I'll find who's botherin my baby girl

 Song of Solomon was especially noteworthy in my opinion for the multitude of rich characters; people with intense backstories, quirky habits, and varying levels of social maturity. Not to mention they all have extraordinary names, from First Corinthians to Guitar to Sing. Pilate was easily my favorite character in Song of Solomon. She is quite intimidating, down-to-earth yet strangely mystical, and incredibly unique. Little details like the earring-box with her name, her love of oranges and soft-boiled eggs, and her knack for telling stories, really define her character. Milkman's first impressions of Pilate are also very revealing of how she stands out from the rest of his world, Milkman describing her as poor, but not dirty, her body built like that of a man's, and her voice sounding like pebbles rubbing against each other. Pilate is so different from the Dead family and all their wealth and obsession with ownership, and therefore she's an immediately appealing character to Milkman and the reader. "As they came closer and saw the brass box dangling from her ear, Milkman knew that what with the earring, the orange, and the angled black cloth, nothing--not the wisdom of his father nor the caution of the world--could keep him from her" (p36).

One of the most powerful and defining characteristics of Pilate is the fiercely protective love she has for Reba and Hagar. Love is a pretty big theme in Song of Solomon, and there are a lot of pretty intense issues surrounding it. There's Hagar starving without Milkman's affection, First Corinthians sneaking off with Porter, Ruth's uncomfortable relationship with her own father and son because of a lack of love from her husband, and then there's Pilate. Pilate's love for her family members stands out to me as being the strongest and most instinctive. It's part of who she is, and yet she doesn't let the people she loves take over her own identity, as seen in some of the other characters like Hagar. She's still very much weird, wise Pilate, but she's part of this family of women who don't let each other get hurt. The scene where Pilate confronts Reba's ex-lover with a knife is the most obvious example of Pilate's motherly defense kicking in, and it's also just a pretty hilarious scene in general, with Pilate speaking all cool and collected while the tiny drops of blood form on the man's chest. If Milkman saw that, you would think he would know not to send Hagar a thank-you note, walk off, and still expect Pilate to be cool with him...

My favorite Pilate scene however is at Hagar's funeral when Reba and Pilate start singing "Someone's been bothering my sweet sugar lumpkin." There's something very powerful about these two older women from a not well-off family, singing this song with not only grief in their hearts, but with an almost scary kind of anger and indignation: not crying, just staring at the people gathered at the funeral and shouting "mercy." Pilate's love for Hagar is such a deep motherly love it kind of makes her seem crazy, but in a very different way than Hagar herself. "Looking about at the faces of the people seated in the pews, she fastened on the first pair of eyes that were directed toward her. She nodded at the face and said, 'My baby girl.' Moving back down the aisle, she told each face turned toward her the same piece of news. 'My baby girl. That's my baby girl'" (p318). The whole scene feels very eerie and mystical as a result of these two voices shouting out with "words tossed like stones into a silent canyon" (p319). I feel like this quote does a good job of encompassing a lot of Pilate's character, being the wise and unexpected person she is, and tending to metaphorically disrupt silent canyons with stones all the time just by being her perceptive, story-telling, bone-carrying, unusual self. While other characters, particularly women (but also Guitar to an extent, maybe), experience love as something that ultimately destroys them and dictates their life, draining away everything else that they used to be because of their own obsession and societal limitations, Pilate and Reba's love for Hagar is ultimately something that builds them up and holds them together. This bond between women is really something different and powerful, and while Morrison's epigraph mentions the fathers soaring, I think the theme of family looking out for each other and of finding your place and your people is really best expressed through the mother figure of Pilate.

"Like an elephant who has just found his anger and lifts his trunk over the heads of little men who want his teeth or his hide or his amazing strength, Pilate trumpeted for the sky itself to hear, 'And she was loved!" (p319)

Multiple Perspectives and Christophine

Wide Sargasso Sea is the only book we’ve read this year to use multiple perspectives in telling a story, and I really liked the effect it created. While there was some confusion in who was narrating certain points, being able to explore the internal dialogue of both Antoinette and Rochester was incredibly illuminating. It is crucial for her gaining sympathy later on that Antoinette narrate her childhood scenes and give us a sense of her loneliness and innocence. However if Antoinette had narrated the rest of the book we wouldn’t experience Rochester’s confusion with the world, and we would lose Rochester’s thoughts which--in my opinion--actually make him a more hated character. Rochester’s thoughts are racist, judgemental, selfish, and uncaring, as seen in his description of Daniel Cosway and his reactions towards Antoinette living without him. The scene where he justifies bringing her along to England is especially revealing of how sick his character is by the end: wanting Antoinette to come with him because he is jealous and possessive of her; he’s allowed to start a new life, but she isn’t. “I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s mad, but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.” If we didn’t have Rochester’s perspective, we would perhaps view Rochester the same way as in Jane Eyre: a mysterious man who doesn’t always do good things, but may have some tragic backstory we don’t know about and therefore we don’t judge him as much because we see he’s in pain. But by narrating a majority of the story from Rochester’s point of view, Rhys is exposing his motives and internal thoughts, and making it impossible for the reader to give him the benefit of the doubt. It also allows us to have some sympathy for Rochester earlier in the novel where we know he is also lonely and lost, but by the end of the novel Rochester’s thoughts make him almost evil as he disregards everything about Antoinette as a person and just thinks of her as belonging to him. “My lunatic. My mad girl.”

After being exposed to the mindsets of both Antoinette and Rochester and getting exhausted from their emotional turmoil and general life problems, having a character like Christophine in the story is much appreciated. Rochester is cruel and Antoinette is emotionally unstable, but Christophine is actually productive and relatively level-headed. While I have sympathies for both Antoinette and Rochester, I definitely think Christophine is the easiest character to fully support. She is responsible, takes good care of Antoinette, has an admirable amount of respect/fear from the townspeople, and she gives pretty good advice. She’s a rational thinker and doesn’t get completely taken over by emotions the way Rochester and Antoinette do, yet she is still fiercely protective of Antoinette, and she can still understand what they are feeling.

Christophine is a vitally important person in Antoinette’s life, having had no other figure to love her or help her. Even when her mother was around, Christophine was the person Antoinette associated with safety and comfort. “I left a light on the chair by my bed and waited for Christophine for I like to see her last thing. But she did not come, and as the candle burned down, the safe peaceful feeling left me.” Christophine stays with Antoinette and though she is her maid, Antoinette respects her and trusts her with her most important questions. I think Christophine is pretty intimidating and maybe if she hadn’t performed Obeah for Antoinette, or if she hadn’t mentioned to Rochester the possibility of Antoinette remarrying, things would have turned out better. But in comparison to Rochester and Antoinette, her sound advice and also her loyalty and responsibility make her a much more likable character.

