene Guenyvere, and that she hath ordeyned by enchauntemente that ye shall never love none other but hir, nothing none other damesell ne lady shall rejoice you” (160 40-42). Though there is not mention of Guinevere practicing any kind of magical or enchanted arts, the implication speaks clearly of the power of her beauty and how it might affect both her husband and lover. Her use of her power seems to be limited to attaining a high station in life through her marriage to a king and maintaining that station through the work of her lover, Lancelot. Her beauty secures her queen-ship as Arthur tells Merlin he wishes to marry her because she “is the moste valyaunte and fayryst that I know lyvyng, or yet that ever I coude fynde” (59). Arthur marries her despite the warnings given to him by Merlin, arguably Arthur’s most trusted advisor, and enters the marriage with the knowledge that she and Lancelot are determined to be in love with one another. Though it is Arthur’s decision to follow through with this marriage despite the warnings and the knowledge of his wife’s eventual betrayal, it might also be seen as power that Guinevere has in her beauty. The reader is not told Guinevere’s reaction to being the object of the king’s affections, but it is not hard to imagine her being pleased at the prospect of marrying the powerful king of England, especially given that “Arranged marriages were the norm among the aristocracy and gentry in Malory’s day…Guinevere probably did not have to be coerced into marrying Arthur. He was a young king, renowned for his prowess and worship, and she might reasonably expect to grow to love him in time” (Kennedy 15).

Lancelot is also subject to Guinevere’s beauty, as it is he who maintains her position in the court. It is understood that no other knight can defeat Lancelot because he is the greatest knight in the world, and it is Lancelot who fights for Guinevere in place of Arthur on at least one occasion. For instance, when Lancelot is away, suffering Guinevere’s wrath, she has a dinner for the Knights of the Round Table, to show her appreciation for all of them. Unfortunately, there is an assassination plot on Gawain, and when it goes wrong, killing another knight, it is Guinevere who is blamed since she is the one who planned the dinner. Though the circumstances of the blame are unusual, and signal an environment of mistrust among the knightly brethren, what is more alarming is the mistrust directed at the wife of the king. Arthur cannot help her for his political ties as king, and even he suggests that Lancelot should be the one to defend her honor. Despite their earlier argument, and Guinevere’s seemingly characteristic unhappiness with him, Lancelot returns to defend her, and does so successfully. Lancelot is so in love with Guinevere, the woman he cannot have, that he passes up the opportunity to marry or otherwise secure the love of other eligible and beautiful women, such as the lady Elaine the Fair Maid of Astolat who kills herself for his love. Guinevere asks Lancelot why he did not show Elaine more mercy and his reply is succinct: “she wolde none other ways be answered but that she wolde be my wyff other ellis my paramour, and of thes two I wolde not graunte her…I love nat to be contrayned to love, for love muste only aryse of the harte self, and nat by none constraynte” (641). Lancelot is controlled by Guinevere’s beauty, at least to some extent, to go to such great lengths, even restoring her position as queen when their affair is alleged by Aggravayne and Mordred during the final chapter of Malory’s work.

Morgan le Fay is one of the more complex female roles in the Arthurian universe since, depending on the text, is sibling, friend, enemy, sorceress, enabler and disabler to Arthur. In Malory’s text she is cast in the role of villain, and her power obviously lies in the realm of magic and enchantment, which she wields over men to gain power over them. She is not the only woman who uses magic to her advantage, for the Lady of the Lake, Nyneve also does and traps Merlin who is trying to woo her. But there are differences in the way each woman uses her abilities:

If Morgan and Nyneve may be said to differ…it is a difference of intensity, rather than of kind. Nyneve…is more impersonal in her relations with the Arthurian world, less interested in its quotidian operations. Morgan…is intensely interested in the Arthurian ethos as a stage for her powers, and the disruptions she manufactures…point to a pleasure in their competitive display. (Heng 106)

Morgan takes pleasure in the control of men, and indeed does so at every opportunity she gets. She is one of the queens to pursues Lancelot to be his paramour (152), shortly after taking Accolon as a lover and using him to kill Arthur while she killed her own husband, only be stopped by her son, Uwayne (90 35-41). The Lady of the Lake, at least from the perspective of Arthur and his court, seems a more subtle, helpful influence on the activities of the court, while Morgan continues her disruptions throughout the story.

Morgan also deprives Arthur of the precious scabbard of Excalibur, which is supposed to keep him from ever losing blood (Malory 36). She steals into this chamber intending to steal the sword, but because the sword is “naked” in the hands of Arthur, she decided to take the scabbard instead, rather than risk waking him:

And she wente streyte unto his chamber…When the kynge awoke and myssid his scawberde, he was wroth, and so he asked who has bene there, and they sayde his sister, quene Morgan le Fay, had bene there and had put the scawberde undir hir mantel and is gone…’Sir,’ seyde they all, ‘we durst nat disobey your sistyrs commaundemente.’ (91)

The power she has over men is made evident in this passage for “we durste disobey,” which could be attributed to both her magic and to her place in the king’s family as his sister. Morgan is in control of Arthur’s fate at this point in the story, as she takes the scabbard and deprives him of his ability to spend an eternity on the English throne. Morgan, unlike Arthur, realizes the importance of the scabbard and it should be noticed that the power of Excalibur lies “not in blade but in the scabbard or sheath (Lat. vagina)” (Heng 98) and in depriving Arthur of his scabbard she is depriving him of an important connection and balance to the feminine world. This act could be interpreted as the beginning of the end with his wife, as his sword no longer has its sheath, he is also meant to lose the sheath to his own sword.

The power of women in the Arthurian world is not limited to that of Guinevere and Morgan. Many of the women in Arthur’s kingdom manage to control and manipulate their surroundings to their own benefit and ends. There are several examples of this in the story of Balin, the Knight with Two Swords. At the beginning of the story a damsel enters Arthur’s court in search of a great knight who can pull her sword out of her sheath. It is only evident later, through the help of Merlin, that the woman has asked the ladies of Avalon to help her have revenge on her brother by having part in the death of a great knight’s brother by use of that sword she is asking knights to pull out of the sheath. When Balin is successful in pulling the sword and refuses to give it back, even after the damsel’s request, she threatens him saying “ye ar nat wyse to kepe the swerde fro me, for ye shall sle with that swerde the beste frende that ye have and the man that ye moste love In the worlde, and that swerde shall be youre destruccion” (Malory 39-40). Through the use of these words and by this damsel seeking out the help of magical women to further her destructive cause, the damsel is creating her own destiny. It may not be the most chivalrous life, being that her mission is to bring destruction and revenge, and hers is certainly not an honorable cause, but she, unlike some of the other women of the court, is empowered to seek out what she feels is important.

Other women are given power by the author, since it is the death of these particular women that determine the fates of the knights who are involved. Again, from the story of Balin, the Lady of Sir Launceor kills herself upon her knight’s sword upon discovering his death at the hands of Balin, to which Merlin warns Balin how her death will affect the course of his adventure:

…because of the dethe of that lady [Launceor’s lady] thou shalt stryke a stroke moste dolorous that every man stroke, excepte the stroke of oure Lorde Jesu Cryste…and thorow that stroke three kyngdomys shall be brought into grete poverte, miseri and wrecchednesse twelve yere. And the knight shall nat be hole of that wounde many yerys. (45)

Still another example of a woman’s power after her death is found in the story of Torre and Pellinor, where Gawain is punished for the lack of mercy he shows toward another knight, yet instead of killing the knight: “Ryght so com hys lady oute of a chamber and felle over hym, and so he smote of hir hede by myssefortune” (66). The gruesome punishment that Gawain is forced to endure not only shows the extent to which Gawain suffers the torment of his lack of mercy, but also forces him to change the way he approaches both knights and women in the battle field since “sir Gawayne sworne upon the four Evaungelystis that he sholde never be ayenste lady ne jantillwoman but if he fight for a lady and hys adversary fyghtith for another” (67). Even after death women seem to have a power to change the fortune of knights, whether it be for better or for worse, and sometimes both.

While it is true that women have a limited role compared to the vast scope of the chivalric brotherhood, battlefield and honor code of the masculine realm of which they are a part of they do have significant powers in those realms they do control. Their realm is that of love, and a woman who can not only identify her lover, but also capture him and make him her knight, her paramour or her husband has truly mastered her womanhood. In taking advantage of what talents and skills they have, women are able to create for themselves a small part of their world that they can control. Like their control in the realm of love, as argued by Geraldine Heng,

…knightly obedience to and cooperation with the feminine supply effective means for actualizations of feminine will, creating an agency by which women may be active in the world. Knightly actions, where they are an extension of feminine will, are, in this sense, transparent, and have been describes as…the exploits of ladies through the medium of knights. (102)

It is through the interactions with the masculine and, ultimately, forging ties with the masculine realm that women are given power beyond that which is given them by their gender. Those women who cannot connect with the masculine realm, such as those women who learn magic, or those to betray the masculine realm, still manage to maintain a power unique to their gender. Men, on the other hand, must maintain a connection to the feminine in order to reach their full potential within their gender, be it through love, chivalry, or sex. Without the balance on the masculine side, the man falls victim to women and must suffer the wrath of those women who can control the realm that he is not only separate from, but has limited understanding of.

Works Cited

Fries, Maureen. "Female Heroes, Heroines, and Counter-Heroes: Images of Women in Arthurian Tradition." Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Ed. Thelma S. (ed and introd). Fenster. New York, NY: Garland, lxxvii, 1996. 59-73.

Heng, Geraldine. "Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory." Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Ed. Thelma S. (ed and introd ). Fenster. New York, NY: Garland, lxxvii, 1996. 97-113.

Kennedy, Beverly. "Malory's Guenevere: A 'Trew Lover'." On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries. Ed. Bonnie (ed and foreword) Wheeler and Fiona (ed and foreword) Tolhurst. Dallas, TX: Scriptorium, xiii, 2001. 11-34.

Malory, Sir Thomas. Complete Works of Malory. Ed. Eugene Vinaver. 2^nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

ENL 168: "'Hurt Hawks' and the Balance of Man and Nature"

2009-06-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Jolene P. Brown

Dr. A. Williamson

English 168

5 June 2009

“Hurt Hawks” and the Balance of Man and Nature

Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Hurt Hawks” tells the tragic story of a speaker who finds and cares for an injured hawk. The hawk is wounded beyond healing, and the speaker watches as the hawk fights a battle with pain and death, yet somehow maintains life for six weeks before the speaker takes it upon himself to kill it out of mercy. The hawk, a symbol of strength, is weakened by the wing’s injury, and though the injury does not kill the hawk, it deprives it of its freedom since the hawk can no longer fly. The hawk is forced to wait for a slow, painful death since it will not be killed off by a predator as it can still defend itself with its talons. The reader watches as the speaker is driven to do the one thing he would rather not do: kill the hawk to save it from a fate worse than death; ending the agonizing depletion of strength from a creature that is the embodiment of that characteristic.

There are two parts to the poem, the first that outlines the hawks fall from grace, and the second that describes death and transcendence of nature beyond the death of the hawk. The speaker describes the sad state of the hawk in gruesome detail, describing the “clotted shoulder,” with “the bone too shattered for mending” (lines 1, 20). In the first part the hawk is shown to be both physically and psychologically injured as described in lines 7-8: “at night he remembers freedom / And flies in a dream, the dawn ruins it.” The speaker endows the hawk with a memory of the freedom he once had in the sky, a freedom that has been stripped from him by his crushed wing that simultaneously crushed his spirit. However, the hawk will not submit to humility as “no one but death the redeemer will humble that head” (11) and throughout the pain maintains his arrogance. This arrogance will not get him a quicker death, notes the speaker, since “The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those / That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant” (13-14). The first part describes an arrogant animal that will not submit death or humility, not even for a quicker death, and the speaker mourns the potential lost in the strength that once was.