It would have been cool to get some of the story from Christophine’s perspective, but I don’t think it would have been completely necessary because she is able to speak about her emotions regarding Antoinette very effectively anyway, unlike both Rochester and Antoinette who go crazy trying. Still, her character is pretty mysterious and I'd be interested in knowing some of her backstory.

Meaning and Higher Powers vs. Meursault

Meursault’s whole attitude of “nothing really matters” and “we’re all going to die anyway” kind of annoys me and I relate to the other characters of the book who are unable to grasp his indifference. “Do you want my life to be meaningless?” asks the magistrate when Meursault brushes off religion as useless and irrelevant. While the chaplain and magistrate definitely come off as overbearing and suffocating Christians, I kind of sympathize with their reaction to Meursault’s philosophy. By saying he doesn’t have time for them, he is saying everything they do and work for is meaningless, that anything anyone works for is meaningless, and that’s a really depressing thought. It’s kind of true: everyone will die, nothing you do will change that. Most things don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But my personality at least does not like being told that everything I do is meaningless. It’s a valid way to see things, but if I dwell on the meaninglessness of my existence then I am not doing anything for anybody, and while Meursault is perfectly content with this lifestyle, I am not. I think there’s a lot of meaning in little things like singing a song, getting a card from a friend, accomplishing something you didn't think you could, and being around people you care about. Meursault enjoys some things I would call meaningful, like admiring a sunset and swimming in the ocean and reconnecting with a neighbor. However Meursault doesn’t recognize these at meaningful. They don’t matter because in the long run, little things don’t make you live longer or change the course of the universe. These things matter to me because they affect the quality of the life I’m living and make me feel like I have a purpose. Meursault thinks having a purpose is ridiculous and made up, which is fine, it is sort of made up. But it's also something pretty crucial to human nature and fitting into society and I can understand why people take offense to his views (although this really shouldn't be the main argument against him in court).

Meursault's lack of emotion or purpose in The Stranger make for some interesting interactions with the religious characters like the examining magistrate and the chaplain. The scenes where the magistrate screams at Meursault and waves around the Crucifix, or where the chaplain cries and says Meursault must believe in God, don’t portray religious people, or people who believe in a greater purpose for the world, in a very positive light. They’re basically seen as insane, hypocritical, and unable to control their emotions, which is a pretty stark contrast to Meursault who is calm and a little too rational for us to be comfortable. Meursault is the one who has committed murder and yet Camus is much harsher on the religious people and the people of the court. By providing these absurd people to make fun of, Camus is able to make Meursault’s lack of belief in anything at all seem like a good quality, making it easier to ignore the morally questionable things he does as a result. As a religious person myself, it’s a little sad that the two religious characters in the book are absolutely horrible, and also that both Christians and Meursault claim to not judge people yet they are both judging each other pretty hard core. Both of these characters are so certain in how they think of the world and so sure of the meaning (or lack of) in their life, they are both a little intimidating to me.

We talked in class about “the Absurd” being humanity’s desire to give meaning to things in a meaningless universe, and how Meursault’s personality is based on an awareness of this absurdity. I feel like an awareness that the universe is ultimately unaffected by your presence is maybe a healthy thing, to keep everything in perspective and not get carried away by things that go wrong. But keeping this in mind, I don't think it's necessarily healthy to believe nothing you do matters because on a smaller scale, people are affected by things you do all the time. Meursault may not care much for them, but people matter to me quite a bit.

Humanity! and Rants on Why the Samsa Family Sucks

*Apologies in advance for the randomness and length of this post, as well as the incorrect translation of the book I read and used in my quotations*
       We've established in class that the title The Metamorphosis applies to both Gregor's transformation into an insect, and his family's transformation from lazy, unproductive losers, to strong, self-sufficient people. We've also established that the family has no way of knowing Gregor is still Gregor or has any capacity to understand their speech or communicate with them at all. All that said, I really hate the Samsa family.
       At the beginning of the book, I was sympathetic towards the family because it would really suck if your son/brother was suddenly a giant cockroach. Feelings of horror and disgust are totally expected and reasonable in such a situation. Yet the family does assume the bug is Gregor, and originally Grete even attempts to still think of him as her brother. Upon one of her first times seeing Gregor "she became so frightened that she lost control of herself and slammed the door shut again. But, as if she felt sorry for her behavior, she immediately opened the door again and came in on tiptoe, as if she were visiting someone seriously ill or perhaps even a stranger" (17). It's interesting here that she originally felt sorry for her reaction towards him, because it means she understands he's her brother, who she seemed to have a pretty good relationship with, and is ashamed that she's scared of him. But this soon fades, and what annoys me is that no one is exactly sad that Gregor is now a bug. There's a little bit of crying and consoling later on, but it's mostly right to figuring out financial dilemmas. They only mourn the loss of his financial support and the fact that his presence makes their family look really sketchy.
       At least Mrs. Samsa seems to show some emotion when she protects Gregor from being killed by his own father, but I still don't like her. And I mostly try to pretend Mr. Samsa doesn't exist because he literally does everything wrong and it's possibly partly his fault that Gregor was such an insect-like worker even before his metamorphosis. The family has acknowledged the bug is Gregor and yet Mr. Samsa still pelts him with apple cores even when he's clearly retreating back into his room. And I hate Grete. At the beginning of the book she seemed like such a promising character because Gregor said such nice things about how observant she was and understanding of him, and they had this connection. Grete knew something was wrong right away, and she brings him food out of "the goodness of her heart," as Gregor believes (17). And yet Grete completely turns on him. She takes charge of his life, moves furniture out of his room against his will, doesn't make any attempt to communicate with him--which is surprising since they seemed to have such a connection before and now she understands nothing of him--and eventually advocates for his removal: "You just have to get rid of the idea that it's Gregor. Believing it for so long, that is our real misfortune. ...This animal persecutes us, drives the roomers away, obviously wants to occupy the whole apartment and for us to sleep in the gutter" (38). This is clearly an exaggeration and her statement feels disingenuous and a little selfish. At the same time it does make sense for her to be fed up with the conditions they are living in. But I still dislike her.
       What's saddest to me is just how disillusioned Gregor was about his family's feelings towards him. Reading parts of the beginning now, it's clear how some of the things he described are just horribly misinterpreted. "If only his sister had been there! She was perceptive; she had already begun to cry when Gregor was still lying calmly on his back. And certainly the manager, this ladies' man, would have listened to her; she would have shut the front door and in the foyer talked him out of his scare" (13). Sure Grete is perceptive, but she's also a normal human being who doesn't like the sight of a giant cockroach, and she isn't going to be able to calmly sort things out with the manager. When she feeds him, Grete bolts out of the room and locks the door because Gregor is a disgusting giant bug, but Gregor interprets it differently: "out of a sense of delicacy, since she knew that Gregor would not eat in front of her, she left hurriedly and even turned the key, just so that Gregor should know that he might make himself as comfortable as he wanted" (18). No, Gregor, no. Gregor just doesn't get that his family will never come to terms with his problem. When he dies, they have a quick family crying session, and then pack up and move out, ready to start a good life without him.
       A lot of the family's reactions make sense in a way, but I hate them so much because as a reader we are exposed to Gregor's humanity and it is troubling to me to see that be thrown away, and that celebrated as positive for the family. I had a thought about this and it made me kind of upset: What if Gregor hadn't been turned into an animal at all, but suffered some debilitating injury instead, that rendered him useless for a job, or unable to communicate? The Samsa family would still have to take care of him and would still be forced to take up economic responsibility which would have the same "positive" effects we see in the book. If the story plays out in a similar fashion, then it becomes really uncomfortable to think about because it would mean ignoring the humanity of a person just because they're supposedly "limiting" your success. Without them you would have a more independent lifestyle, but it would also be horrible because they are still human and have an emotional connection and relationship with you and so much more value beyond financial productivity. I think this is why I find it sad for the Samsa family to move on happily with their lives, because even though Gregor is a bug, we know he still has a human mind, and ignoring the potential of human minds is not something that is acceptable (even though they don't know he has a human mind, I know, I know). Anyway, this book was an interesting and enlightening read, and I hope the Samsa family has a horrible life without Gregor. But then again, what could they have done really? Ugh, there are never any answers.