The second part of the poem describes the continued decline of the hawk leading up to his eventual death at the hands of the remorseful speaker. The pain that the hawk endures is matched only by that of the speaker, who would “sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk” (18). The speaker does all that can be done, feeding it and allowing it the freedom to wander over the landscape outside of a cage. For six weeks, the speaker says, “He wandered over the foreland hill” only to return “in the evening, asking for death, / Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old / Implacable arrogance” (22-23). Even in his weakest moment the hawk maintains his arrogance, not even willing to beg for the death that he needs to leave behind the suffering of his crushed wing and subsequent confinement to land. The speaker describes the bullet as a “gift” which he gives to the hawk in the twilight of the evening, and the sound of the gun triggering a relaxing fall of “Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers” but also a soaring of “the night-herons by the flooded river” that “cried fear at its rising” (25-26). There is, then, both a rising and falling at the end of the poem: as the hawk falls into death, life continues on as other birds rise in life “before it [the hawk] was quite unsheathed from reality” (27).

There is an unusual word that occurs in the poem on line 10 that can be interpreted in several different ways with each interpretation giving new meaning to the passage.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At a distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. (Lines 9-14)

The word “curs,” seems at first to be a typo, or some kind of error on the part of speaker or poet. However, analyzing the use of the word in the line through context, the word could be replaced by either ‘course’ or ‘curse.’ Each word would give a dramatic interpretation to the sentence in which it is employed. In the use of the word ‘course,’ the time that passes through the day, and the general course of events from the moment the sun rises to the next sunrise becomes a torment to the bird, that must suffer each moment without his wing. It also implies the course of suffering the bird must endure, through the shock of the injury, the pain and the realization and acceptance of the inevitability of death. When the word ‘curse’ is used instead, the day is personified: cursing the hawk either with the injury itself, with prolonged life despite the injury, or both. Both words help to express the hawk’s and the speaker’s unhappiness at the injury which is only made worse by the potential that the hawk once had. Further, the incapacity of the current state when compared to the former strength, freedom and arrogance, is even worse than the pain. The current state is a tragedy in the truest sense since all the potential is lost as the hawk must continue the course of pain and incapacity, and suffer the curse of incapacity without the immediate release death.

The hawk is a symbol of strength: “The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, / The wing trails like a banner in defeat” (1-2). In the first line the speaker refers to the wing as a “pillar,” the source of architectural strength, and the metaphor is changed in the second line as the reader is told of the injury; suddenly the pillar is a “banner in defeat.” It is clear that the battle has ended for the hawk as not even the “cat nor coyote / Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons” (4-5) The implication is that the hawk still has the ability to fend off predators, but the predators will not do the hawk the honor of fighting him, since there is other meat to be had. The value that the hawk has as a warrior with honor is suddenly that which will keep him from dying, and ultimately is the same honor that will prevent him a swift warrior’s death. His honor is then lost with the injury as he is valueless even to predators as food.

The tone of the poem is affected a great deal by the poet’s use of free verse combined with long lines. The poem becomes more of a story, as the reader can imagine being told this story by someone who has experienced it first-hand, and it becomes a more personal experience for the reader. Consonance is used more in the first part of poem giving the reader a constant reminder of the jagged pain of the hawk, and the unsettling feeling experienced by the speaker. The word ‘strong’ is used twice in line 9 emphasizing the importance of strength to the creature and how the speaker admires this quality in the hawk. In the second part of the poem, assonance is the emphasis with descriptions such as “implacable arrogance” (24), “eyed with the old” (23), which soothes the ear in preparation for the death to come. There is still consonance, however, and the contrast between the two maintains an uncertain tone leading to a repetition of ‘r’ sounds in the last two lines allowing for a sound of closure at the end of the poem.

The poem is representative of the relationship between man and nature. The title itself implies a larger scope of meaning, since the word “hawks” in the title implies a plurality that does not exist in the poem. This absence generously opens the scope of the interpretation to metaphor applying itself easily to nature. The hawk as a symbol for nature embodies all those characteristics important for the survival of all creatures: strength, honor, glory, arrogance and grace but these things are not permanent and can be lost quickly, without warning. The poem makes no mention of how the hawk was injured, this cause itself is irrelevant to the point the poet is trying to make. The injury weakens the bird, but does not strip it of all its qualities since it can still defend itself from predators and arrogantly defy death. It takes the work of man to allow the creature passage into a world without pain, but even the death of the hawk cannot put a stop to nature as the flock of birds react to the sound of the gift-bullet and take to the sky. The fall of one bird leading to the rise of an entire flock: in helping with death there is a birth of life.

Works Cited

Jeffers, Robinson. “Hurt Hawks.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2, third edition. Editors: Jahan Rmazanin, et. al. W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2003. Pages 416-417.

ENL 111: "One King, One God: Christianity in King Arthur's Court"

2009-05-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

Jolene Brown

Dr. K. Smith

English 111

12 May 2009

One King, One God: Christianity in King Arthur’s Court

Religion is an important thread that runs through the many tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The virtues that the court is said to uphold, though they include other non-Christian influences, are representative of Christian virtues, and the idea of a single God is brought up continually throughout the works. As one of the earliest works that mention King Arthur and his court, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain set the standard for the integration of religion, virtue and valor into the politics and kingships of Britain. In this way, Arthur’s rise and fall as King of Britain can be seen as an attempt to advocate Christianity over paganism, specifically monotheism as superior to polytheism. By criticizing the in-fighting of Christians for power Geoffrey argues that Christians should instead turn their fighting to outer foes, spreading the word of the Christian God, thus creating a larger support network, and ultimately the expansion of both Christianity and British power.

Religion plays an important part in the virtues attributed to Arthur by Geoffrey, and those virtues are what make Arthur popular among his people. Geoffrey, in Book 9, describes Arthur as a “youth of outstanding virtue and largesse” whose “innate goodness made him exhibit such grace that he was beloved by almost all people” (163). Geoffrey also says Arthur is one who “possessed both great courage and generosity,” but it is clear that these virtues are reserved only for his people, as the line finishes by pointing out Arthur’s determination “to attack the Saxons so that he could distribute their riches among his men” (163). But even his violence towards the Saxons is justified by another virtue: “Justice spurred him on as well, since by right of inheritance he ought to have control over the entire island” (163). The listing of these virtues and the attribution to Arthur not only makes him a worthy candidate for the throne, but also allude to a higher authority that gifted such virtues to the man. It is also important that Arthur wants to protect his own people over the Saxons, choosing the “justice” of inheritance over the allowance of peace. In making this decision Arthur is choosing to not only spread his own power, but to also further reaches of his virtues, granted by God.

An early example of Arthur helping Christianity is his actions after driving out the Saxons from Britain: “Arthur then rebuilt all the churches that had been destroyed and established communities of religious men and women there” (170). Arthur restores both churches and communities while simultaneously strengthening the ties of the church to these distant realms. He also becomes a symbol for the power and virtue of Christianity establishing that God can place such a man in power, but can also give that man the strength to drive the pagans out of Britain and allow for the reestablishment of the Christian church. Arthur also shows his virtues to those people who he restores their faith by also restoring “titles and property to all those who had been driven out by the Saxon occupation” (170). This generosity of both his faith, through the restoration of the churches, and of his wealth, through the distribution of property, speaks highly of Arthur’s character and also of the God that he represents.

In the spreading of the Christian faith through all the lands of Britain Arthur comes to inspire faith in other, ever more distant, lands. The court that he creates gains renown through all of Britain, as the word spreads about the grandness of Arthur’s Round Table. By inviting “all the bravest men from the far-flung reaches of his domains” Arthur is able to “cultivate such refinement…that people far and wide sought to emulate it” (171). This act of emulation both by individuals and by other royal courts speaks as a metaphor for religion. Religious ritual is meant to be copied, reenacted by others for the sake of faith, and by copying Arthur’s court the subjects of Britain are not only showing faith in Arthur, but also faith in the religion that created him. However, religious devotion can also spread fear to those who do not know or understand the purpose for the ritual, which explains the reactions of the other European kings: “The fame of Arthur’s great generosity and prowess then spread to the furthest ends of the earth, and great fear beset the kings across the sea” (171). The kings were afraid of losing their lands to Arthur, but part of their fear one could attribute to the ritualistic fashion in which British subjects sought to copy Arthur’s court so fastidiously to the point that “Every young nobleman was tempted to hang himself unless he could dress or bear arms like the knights of King Arthur’s court” (171).

Through a combination of his virtues and warfare, Arthur wins over domains far-reaching from his inherited kingdom. Arthur’s influence spread past Britain into Europe as “There did not remain one prince of any merit on this side of Spain who did not attend his court when summoned…Arthur’s generosity was renowned all over the world and this made all men love him” (175). After several years of ruling peacefully over Britain, Arthur “rejoiced at being universally feared” and when he realizes that he “desired to submit all Europe to his rule” (171). This conflict of virtue with greed gives a clue into the downfall of Arthur: the end of the round table will come from within. It is Arthur’s decision to spread his power throughout Europe that, one could argue, ultimately leads to his downfall, and it is significant that it is the fear that others have of him that drives him to make this decision. When Arthur is compared to God, God also commands a form of fear from his followers, however it is believed that since God is a perfect being that the fear will not be manipulated for personal gain. Arthur, however, is only a man, and as a man has inherent flaws that prevent him from realizing the mistake he makes in manipulating the fear of his neighboring kingdoms for his own gain. Though it seems though Arthur is only continuing spread the Christian faith, this move is different because it is driven by his desire, and not the “right of inheritance” that was given to him by both his earthy father, Uther, and his Christian father (163).

The giant that Arthur fights can be seen as a symbol of this inner conflict of greed with virtue, as the giant represents the power hungry man that Arthur is becoming. The giant takes a young maiden, who in her fear can be compared to those kingdoms who fear Arthur, and attempts to rape her; when she dies in the attempt, the giant rapes the old woman instead. This juxtaposition between the young maiden and the old crone brings to mind the new kingdoms that Arthur has his sights on, and the old kingdoms of Britain that he is forced to settle with. By killing the young maiden in the attempt to rape her, the giant never gets his satisfaction from the maiden; Arthur never gets his satisfaction in taking Rome despite winning her because he is forced to return to Britain to defend her, his crone, instead. Another important factor in this story is that Arthur is insistent on defeating the giant himself: “For King Arthur possessed such strength and courage that he scoffed at bringing the entire army against such monsters. He wanted to impress his men by vanquishing the creature himself” (183). His insistence on going alone to defeat the giant only reinforces the inflated ego that has developed since he learned how he is feared.

The conflict that begins within Arthur ultimately destroys his kingdom, and leaves Britain in ruins after his defeat. In Book 11, Geoffrey outlines the folly of the British people:

O you hateful people of Britain…Because your kingdom was so divided against itself…because your pride did not allow you to obey a single king, you shall behold your land laid waste by impious pagans. Your houses shall indeed fall, and your descendants shall indeed mourn…they will barely ever be able to regain their former state of dignity. (202)

This lament for the people of Britain, though it is referring directly to their failure to accept Arthur as their “single king,” also speaks in religious overtones as their not accepting God as their “single king.” It is a call against polytheism, and the pagan religions that called people away from the Christian guidance provided by the church. Geoffrey also tells the reader that “the Britons thus lost the crown of Britain for many years…they did not follow a single king but instead obeyed three separate warlords who constantly ravaged the land fighting one another” (203). Instead of only one “king” or God, there were more than one, lending itself to pagan rituals and practices. By succumbing to these many gods, the Britons had lost both the crown, and the dignity that it had while under the rule of a wise, Christian king like Arthur.

In writing the history of the British people this way Geoffrey integrates religion into politics so subtly that the implications are not immediate. This view of a King as a symbol for God helped to forge the groundwork for the later Anglican religion, which places the monarch at the center of both the church and the state. By uniting the people under one religion that served the King as a representative of God, and by integrating that religion into their politics the Britons were able to create a vast world power within only a few hundred years of Geoffrey’s writings. Britain became Arthur, and through religion and warfare managed to take over most of the world, but like Arthur, they were not able to sustain it.

ENL 168: "'The Fish' and Freedom"

2009-05-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Jolene Brown

Dr. A. Williamson

English 168

May 5, 2009

“The Fish” and Freedom

The poem “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop tells of a fisherman who catches a very old fish. Though at first the fisherman is not impressed with the fish, except for its obvious age, he begins realize the significance of the catch through observation of its appearance, and the meaning of a few snapped wires and rusted hooks. The story in the poem itself seems rather simple and straightforward, however there are many subtle clues, similes and metaphors in the course of the poem that allude to a greater meaning for both the speaker and the reader.