Robert Cohn's Role in The Sun Also Rises

      The Sun Also Rises has ended and I'm still confused about Cohn's role in this story. Jake clearly hates him, as do all of the other characters, but the reason for this hatred isn't as obvious to me as it used to be. Cohn is obnoxious, that's for sure. He's overly chivalrous, especially in defending Brett's honor: "'I didn't ask you to insult her.' ...He stood up from the table his face white, and stood there white and angry behind the little plates of hors d'oeuvres" (p47). He comes off as arrogant to the others, and he doesn't have the best grip on his emotions, as seen when he beats up Romero after discovering him with Brett. He's a little too self-assured and not a particularly interesting guy. That being said, I don't think Cohn deserved all the verbal abuse, from Jake and Mike in particular. They aren't so subtle in letting him know they don't want him around, which must be kind of hard to hear considering Cohn's idea of his relationship with Jake: "You're really about the best friend I have, Jake" (47).
       Over the course of the book I found myself starting to feel bad for Cohn because of all the insults he gets from people, and the fact that his emotional response to Brett dumping him isn't that outlandish to me. While obviously the outsider to Jake's friend group, I don't actually think he's that strange, he's maybe easier to relate to than the others. He's kind of the only sane one in this weird group of people. He isn't constantly wasted, he is understandably a little grossed out by the violence of the bullfights, and he actually wants real friendships and romantic relationships with people. Is it so crazy for Cohn to expect Brett to acknowledge him after they lived together and publicly had a romantic relationship? It's not like Brett ended it, she just expects all her lovers to understand she doesn't actually love them, whereas Cohn "can't believe it didn't mean anything"(185). The scene where Cohn is in his room crying may be a little pathetic, but I feel like Cohn's emotions are pretty much justified, even if his actions in punching Jake and Mike aren't. "Cohn was crying. There he was, face down on the bed, crying" (197). I personally wasn't super into the rest of the characters drowning their sorrows in alcohol and pretending their ironic humor made up for their lack of purpose, so Cohn actually having a humane reaction to his circumstances was almost a relief. I still don't like Cohn, but it's hard for me to agree with Jake about Cohn when Cohn's reactions are almost reasonable. The uncomfortable ethnic prejudices coming from Jake and Mike that seem to intensify over the course of the novel also make it difficult for me to go along with their hatred of him.
      I think there are some similarities between Jake and Cohn too. They both fall for Brett, obviously, but they also don't seem to enjoy drinking and partying as much as the others do, and both do have emotional breakdowns at some point (Jake in his bed in Paris, thinking about Brett), granted Jake is considerably better at hiding his emotions than Cohn. Jake is also not nearly as cruel towards Cohn as Mike is, which I think is significant, Mike comparing Cohn to a steer in the bullfighting ring: "'Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don't you know you're not wanted?'" I think Cohn's inclusion in the story is maybe a bit of a critique of this society that doesn't really seem to care about anything. Or maybe it's just to show us something about Jake's character: that even though he plays this cool and collected guy who has accepted his circumstances and independence, he'd be "as big an ass as Cohn" if he really did have a chance with Brett (185). Maybe Cohn is there to show us what would have happened between Jake and Brett, while keeping the dignity of our protagonist relatively in tact.

Gender Roles in Mrs. Dalloway

As I read Mrs. Dalloway, I remember being irritated with Clarissa at various instances where she lay around the house, talking of parties, criticizing Miss Kilman, not seeming to care that there was a difference between Albanians and Armenians, and not bothering to educate herself in the slightest. I was a little upset that Woolf would choose to portray her main female character in such a useless way. To make things worse, the only working-class, educated woman depicted in the novel is Miss Kilman, who is satirized and shown to be somewhat hypocritical and annoying. I was disappointed in the unambitious women of the book, however I was not surprised considering Woolf was writing in the 1920s. As the book goes on though, it becomes clear that Woolf is offering a very legitimate critique of the constraints placed on women of this era.

A main theme in Mrs. Dalloway is that you can’t pretend to fully understand anyone and there’s much more to a person below the surface. While many people see Clarissa as “the perfect hostess:” kind of fake and restrained and meaningless, she actually struggles with very real problems and has incredibly complex thoughts and emotions. To her, Clarissa’s parties aren’t just an excuse for rich people to dress up, enjoy fancy food, and act fake together. They’re a way to bring people together and celebrate relationships and culture and life. I’m still not super into the whole housewife “hostess” image, but by depicting her in this manner I think Woolf is making the point that just because a woman such as Clarissa is uneducated and economically dependent on her husband does not mean she is of lower value than him. Even though her type of work may be different from Richard’s, Clarissa is still doing important work that has meaning to her and makes her a more independent character.

Another clue that Virginia Woolf is criticizing gender stereotypes in Mrs. Dalloway is through Septimus and her portrayal of hyper-masculinity promoted during the world wars and the dangerous effects that can have. Septimus’s time in the war resulted in his inability to feel upon returning home, to the extent that he was unable to grieve for the death of his closest friend, a fact that he is almost proud of. Not displaying emotion makes him more masculine, but because he becomes concerned about his lack of feeling, he is seen as weak and cowardly by the doctors who are used to previous generations of warfare that didn’t involve nearly as many mentally scarred veterans. There is simply a societal expectation that men will be impossibly tough and unphased by battle and death, and this is what Woolf critiques by showing Septimus’s struggle for understanding and peace, that ends up resulting in his death.