The poem begins with a fisherman lifting a fish half out of water. The speaker states in a very straightforward, yet disappointed tone:

He didn’t fight.

He hadn’t fought at all.

He hung a grunting weight,

battered and venerable

and homely. (lines 5-9)

The speaker blames his disappointment on the fish. Its lack of fight is interpreted as weakness, physical and in character, and not worth the effort to pull it into the boat. One of the draws of fishing is the feeling of triumph that man feels when overcoming his game, so when the fish succumbs to its fate by not fighting, it has ruined this triumph for the fisherman. It is clear that this is one of the reasons why the fisherman has not immediately pulled the fish into the boat, and instead leaves the fish in a state of limbo, half out of the water beside the boat.

Another factor is the outward appearance of the fish, as the speaker describes the fish as both battered and homely. Even when compared to a rose, an object known for beauty, the speaker describes:

…his brown skin hung in strips

like ancient wallpaper

and its pattern of darker brown

was like wallpaper:

shapes like full-blown roses

stained and lost through age. (10-15)

It is obvious that the speaker is disappointed at first description of his ancient catch. The combination of the fish allowing the speaker to reel him in without any fight, and the unattractive physical nature of the fish disappoints both the speaker and, subsequently, the reader through the description.

The author uses many similes and mixed metaphors, like the one above, throughout the poem in significant ways, giving the poem a tone of both sympathy and beauty to an otherwise disgusting fish. In fact, there are six obvious similes in the poem, and each of them compare a description of the fish to an object that is inherently beautiful or heroic, and usually these comparisons are in direct contrast with other lines. An excellent example of this use mixed metaphor is lines 27-28: “I thought of the course white flesh / packed in like feathers,” where the speaker calls the flesh of the fish “course,” in the first line is in direct contrast with the word “feathers” in the following line. Another example is lines 61-62, where the idea of medals and ribbons are described at a contrast to what the reader imagines: “Like medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering.” The significance of this placement of similes can be traced to the fish, such that the fish is not at first what it seems to be. In fact, the speaker has to take in the whole of the fish before he can understand how these disgusting outer features do not tell the whole story of this venerable fish.

In fact, the fish only seems determined to accept death. In lines 34-44 the speaker describes staring into the eyes of the fish and not recognizing any intelligence or consciousness. It seems the fish as given up, as its eyes “They shifted a little, but not / to return my stare. / —It was more like the tipping / of an object toward the light.” The last line, which begins with a hyphen, almost as an after-thought, tells the reader that the eyes of the fish are like an object heading “toward the light.” This can be seen as the fish succumbing to the inevitability of its death, “toward the light” in the way that near-death experience has been described. This is another example of the fish accepting its inevitable demise at the hands of the speaker, which can be interpreted, by both speaker and reader, in an anti-heroic manner.

It is only when the speaker notices the hooks hanging out of the mouth of the fish that it seems as though the fish made a decision to allow the fisherman to catch him. The speaker notices the condition of the fish:

…then I saw that from his lower lip—

…hung five old pieces of fish-line,

or four and a wire leader

with the swivel still attached,

with all their five big hooks

grown firmly in his mouth. (48, 51-55)

These hooks that are “grown” into the mouth of the fish not only show the determination that this fish had for living, but they are also symbols of past battles, as the speaker refers to them as “medals with their ribbons/frayed and wavering,” but they also signal the wisdom of age, as they are also seen as “a five-haired beard of wisdom/trailing from his aching jaw” (63-64). Suddenly, the fish is deserving of reverence, and even a source of pride: “I stared and stared/and victory filled up/the little rented boat…” (65-67). It is not until this line that the reader realizes the significance of this catch to the speaker, because in a rented boat, this fisherman is one that could be considered an amateur, so by catching this fish the speaker had done what others before him were not capable of. The fish also takes on a mythical quality, and at the close of the poem, when it is the speaker who succumbs, not to death, but to enlightenment.

This poem was written in a free-verse style, and by writing in free verse, the author is free to tell the story of the fish and the fisherman in such a way that is unlimited in its rhymes and rhythms. Free verse is also symbolic: it allows the fish, the fisherman and the author freedom, which is a theme throughout the poem. This style also makes what little rhyme and repetition that the author does use more obvious to the reader, signaling clues to important passages that might be lost if the poem had more meter or rhyme. Repetition, instead of rhyme, becomes the focus of the reader, as there are several points of repetition that play an important role in the transitions of the speaker. In lines 48-49 the speaker repeats the word “lip” twice, both as the last word in the line. This is an important signal in the poem, as it is when the speaker notices the heroic lines hanging from the lip of the fish. It is a change of heart for the speaker, and a transition for the fish from helpless victim, to former hero. Repetition is used again at the second to last line where the word “rainbow” is repeated three times. Again it is a signal of change of heart, as the speaker reaches a climax of realization—an epiphany, which in a chant of “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!” comes to its fullest extent.

The rainbow that spreads from the oil stain in the boat emerges out of the speaker’s victory and from an epiphany, when the speaker suddenly realizes the significance of the catch. The fish becomes a symbol of something greater: freedom; by capturing the fish the speaker not only strips the fish of its freedom, but captures freedom itself. The fish can be seen as a symbol for freedom, in that the fish has obviously struggled to retain its freedom, as evidenced by the many hooks and wires hanging from its lips, but also by the its surrender. By surrendering to the speaker, the fish forfeits its own freedom, perhaps for the sake of the other younger fish, which alludes to a self-sacrificial generation that gives its own life for the sake of the future: much like those generations that fought wars for freedom. It is this combination of fighting and self-sacrifice that gives the fish the quality of a martyr, and the rainbows that emerge as a result of the speaker’s epiphany are clearly meant to enhance this ethereal perspective. By releasing the fish, the speaker allows freedom back into the world, and the fish becomes an immortal for both speaker and reader.

Works Cited

Bishop, Elizabeth. “The Fish.” The Norton Anthology of modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2, third edition. Editors: Jahan Ramazani, et. al. W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2003. Pages 21-22.