While I was originally unimpressed with the female characters in Mrs. Dalloway and the depiction of working women, I think Woolf does a good job of establishing that a person’s worth is not defined by the money they make or the facts they know, but by the relationships they have with other people. This combined with Septimus’s story and the reflection on masculine ideals and the danger they can create, made me appreciate Woolf’s writing in regards to gender in Mrs. Dalloway.

Is it over yet?

The reaction to The Mezzanine  from our class has been quite positive. For being such a strange format of storytelling, Baker manages to make Howie funny, relatable, unique, and somewhat charming.

      While The Mezzanine was a thought-provoking experience in appreciating the small wonders of an industrial consumer society, the reason it is able to be so humorous and intriguing is because it is different and new to us as a writing style. The idea that someone could write a book based merely on objects they encountered, instead of events or social interactions, is appealing because we've never read it before, we want to see if it's possible to enjoy such a thing. I laughed out loud the first time reading about Howie's concern for straw construction, because it's not something I've ever thought about. It's funny that someone should care so much about straws. It's funny to realize that I too greatly appreciate straws and am always excited when an occasion arises that justifies me using one. Encountering such a rant in The Mezzanine is both familiar and quite new, because while similar thoughts may exist in my mind, the idea that someone would write those thoughts down is unexpected. However once you get over the discovery of shared interest and appreciation for common place things, the newness of the format begins to lose its excitement. It's like the old brands of bubble gum that start out stronger and tastier than the new ones, but lose their flavor in a matter of minutes. Once I got into the rhythm of how Howie thinks (or writes- as we established this is not a stream of consciousness  narrative), I began to dread the appearance of a footnote that marked the beginning of yet another tangent on things I didn't particularly care about. While Baker does an excellent job of revealing what's special about painfully ordinary objects, I did not appreciate hearing what was extraordinary about every single object. After hearing about straws, staplers, escalator railings, urinals, clean backgrounds, vending machines, shoelaces, milk cartons, and countless other items, the uniqueness of examining something in such close detail became rather tiring and I was rather unenthusiastic.

      I don't mean to say I didn't enjoy The Mezzanine. I did, it's just not the sort of thing I'd like to read again. It's the sort of book I wish had been about half as long as it was. While intriguing and full of delightful and witty surprise tangents, I missed the old-fashioned idea of a plot, and I especially missed real-time dialogue and the ability to be emotionally in tune with a character. To me this book was more like a writing experiment to see if such a strange genre of book could actually be readable (and I would say yes, it is a successful book), rather than art (although his way of over-explaining things and rejoicing in the normality of life is certainly masterfully pieced together). But we all know art is a matter of taste. So if The Mezzanine was in an art museum, I'd say it's sitting in the gallery along with the weirdly-shaped silverware and twisted tables labeled as "contemporary art;" a section I briefly walk through, laugh at the strangeness of, and leave feeling both humored that forks are behind the same glass as impressionist paintings, and a little unsatisfied that I didn't visit the Ancient Art of the Americas exhibit instead.

Ancestors and the Fleet Walker Narrative

        The ending of Angry Black White Boy was not what I was expecting. I thought the book would end where it started, with some rant from Macon on a bus fleeing a crime scene, but instead it's in the south with Macon abandoning everything he's spent the entire novel trying to convince people of. One thing that does become more clear towards the end is the role of ancestors, who were first just mentioned to show Macon trying to distance himself from the white supremacy of Cap Anson. By the end, however, Macon starts to connect himself to his ancestors more, thinking of Cap as he sits on the bus and as he dramatically changes into "Uncle Macon" for a time. The idea of Macon likening himself to Cap shows the extent to which he is utterly confused and defeated. Everything Macon stood for was against what Cap did and for him to go as far as to join Cap's thinking was a little shocking to me. I think the last line of the book about Macon joining his ancestors is interesting because it's clearly not just there to tell us Macon died; it represents Macon's failure to change anything. It's saying he's just as bad as all those white people he condemned and tried to change while denying he needed to change anything about himself. I thought maybe Mansbach was going to give Macon a heroic ending, and one could almost say this is a heroic death, but I feel like this last sentence ruins any image of Macon as a martyr because it is bringing Cap Anson into the picture, who is the 1 clearly unheroic character in the book.
        Probably my favorite element of Angry Black White Boy was the story of Fleet Walker, Cap Anson and Red Donner, because it had a lot of obvious parallels to Macon's story, yet there's a lot of room for interpretation. To me one significant reason for including this story was kind of to counter Macon and show that there's no "giving up" white privilege; if you're white, you're still going to be white, and you can't understand the racism felt by black a person like Fleet. Macon tries to be culturally black and convince himself he understands the suffering brought on by racism, but seeing his story next to Fleet's and the intense racism Fleet faces, it is apparent that Macon can't understand. When the baseball narrative brings in the character of Red Donner, it becomes especially interesting because that is exactly the character Macon would seem to be, yet the only way Donner is able to "give up" his white privilege and help Fleet is by making himself look black, by pretending, which isn't something that Macon likes to do. I think Macon would see himself as Fleet Walker, not as Red Donner; he thinks he has "transcended" his whiteness and doesn't need to pretend. In the end I think Macon's story is a less heroic version of Red Donner's: both in a way "transcended whiteness" and got killed for it, but Donner did it to save a life, whereas Macon almost took one.Donner stepped up when he was needed whereas Macon was actively trying to be a hero (until the end when he betrays the cause he was about to get killed for.
        Angry Black White Boy was a weird book, but I really liked a lot of the questions it brought up, especially whether someone in one group of people can claim any sort of say in the decisions of a different group. It's a question I don't know how to answer, but it definitely needs to be asked.

Paparazzi

While reading Room, I wasn't particularly fascinated by the whole media aspect at first, because some of it felt so unrealistic. It was a part of the story I hadn't expected to hear about, and instances such as the women in the mall asking for Jack's autograph or the helicopter flying overhead just felt so weird and over-the-top. And I was disgusted with the interviewer who just wasn't able to read Ma at all; I thought if this is her job she should have some experience with respecting people's emotions. However, I looked into the story Mr. Mitchell brought up in class of the Cleveland kidnapping victims, and it turns out some of this paparazzi stuff isn't quite as unrealistic as I thought. Seeing the sheer number of articles and Youtube videos on the three women makes me rethink how real this topic of our fascination with such a horrible thing is. After reading Room, I didn't really want to hear all the details of the Cleveland victims, especially since I knew it wasn't a fictional case and they weren't presenting their story through the optimistic eyes of a 5-year-old. I looked into it anyways though (mostly because I needed something to write this post on, but partly because it did sound a little interesting).

       First of all, the similarities between the Cleveland victims and Room are overwhelming. The women were abused while their captor pretended everything was normal (similar to Old Nick playing the badgered husband), their only connection to the real world was through a TV, and one of the women had a child and created a little schoolhouse for her within their room. There were also some huge differences, like the fact that they were chained up almost all the time, and that there were three women who had a very different relationship than we see from Ma and Jack. The media coverage of the kidnapping is pretty extensive and also very similar to that of Ma and Jack's escape, with several videos of their homecoming and interviews with the police officers. It's been a couple years since their escape, so there are some pretty nice interviews out there where the interviewer is actually respectful and asks them about their future plans and what they do to keep moving forward, and there's also some interviewers that keep bringing up the rape and the chains. I feel like once that sort of abuse has been reported and dealt with in court you can stop bringing it up a year later when they're trying to move on, but it seems like the public is really fixated on the torturous element which is pretty sickening. Some of the worst parts of the media coverage of this include a television movie, where there are actually people cast as the three women. It came out a few days ago and I just don't understand why someone would make this into a movie. I even found an article about the movie that says: "These scenes of violence are depicted because what we’re watching is based on true events, but their purpose overall is to be taboo, to viscerally scare the audience even further. It’s torture porn—but this isn’t Saw, because these things actually happened." ...Like what? I can understand media coverage of this story because it's remarkable to hear how these women survived such a situation and were able to keep hope and want to help others afterwards, but apparently this movie focuses much more on the torture during those 10 years instead of the recovery afterwards and I just can't imagine why anyone would want to watch that, knowing that it actually happened. 

Another sickening article I found is all about why only two of the women wrote a memoir together, and the third published a book on her own. It talks about the captor trying to turn the women against each other and about the tension with one of them. Apparently there was a bigger age difference in one of the victims, who was also the captor's least favorite and most abused. The commenters keep trying to say which one was the real hero and how could the women not be bonded for life because of this and did the two women shut the 3rd out or why did the 3rd write a book by herself instead of with the others? Why does the public care about their relationship-- doesn't it make sense that these women might not want to see each other for a while afterwards? They aren't like Ma and Jack who have only each other and know nothing else. They all had previous lives, and while the families of two of the women never gave up hope (they even watched their parents searching for them on TV), the family of the third thought she ran away and they eventually moved away. Their lives are going to be terrible for a while and people need to back off.

       I don't really know what I'm trying to say about this media stuff except that because of reading Room, I'm more aware of  how strange it is that we have such an obsession with crime dramas and victims of abuse. While I think it's important for people to know that this sort of thing happens, and I think it's amazing that these women have been able to use writing as a way to recover from and come to terms with their experience, it's scary to think of how the line blurs from news report to entertainment. I felt really uncomfortable watching Youtube videos of the women telling their stories, because I could just hear Ma's voice from Room, wanting to yell at the interviewer and going into a depressive state afterwards, and I just wish people could have more compassion for a person's sense of privacy. As for the reader's position in reading a book like Room, I'm also not really sure-- because I did enjoy the book even though it was incredibly dark. I enjoyed it mostly though because of Jack's narration and how interesting it was to grasp his concept of the world and watch his world view and his language change, definitely not because of their horrible situation. Yet it is the horrible situation of Room that allows Jack to be a satisfying heroic character. I would say it's okay to like the book because it's fictional, but that excuse is pretty much invalid when such a similar story did occur in Cleveland. I don't have any answers only to point out that Emma Donoghue made a really interesting and gutsy choice by including the press coverage and its psychological effects in Room, and I'd be interested in what other people think of this subject.

Outside

        They made it outside and I was expecting all their problems to be solved, but I guess since the escape happened only halfway through the book I should have known that wouldn't be the case. While I'm immensely relieved that they are out of Room and away from the immediate danger of Old Nick, the process of adjusting to the new world still seems like a pretty grueling and unpleasant task, especially for Jack who thought he was done being the hero. I thought the interaction between Ma and Jack right after Ma is rescued is quite sad and reflective of the problems Jack is going to face from now on: Ma tells him "we're never going back" and Jack starts "crying so much [he] can't stop." As a reader able to pick up on the cruelty of their situation and the abuse of Ma and poor health of Jack, it is almost incomprehensible to us that Jack would rather be in Room than outside. Yet from what we've seen of Jack's character and daily life inside Room, I guess it isn't hard to understand that playing games all day with 1 person who loves you would feel more comforting than suddenly being surrounded by strangers and having entirely new possessions and getting shots and medications all day. It's clear from the little bit we've read of Jack in the hospital, that the book can't end yet because Jack is still far from okay and in fact seems to be in a much less healthy emotional and mental state than he was when we first met him, as an optimistic little kid playing around. He's also having trouble with his depth perception, his walking, and separation anxiety with Ma. I thought the scene where Ma tries to take a shower was especially representative of how scary this all is for Jack.
        This "After" section is also the part where I think it's even more important that Jack is narrating instead of Ma, because Jack gives us this chaotic and overwhelming view of the outside that's intriguing to me because I have no way of really understanding what it must be like for him, and neither does Ma really. Whereas Ma is much easier for us to understand and hers is the more normal reaction and recovery we would expect. Ma doesn't even pick up on all the things that are stressing Jack out, and hearing from Jack instead gives us a really different twist on how "heroic" this escape has really been. Can you call it a hero's journey if the hero regrets their actions and is more miserable than before? I know Jack is relieved to be free from Old Nick, but I think it's clear he misses parts of Room and doesn't quite understand the full benefits of being outside yet. Perhaps Jack's heroism is more in his choosing to act to save Ma instead of only thinking of his own wishes. I think that Jack will improve over the course of the book, but for now it is certainly upsetting to see how lost Jack feels in this outside world that doesn't seem real to him.

Ma and Jack

        So far in Room, one of the things that has really stuck out to me is the relationship between Ma and Jack and how important it is for both of their survivals. They've literally never been away from each other for five years, and as a result they are extremely close. While we can see it is tough for Ma to interact with a five-year-old 24/7, it's also clear through her protectiveness of Jack (especially in regards to Old Nick) that Jack is her whole world now and pretty much the only thing keeping her alive. Jack notices after his 5th birthday that he and Ma have been fighting more, but after the power goes off and Ma starts confiding more in Jack, I think we see their relationship become even closer. During the power outage both of them are scared for how they will keep eating when they have no food, and they have to run around to keep warm and they have no water. While Ma takes this as extreme punishment, Jack replies that a real punishment would be being separated from Ma: "Like if there were two Rooms, if he put me in one and you in the other one."