UWP 104D: "Statement of Purpose for Submission to CSUS Master's Program"

2009-03-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

Jolene Brown

Dr. S. Herring

University Writing Program 104D

March 20, 2009

Statement of Purpose for Submission to CSUS Master’s Program

Whether it was teaching my stuffed animals the importance of colors in relation to my coloring book, instructing my younger brother the intricacies of the multiplication table, training employees on-the-job, or assisting other students in my classes when I can—I have always been a teacher. It was a surprise to me when I decided that I wanted to be a college professor, but many of my friends and relatives were not at all surprised at my decision. It was not until I was in college that I realized I wanted to teach, when I was around students that I understood and could relate to. It came so naturally to me to assist fellow students, volunteering myself to those who needed an extra hand in my classes when I felt I could help. Being in college was a natural fit for me, and as I approach my first goal at UC Davis have come to realize that I wish to remain in the classroom giving the gift of education to future generations of college students. For this reason I wish to apply for the English graduate program at Sacramento State University, to study English composition and also receive a certificate in reading in adult education.

I believe that teaching is more than just explanation to students. As an English major, much of my education has centered on writing papers, but writing has not always been my strength. In fact, much of my college career I have suffered from a fear of writing that I have managed to overcome with the help and encouragement of some excellent college English professors. This is my motivation to instruct college English students, many of whom suffer from the same phobia as I did, and give them the motivation and self-confidence they need to write well and learn to enjoy at least some aspects of that which they loath. Specifically, I see the connection between good reading and good writing, and want to dispel the myth that they are separate entities, guiding students to conquer their fear of both.

One teacher, specifically, has inspired me to pursue teaching and has become a mentor for me throughout my college education. She was my English Reading 312 instructor at American River College, Professor Sue Rooney. Her class was the first class I took when I returned to college after a four year hiatus and it was the most challenging class I have ever taken. More important than just a grade, the next semester I realized how useful everything I learned in her class was and my success as a student improved dramatically because of what I learned in her class. She taught me something more important than better ways to read: she taught me the importance of student responsibility in education. Learning is more than reading a book and regurgitating the material; learning is students taking a pro-active approach to the material presented in every class, using it to explain the world around them, relating it to everything they do and committing to themselves to apply what they learn to their own lives. Whether it is nutrition, science, mathematics or literature, what students learn in school should become personal. Student should be taught to see the application beyond abstract ideas.

As a teacher I would commit myself to each student, maintaining standards that are achievable, but challenging. I consider myself an untraditional student because I did not attend college right after I graduated high school, instead going out into the work force for several years, and realizing through that experience that I wanted to pursue higher education. I managed a record store, a dream for any student out of high school, and in doing so gained valuable inter-personal skills as a manager and through interactions with very different kinds of people on a daily—even hourly—basis. I know this experience will allow me to reach out to every student, regardless of their position, culture, background, age, race, or gender. I have a special appreciation for returning students, especially those who have taken a substantial amount of time off from school to raise families or work full time. These students who have decided they want to pursue their education in spite of their lives outside of school are the ones I have a particular desire to help. I want to encourage them not to give up their dreams, regardless of their personal struggles, and see them realize their dreams no matter what those dreams might be.

The California State University, Sacramento has a program that would be perfect for me to see through my goal of teaching at a community college. The school offers the program I want to apply for, namely English composition, but also the certificate needed to instruct adult students in reading. Many instructors I respect and admire are graduates from the program I wish to apply for, and so I am familiar with the final product of education through Sacramento State. However, more importantly, the campus is also located in the community that I wish to remain a part of. As a Sacramento native, I want to give back to my community, assisting those people in Sacramento and giving my time to my neighbors. If I am accepted to Sacramento State I will have the opportunity to pursue my degree, and my future, in the city I call home, with people I love, surroundings that I am familiar with, at a school that allows me every opportunity to be the best college professor I can be. I look forward to working closely with the talented professors at Sacramento State University, pursuing my dream of helping and motivating others to pursue theirs.

UWP 104D: "Integrating Technology into College Classrooms"

2009-03-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

Integrating Technology into College Classrooms

Technology is now a mainstay in our lives as Americans, and indeed as people living during what is no doubt the middle of an age determined by technological breakthroughs. It is no longer an option, more of a requirement, that a person be computer literate in order to market themselves as an ideal candidate for even the most basic jobs. It is for this reason that technology be integrated into college classrooms, both as a tool, and as an instructional method, to help adult students gain marketable skills for the work place. The importance of integration of technology, as both a tool for learning and communication, in a college class room is the most important task educators must face in the next decade. It must be taught to all levels of people as a skill that can be mastered for real-world application in a technologically demanding job market.

The digital age is upon us, and those countries catching up are learning to focus their attentions on the use of computers and digital technologies as a way of inching up the world ladder. It is the younger generations that have the edge in the job markets of tomorrow, having been surrounded by technology from early ages. This trend leaves many adults scrambling to catch up in an increasingly foreign job market that emphasizes the use of computers and technology that they have little or no experience with. This is exactly why adult education must integrate technologies into their classrooms. The article Technology and Equity Issues in the educational handbook Kaleidoscope realizes that “it is also clear that technology should be one of the principal tools by which students learn to manage the ever-increasing base of knowledge they will need to achieve success” (Ryan 412). The integration of computer literacy into the foundations of the college system, much like the standards of basic reading, writing and math skills, would be one way for adult Americans to get and keep their edge in the already competitive job market.

Even the simplest technology integrations into the college classrooms can prove effective for students. One teacher preparation program at a community college integrated the use of digital photography into their program, using digital photos of good student work as examples for current and future students (Wursta 788). This, in turn, inspired the teachers-in-training to use creative technologies to show their own student’s work off through digital formats. Explaining the move to technology integration Melanie Wursta writes: “In the past, some teacher educators have stressed the importance of presenting engaging, motivating lessons to children yet sometimes expected college students to learn primarily through reading and listening. By combining verbal discussion with visual documentation and hands-on learning, faculty can create dynamic, vibrant, college learning environments” (793). In using technology in the education of future teachers, the faculty is also showing those teachers how to integrate it into their own classrooms, while creating a fun, multifaceted learning environment.

It has become a trend to take an ‘all or nothing’ approach to classroom technology, with many schools opting for purchase of expensive, and often useless, technology for classrooms over the traditional school necessities. Programs such as music, art, field trips and libraries suffer for the sake of having the newest computers, hardware or software. To compound the problem, the colleges often lack the funding to train their teachers how to effectively integrate it, leaving students to figure it out on their own. Another Kaleidoscope article titled The Mad Dash to Compute points out the unproven educational outcomes of computer use in classrooms: “Computers, which have as yet demonstrated questionable effects on student learning, must not be bought at the expense of proven staples of mental development, such as art, music, drama, debate, physical education, text literacy, manipulatives, and hands-on learning aids” (Ryan, 389).

There are definitely risks that educators take when focusing their time, money and efforts on using computers in the classroom. In the book titled The Cultural Dimensions of Educational Computing: Understanding the Non-Neutrality of Technology addresses the shortcomings of technology in relation to cultural differences among students. Although the book was written a decade ago, many of the arguments are still relevant to the education of students by computers. One example is regarding computer use replacing such necessities as cultural education. The book argues “The cultural orientations that are weakened in the classroom include the forms of authority and skills associated with the oral traditions: folk arts and technologies, substantive traditions of the community…the fine arts, and the values related to…care, competence, and frugality in the use of the world” (6). This one sided approach of technology in education can be avoided through integration of technology into the classroom. Instead of marginalizing other forms of instruction computers should be used as a way of highlighting other methods of instruction. Computers are integrated into the workforce, and education must use the workforce as an example to build curriculum helping students use technology as a means for their education, rather than as an end of education.

Before technology is brought into a classroom there must be curriculum in place to guide the instruction of students in the online classroom. Instructors should be trained in the best methods of delivery when instructing students in the online environment: “…instructional designers need to look for innovative ways to facilitate quality teaching and learning recognizing that simply converting a face-to-face course to an online course does accomplish the task…methods of instructional delivery may need to be modified for the online environment” (Aragon 155). Funding for schools can be scarce at times, and it comes in cycles, and it is when schools become funded they jump at the opportunity to get technology for their campus, often without adequate planning in how to implement it. If the class curriculum for the implemented online classes is not adequate, students will not successfully complete the course. There are several reasons for this, including learning style, presentation of the materials, and overwhelming amounts of work. Making the class materials available comfortably and understandably becomes the online teacher’s primary goal.

Integration should be the primary goal of community colleges that wish to send out their graduates prepared for the workforce. Too often colleges try to move to an entirely online curriculum, when in reality is it rare that an employee is required to perform their job entirely online. One of the most important things that colleges should teach their students is the social skills and team work that comes with working with other students cooperatively in small groups or pairs. This aspect of education is what becomes more valuable to students in the workforce. Unfortunately, it is also this lesson in socialization that is lost in those courses that are taught poorly online, because teaching group cooperation in online environments can be done. A teacher who is more comfortable facilitating discussions in person should teach a hybrid online or an in person course, where they have access to their students in a real-life environment.

Teachers who have mastered integrating group cooperation into their online courses are those who grade forum posts and responses, have group assignments as a mandatory part of the course, and allow students to post pictures, setting up “profiles” so students can get to know one another beyond a text on a page. This kind of instruction can be welcoming for some students, who are accustomed to networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, but also allow older adults to get to know one another in a more familiar face-to-face way. However, this kind of freedom requires instructors to be aware of everything their students post, and to discipline those students who put inappropriate items on their profile.

Technology is not going to disappear from our culture because it is a means to make life easier. In fact, the easier technology becomes to use the more important it will be for adult educators to embrace it and prepare adequate instruction for their students. Teacher training should integrate technology into their curriculum, showing future teachers the importance and usefulness of technology as a route to effective education, from young children to adults. This will create a well-trained work force prepared, technologically, for any career the person chooses, and computers will no longer be a mystery for those adults who are only now realizing the importance of technological knowledge in their jobs. Integration of technology into schools will only create more opportunities for people outside of school, regardless of age, career, or culture.

Works Cited

Aragon, Steven R., and Elaine S. Johnson. "Factors Influencing Completion and Noncompletion of Community College Online Courses." American Journal of Distance Education 22.3 (2008): 146-58. ERIC. CSA. 9 Mar. 2009 <http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&id=doi:10.1080/08923640802239962>.

Bowers, C.A. The Cultural Dimensions of Educational Computing: Understanding the Non-Neutrality of Technology. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1988.

Ryan, Kevin and James Cooper, eds. Kaleidoscope: Readings in Education. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.

Wursta, Melanie, Judy Brown-DuPaul, and Laura Segatti. "Teacher Education: Linking Theory to Practice through Digital Technology." Community College Journal of Research and Practice 28.10 (2004): 787-94. ERIC. CSA. 9 Mar. 2009 <http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=H7EJUDE04N6LUD67>.

UWP 104D: "Purpose, Process and Reflection: Taking Bright Adult Students to the Next Level"

2009-03-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

Purpose, Process and Reflection:

Taking Bright Adult Students to the Next Level

Sue Rooney reflected on the question for a moment before she answered. It was not a long moment; much of what she wants to say has already been said before, in other conversations at other times. She has always wanted to be a teacher; so much of what she is telling me is restatements of what she has told herself, her family, her friends, her children and her students over the last twenty years of her career. “You see,” she starts out, “I remember being in school, as young as grade school, and I could never understand why students who were really bright—I mean, really, really smart, you could just see it and hear it when they talked—why they would do so bad in school. They were the ones I was interested in. The ones who had learning disabilities always had extra help, but those smart ones, they never did—they were the ones I wanted to help.”

Professor Sue Rooney was my teacher for a class titled Academic Textbook Reading at American River College during the fall semester of 2005. She is an inspirational teacher who judges each student on the own potential and pushes them to achieve what she knows they are capable of. “When I was first hired at American River College, back in 1989, I noticed how little help there was for students who were not ‘basic skills’ but not quite ready for university-level college work. There was a gap that needed to be filled by English reading courses to help those students reach the next level.” She teaches every student in her class ways of improving their reading strategies, and by doing so, opens doors for students who never knew they were capable of achieving even the most fantastic dreams. Without her motivation and guidance, many students would have given up on their educational goals before even knowing their own potential.