        I've also been really impressed with the games Ma and Jack play together, ranging from word sandwiches to "Parrot" to rhyming games and guessing song lyrics. As a result of his confinement, Jack has turned out to be an intensely creative child since he has few actual toys or other kids to play with and there really isn't anything else for him to do. Ma feels stifled by this situation and gets sick of playing all the time, but Jack seems to largely enjoy himself. Even though he's never even seen grass or smelled fresh air, Jack is content as a giant-killer and a coal miner, he "plays Icarus with his wings melting" and has a box spaceship, and is constantly imagining things and keeping himself entertained. I think Jack's imagination is incredible and gives him a sense of excitement and optimism that makes sense as we realize Jack is actually attached to Room and likes it, in sharp contrast with Ma. In fact this point seems to have caused the most tension so far between Ma and Jack: Ma's criticism of Room. Jack describes himself as "nearly growling" as he rebukes Ma's statement of Room being stinky and it takes a lot of convincing from Ma to get Jack to listen to her escape plan because nothing about the outside world is immediately appealing to Jack. While Ma can't wait to leave Room and only associates it with pain, it's literally all Jack knows.  I think their closeness is really the heart of the novel right now and it will be interesting to see if they can maintain their close relationship while they escape, since Jack is already struggling to trust Ma quite as much and realize that she doesn't know everything. He's started to say "I hate her" and Ma has been forced to push Jack past everything he's comfortable with. I can't help but wonder if Jack will have some jealousy problems if they're able to escape, since Ma will want to see other people and Jack won't be used to having to share her attention. At the same time they are so completely devoted to each other and have undergone so much together it's hard to imagine anything ruining their bond. It's basically a pretty emotionally intense situation right now and i'm definitely in suspense for what will happen with their escape plan.

As I Lay Running...??

       One of the things that struck me while reading about Smithy and his various encounters with people who instantly judge him, is how much Smithy reminds me, in a few ways, of Dewey Dell from As I Lay Dying. To begin with, The Memory of Running and AILD have some similarities in that the main character(s) embark on a seemingly ridiculous and pointless journey to honor someone who has died, and along the way they encounter a lot of people who are critical of them, have to overcome severe setbacks, lose almost everything (I guess in AILD this would be all the kids, not Anse), and come home with something other than what they set out for. In Smithy's case, this would be a relationship with and love for Norma, and for Anse it was a new wife (although it appears he did set out with this in mind, he just never shared it with the reader until the end). Both stories are also much more about the ridiculous journey to get there than they are about the destination. Burying Addie is supposed to be this hugely important and meaningful thing and yet it's done in a few sentences, with a majority of the character development (Cash stepping up as a leader, Darl going insane, etc.) happening over the arduous trip to Jefferson. Likewise, Smithy's visit with Bethany's body is brief compared to the weeks he spends biking to see her, because the real journey for him happens on the road as he learns to let go of the past and embrace a new future with Norma and people, who he has discovered aren't so bad.

       But Smithy reminds me much more of Dewey Dell than of Anse. While Smithy is certainly a much easier narrator to comprehend, both he and Dewey Dell are kind of "lost" characters at the beginning of their respective journeys, with Dewey Dell unable to ask for help and Smithy unable to express his emotions other than drinking and smoking. Neither seem particularly mentally astute, with Dewey Dell's nonsensical narrative voice and emotional connection to a cow, and Smithy constantly telling us how awkward and stupid he is (his conversational skills being limited to "It's raining"). Yet I think both McLarty and Faulkner mean for the reader to feel a sense of attachment or endearment to these characters, instead of judging them as pathetic. After following their stories and their mindsets, we get to know Smithy and his background, and we understand the dilemma Dewey Dell faces and the difficulty of her situation, so to us their actions seem normal and justifiable; we forget what they look like to other people. Even with Smithy constantly reminding us that he's fat, we forget how crazy he looks until he gets beat up by a police officer and shot. We get so concerned with Dewey Dell's safety that we forget she is a poor country girl who doesn't know much of anything, until she's judged and taken advantage of by multiple shop owners. In both cases I found myself feeling very defensive of those characters; I was angered when Smithy is beat up when he was the one hit by a car, and I was upset when Mosely and MacGowan ridicule Dewey Dell for walking barefoot and not knowing exactly what she wanted. As a reader I have a relationship with both of these clueless characters that can't be understood by the outside world.

        Dewey Dell and Smithy have some obvious differences as well, but their simplicity in the face of intense emotional trauma and inner turmoil makes them relatable in my mind.

Anse and The New Mrs. Bundren

       So I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around this ending to As I Lay Dying, which was not at all what I was expecting it to be. This whole epic journey thing didn't really feel all that heroic throughout the book because of Anse being so useless the whole time and everyone seeming kind of casual in their narration, but now that we have this dismal image of the family sitting on the wagon and realize the journey is over, it does feel like this was a pretty significant trip. We talked in class a lot about whether we could feel happy for Anse that he managed to succeed against the odds and overcame the bridge collapsing and all the people criticizing him. Since we know Addie didn't love Anse, the fact that he's remarrying so soon can be sort of overlooked, but what makes me not really respect Anse is the fact that he's basically destroyed his living family by going on this trip, which is a lot more important than the last wishes of his dead family (if we can even say that was his main reason for going to town now). Jewel has lost his horse, Cash lost the use of a leg, Dewey Dell lost her money aside to getting raped and still refusing to tell anyone she's pregnant, Darl is in an insane asylum where they'll possibly never see him again, and Vardaman thinks his mother is a fish and didn't even get the train car he wanted. It's very hypocritical of Anse because he kept saying to respect the dead, yet he's the one who uses his wife's death to help himself out while screwing over his kids. I'm trying to picture what the reaction would be from the family after Anse announces the new Mrs. Bundren. I feel like Jewel would flip the wagon over and move to Texas somehow. Dewey Dell would be angry knowing it was largely her (well, Lafe's) money that went into buying the teeth, and she'd be feeling totally hopeless and confused. Vardaman would not understand that he has a new mother, and Cash would give up on Anse but keep his cool because he wants that music player.
       Even more I think what the trip home would be like for this new Mrs. Bundren, who can't have any idea what she's gotten into. We don't even know anything about her, but she must be a little crazy if she agreed to marry Anse. Still, what will she think when she hears Vardaman's mother is actually a fish, Jewel's a horse, her fiancé set Cash's leg in concrete, and Darl is being carted off to Jackson? What will she think of their smelly wagon? Does she know they have to cross a flooded river to get home? That Anse doesn't do anything but rub his knees and watch his children work? Will she notice Dewey Dell is pregnant? Will she beat the younger children like Addie did? It doesn't seem like Anse really knows how to fall in love with people, judging by the proposal scene we get from Addie, so he can't really want a new wife because he'll get lonely, but instead because he wants someone to take care of the house and help do the work for him. Or maybe Anse's new teeth will give him a sense of confidence and he will actually take some charge around his house. It's likely he'll have more kids on the way so I sure hope he gets his act together. Whatever Anse did to win over the new Mrs. Bundren, I doubt her new life will be quite so great. Especially after hearing the way Moseley and MacGowan talked down about country folks when they noticed Dewey Dell looking so out of place, it seems weird to have a city woman leaving with the Bundrens to go to the country. Anse has managed to destroy his old family in the hopes of having a better new one, and I don't really like him for it.