“Reading is a process in the mind: when teaching a student to write well you have their finished product in front of you to judge, critique and see their problems. It is not the same with reading and poor writing is always a reflection of poor reading.” Professor Rooney saw a gap in the college education system for those students she wanted to help, and immediately sought to fill it. Her first step was to create a department at the college to be the foundation for those classes that students needed, and, with the help of another instructor, she founded the Reading department as a sub-department of English. “Teaching at a college is different from teaching K-12. People choose to go to college, and by doing so have made a decision to seek out their own education. Education comes from the Latin word educere which means to ‘lead out.’ That’s what I’m here to do—lead them out into the world better educated, amply prepared for their next stage, be it work or university.”

“So,” I ask, “is it safe to say that you take responsibility for your student’s learning?”

“No, absolutely not,” Professor Rooney answered. “I take responsibility for what is in my power: as a teacher I can only provide them with the right environment, give them the tools, and be there for them, but I do not take what is theirs. I want my students to be responsible for their own learning—these are adults, and I treat them like adults.”

“How do you do that?”

“I challenge the students to ask ‘why.’ I want them to question what they do in their classes, in my class, and it is when they find the answer to the ‘why’ they realize the power they have as students. They can think critically about their own education and they know what they are working for. I also ask myself the same question: an effective teacher should always reflect on why they do what they do. It is the teacher’s responsibility to teach as much as it is the student’s responsibility to learn.”

Her philosophy on teaching comes alive in her classrooms, as Professor Rooney challenges her students who prove what they know. It is not only about passing tests; it is about the application of what they are learning in her class to their other classes that is the mark of the successful student. “I want my students to have ah-ha moments, when they realize how they can improve themselves.”

“Can you explain?”

“Well, just the other day in R.A.D. [Reading Across the Disciplines] I had a student who is seeing me for help with his political science class. He missed some questions on his last exam and we went over it question by question, and I was asking him why he missed each one. As it turns out, he knew exactly why he missed each question and could tell me those things he neglected to study in the first few weeks of the semester. The student was amazed! And, more importantly, he identified his weaknesses and strengths and is already changing his tactic to do better on the next exam.”

“What do you teach students in your class that you think is the most important?”

“Three things: purpose, process and reflection. These are what drive everything I do with students in my lecture class and in R.A.D.” I thought back to her class when I took it several years ago and remembered having to do different reading exercises and writing journals on them. “Is that why we did those journal entries in your class?”

“Exactly why! Metacognitive journals are an important part of the learning process. After students identify ‘why’ they are doing something, and they have completed the task, they then must reflect on the activity from beginning to end. This brings the student recognition of their strengths and, more importantly, their weaknesses, and by doing so, they can begin to identify how to improve their next attempt.”

Sue believes that many teachers focus too much on the products of learning and not the process. In order for students to move through the learning process effectively they must have the ability to identify their purpose for learning because if there is no purpose students feel as though they are wasting their time and it becomes a mental block for learning. At the end of the interview, Sue offered me advice:

“Jolene, when you begin teaching and you’re standing in front of that class for the first time, remember that each student is an individual and for every student you have a different approach to the material. Always work on improving your class, your style, your approach, your interaction—the students will see the work you put into it, and they will match you. And, most importantly, never, ever, ever lower your standards. The moment you lower your standards to accommodate your students you are no longer a teacher and you are not instructing. I love this job, and the moment I stop loving this job I will retire.”

Professor Sue Rooney has seen her dream through for more than twenty years. She set out to help those students who needed a push to the next level, be it through instruction, encouragement, or a little of both. I am proof of her strength as a teacher; I give her credit for inspiring me, indeed many students, with making successful transitions to a four-year prestigious universities. Reading Across the Disciplines, or RAD as it is called around campus, has grown steadily and silently for eight years in a room slightly larger than a walk-in closet. Students now flock to the program en masse, leading to an expansion of the program outside of English students, to assist students in programs such as electronics, nursing, engineering, mathematics, paramedics and science. Her vision has taken off, leading to years of students who realize the importance of reading in their classes, and have gone on to be successful in four-year universities.

ENL 164: "Remainder:Reminder" Response to Remainder by Tom McCarthy.

2009-03-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

I liked this book. It reminded me of so many ideas that we have discussed in this course, and some of them nearly forgotten. It was as though I were hunting out the concepts, much like our narrator was hunting for his building, and when I discovered them I was elated in my realization of them, much like he was when he discovered his building. It was a way of bringing to life those abstract ideas that, until now, were only floating around in the corners of my mind, and had not found a conception to pin themselves to: a seemingly realistic use of unrealistic abstractions.

On pages 55 and 56 our narrator describes a group of homeless people across the street from the coffee shop where he is enjoying his 'short cap:' "I started seeing a regularity to the pattern of their movements...It was complicated though: each time I thought I'd cracked the sequence, one of them would move out of turn or strike out on a new route." This is an example of the clinamen, in the pattern of the moving people, suddenly broken by one person who moves different from it.

Another part of the novel that reminded me of an idea we’ve discussed is page 96:

“I imagined looking on from overhead, from way above the city, picking out Naz’s people, each one with a kind of tag on them, a dot like police cars have to help police helicopters pick them out. I imagined looking down and seeing them all—plus me, the seventh moving dot, my turning and redoubling etching out the master pattern that the other six were emulating.”

This passage reminded me of something we had discussed that I could not quite place, much like the memories that plague this narrator. I realized that it was part of our discussion on Meillassoux: the seventh case, “a seventh side to the die that emerges as the die is thrown; a pure emergence that does not ‘pre-exist’ its own existence” (notes 1/22/2009). Our narrator, and indeed these new memories that have emerged to him as a result of his accident, are an example of the seventh case, which has emerged into his mind without existing prior to the accident.

There are also very obvious references to the simulacrum that Baudrillard discusses in his paper “The Precession of Simulacra.” Throughout the novel the narrator creates for himself representations—perfect representations—of certain experiences, places, and memories, for the sheer pleasure of doing so. On page 67 the narrator states: “I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my money. I wanted to reconstruct that space and enter it so that I could feel real again.” The house itself was a haven for the narrator’s “re-enactments of events that hadn’t happened but which, nonetheless, like the history in Kevin’s pop sing, were on the verge of being repeated” (134).