Dewey Dell

       I think Dewey Dell is my favorite character in As I Lay Dying. I mean Cash is definitely more likable and Vardaman is funnier and crazier, but Dewey Dell got my attention from the beginning because she actually had a plot line and something urgent happening in her life. At the beginning of the novel, I was rather confused and not particularly interested in any of the other characters. Cash was just sawing away, Anse was philosophizing about roads, Jewel was playing with horses, Vardaman was being crazy and thinking about fish, and Darl just never connected with me at all because he narrated other people's stories and didn't talk about himself. I didn't even pick up on what happened to Dewey Dell at first, but once she started to tell you more about it, it quickly became the more troubling and intriguing story line than transporting the body of a dead woman we hadn't met (at the beginning). Because Anse was depicted as so clueless and lazy and out of it, I pitied him a little bit, but I couldn't really grasp his grief for Addie; there was always a little bit of humor in it. While Dewey Dell's narrative style is much harder to follow, it's difficult to call it funny because of the serious predicament she is in. I think part of Dewey Dell's craziness comes from having this secret that she can't tell anyone, and its physical and emotional weight is mixing her up and keeping her tied down and lost within her own feelings. The reader doesn't really get actual narration out of her, they get glimpses into her head and see her confusion and fear about what to do, and the way she becomes aware of nature and birth and life, such as the cow she seems to bond with in the barn.

       To me, Dewey Dell never came across as plain stupid in the book. She's scared, she's panicked, she's lost, but I don't think Faulkner means for her to be stupid because he makes her story tragic enough that we can't laugh at it. She obviously doesn't know a lot of things and has not been educated well, even in the functions of her own body. Perhaps "powerless to alter her fate" is true of her, but I have trouble viewing her as quite so utterly incompetent and naive. I think she knows what's happening and she knows roughly what she has to do to fix it. She knows she can't tell anyone because at this time that would not have gone down well, and she also questions a few times whether they'd kill Lafe, which it doesn't really sound like she wants. But she does tell the people she needs to tell: the shop keepers, and even though she doesn't quite have the vocabulary to articulate her problem, they figure it out. I don't think she knew exactly what sort of fix they were going to give her, because it's a little unclear if she knew it was illegal or not, and she fell for MacGowan's mention of an "operation." So she clearly isn't the brightest. But I don't know, there's something about Dewey Dell that makes me not want to think that. I mean it doesn't seem like Addie is the sort of mother who would have explained much to Dewey Dell, especially not about love, and I can't ever imagine having to talk to any male member of the Bundren family about anything female-related, they're all kind of gross and creepy (except maybe Cash). While she doesn't really have a choice, I think she is quite determined and courageous to be trying this out alone and clueless. She thinks up a way to bring along her Sunday clothes and $10 that seems to fool everyone but Darl for most of the trip. The end of As I Lay Dying has left me a little unsatisfied because we have no idea what's going to happen to her! Is she going to find Lafe again? Is she going to have to tell her family? Will the new Mrs. Bundren be someone she can share her secret with? I'm not entirely sure what our conclusion was about Faulkner's portrayal of women, because while the women weren't particularly positive, the men certainly weren't either, but I think it's true that with Dewey Dell the reader is supposed to feel bad for her, not judge her too much for her lack of worldly knowledge, and understand that the life of a country woman at this time, especially in the Bundren family, would have been tough.

The Man of Constant Sorrow

       I really enjoyed the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou and I thought it not only made the movie more interesting to watch, but also provided more connections to  Homer's The Odyssey. In The Odyssey we saw a lot of bards and the telling of stories through songs, which is really well portrayed in the music of O Brother Where Art Thou, especially in the main song "Man of Constant Sorrow." I thought this song was really fun because it was sort of silly in the movie, but it is also an incredibly good song to summarize Odysseus' struggles. I looked up the lyrics and here's one verse I think pretty perfectly summarizes Odysseus' journey:
"For six long years I've been in trouble
No pleasures here on earth I found
For in this world I'm bound to ramble
I have no friends to help me now."

Especially the last 2 lines of this really remind me of Odysseus constantly having to restart and "ramble" and always losing his crew or the blessing of any friends that try to help him. I also liked the lines "Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger, My face you never will see no more" because it speaks to all the characters in the book that doubted Odysseus' return at one point or another, which was most of the characters since he'd been gone 20 years. 

While reading The Odyssey, I was a little put off by how gruesome the slaughter in the hall was, and although O Brother, Where Art Thou paid homage to that scene with the little brawl Everett and Penny's fiance had, I thought the real slaughter in the hall scene was when Everett and his friends win the love of the public by revealing themselves as the Soggy Bottom Boys. I think it was kind of funny that the way Everett wins back Penny is through this song as opposed to fighting people (as we saw in the film, he is not a very good fighter!). It's like he's still sort of a mess, but she'll marry him again because he's famous now and she knows he can actually do something. There was a lot of great music in this movie and especially this song and the idea that Everett won back his respect through singing, really made it an enjoyable story for me.

Dead Suitors

       My opinion of the suitors has changed a lot over the course of The Odyssey. They're clearly the bad guys from the start, but I remember them not seeming horribly obnoxious during the Telemachiad. While the suitors were lazy and greedy and excessive in their feasting, they didn't seem so bad to me at first because of the ambivalence we feel towards Penelope at the beginning of the story. I remember the class mentioning several times how Telemachus was getting annoyed with Penelope for leading the suitors on and not making a clear decision about taking a husband or remaining a widow. He seems to blame her for toying with them and elongating the whole process. Because of the distrust surrounding Penelope, the suitors seemed more within their right to be courting her and waiting for her decision (she does say she'll marry one of them during the whole weaving incident). However, the suitors start to go downhill the farther into the story we get. First a group of them plots the murder of Telemachus, which cuts short any pity the reader might have ever felt for them, and although they do not succeed in this endeavor, it shows what they're willing to do to become rich and doesn't make them look good at all.

      It's not until Odysseus returns to Ithaca that I really felt my opinion of the suitors plummet. Instead of welcoming a beggar with hospitality, as we have seen in many other kingdoms throughout this book, the suitors kick Odysseus, throw stools at him, call him names, and threaten him. They are really awful, especially Antinous who is vicious to the beggar-king. While I wasn't really itching for an all out slaughter like Athena and Odysseus were, I definitely did not like the suitors at all by their final chapter. They failed the test of hospitality which is such an obvious custom of this time, and they have been squandering a house that doesn't belong to them for years, behaving as though the servants are theirs. That being said, I felt the slaughter to be a little over the top as a means of revenge. While I understand the sort of necessity in ending with Odysseus crushing 100+ guys for an aesthetic appeal to the ending of such a long quest, I still don't particularly like the way that things play out. It just seems a little cruel to brutally murder all these men, even though the suitors were pretty bad people. I can't help thinking Odysseus, with all his cunning, could have thought of a different course of action to spare all the blood, but we know he and Athena were really wanting the blood, and he did deserve to feel angry at these guys. It still just felt a little too much for me to see Odysseus as an appealing hero. The worst part of it for me was the end when he brought out the maids and made them clean up the bodies and then hung the women. It was emphasized as a painful death and seems so violent, especially since their only crime was disrespecting someone they hadn't met and sleeping with single men who'd been living there for years. And there's Melanthius, who was certainly a despicable person, but his death is the most gruesome of all of them and he is not only killed, but mutilated and tortured. Reading these parts just didn't make me have much respect for Odysseus, because while one could argue the suitors deserved to die, I don't think anyone deserves to be slowly cut into pieces, no matter how badly they offended Odysseus.

       So I don't really know how I feel about the slaughter of the suitors, but I definitely agree they deserved some sort of punishment as they showed their nastiness and unwelcoming attitudes at the end of the story. I still wish Odysseus/Athena had thought of something better, or had at least been somewhat kind and granted the some of the people quicker deaths.

Odysseus...meh

       Maybe it's because of the group presentations this week, which all hilariously summarized Odysseus' wanderings quite sarcastically, but I'm a little disappointed with Odysseus as a hero so far. It's clear that to the people of Greece during this time period he is an epic hero because he has survived so much hurt and he is favored by the gods. I know it's not really fair to judge him by today's standards, but I can't really help it, he just kind of annoys me. While he is humble enough to reject other peoples comparison of him to the gods, he's still somewhat fond of his own strength, especially in requesting songs be sung about himself when he's with the Phaeacians. Odysseus receives tons of help from Athena, and while that's apparently super cool back then, it doesn't make him very heroic in my eyes especially as he doesn't do much to thank her for being the only reason he's still alive. In general, anytime the Greeks want to thank the gods all they do is kill a bunch of animals, which doesn't seem to be a very sincere or personal display of gratitude (I know, I know, historical context). To me Athena is the most heroic character in the book at the moment, and that's not really fair because she's a goddess.

       One of my least favorite things about Odysseus right now is his concern for Penelope being faithful to him while he's off sleeping with Circe for a whole year. I mean obviously this is a sexual double standard of the time period, but I think Calypso points it out pretty clearly when she argues how men are allowed to have all these affairs and women aren't. It's just irritating when Odysseus claims he's being faithful to Penelope just because he misses her... kind of a loose definition of faithful.

       The main heroic trait Odysseus seems to have is his insane physical strength. It's definitely pretty awesome that he can swim for days and fight off giant monsters, but he's also getting power boosts from Athena and it doesn't really give him a satisfying heroic character. Odysseus is supposed to be known for his "twists and turns," his wisdom and cunning tricks, and a big part where he displays this is in his defeat of Polyphemus. However after our class discussion I'm not even finding that very heroic. Odysseus did what he had to do to get out, but he also bragged about it and could have avoided the whole situation by not taking advantage of the cyclops. While I can understand why he seems very noble and god-like to the other people in the book, to me he is just not very likable. 

       The only thing that changes my mind a little about Odysseus's character is reading the passages where he is distraught and pleading to go home, because then I do feel sorry for him and can see his pain and feel how terrible it would be to be lost for 10 years with no family and all your friends being constantly killed or eaten. Reading the actual text does make me pity him more and perhaps I would like him better if I had read all of the books in the "Wanderings" section. As of now I admire his strength and his cunning, but in general I do not like him and I wish he would actually say something sincere instead of just pretending to be faithful.

My Heroic Obsession

I forced myself to refrain from writing about Lord of the Rings for my personal essay because I talk about it far too often and wanted to at least attempt to show that I have read some books besides Tolkien’s classic trilogy. Nevertheless I find myself thinking of Lord of the Rings frequently in this class because it is such a perfect example of the hero’s journey and it is probably my favorite story, and definitely my favorite movie, ever (big surprise to all of you, I’m sure). 

I read The Fellowship of the Ring for my banned book project subbie year, and though it wasn’t the most action-packed book ever, I found it quite charming and I loved hobbits and their simple lifestyle. The Lord of the Rings movies have been a family favorite since I was about 5 so I sort of entered a relapse obsessiveness phase after reading the books, which I must admit I have not left in the 4 years since (in fact I have reread the books and The Hobbit and seen The Hobbit movies in the meantime). My family now watches the extended edition of the movie trilogy every year over winter break. Living that geek life.

The Lord of the Rings is a beautiful story to me because there is so much at stake, the risks are so high, and yet the heroes are small little “halflings” whose only weapon against evil is their extraordinary willpower. Frodo and Sam, a wealthy hobbit and his gardener, wander on towards a likely doom, holding on to nothing except their friendship and desire to save their homeland. It’s not a particularly complex storyline, but it’s a powerful juxtaposition of two overwhelmingly sympathetic protagonists climbing through a land of unspeakable evil. LOTR has many hero characters, so that it’s hard to determine who the main hero really is, and I like this because it’s a little more realistic than a kind of superhero image in which one person is responsible for the fate of all. Frodo is usually recognized as the hero because he was the actual ring bearer, however it's also easy to argue that Sam is more of a hero because he is frequently responsible for Frodo’s survival, as are countless other characters. I do think Frodo deserves his spotlight because it is his initiative and sacrifice that renders the quest successful; it is his body and mind that are damaged beyond return. Frodo does become dependent on the Ring and ultimately succumbs to its temptation, but I think this makes him almost more sympathetic and heroic because it demonstrates both that he is not perfect and the scope of the pressure and burden that he carried.

Part of why The Lord of the Rings is an even better story than the classic hero narratives, is that while much is restored and most people live happily ever after, Frodo, our hero, does not. Having journeyed on foot to the most evil place on Earth, Frodo at first returns to Minas Tirith, the great city of men, to a hero’s welcome complete with feasting and songs written about him, gifts from the King and Queen, and months of partying and recovering with all of his friends. It’s not until Frodo returns to his own home in the Shire that we realize Frodo’s suffering has not ended with the destruction of the Ring. Frodo is often ill from his physical and emotional wounds, he is very tired and he is seen as weird by the rest of Hobbiton, who does not understand everything he has been through. While Sam, Merry, and Pippin, are admired and marvelled at, Frodo no longer fits in. He states in the movie adaptation of The Return of the King: “How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend, some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.” There is an overwhelming comparison to the return of a soldier from war, no longer knowing how to face ordinary situations after encountering such terror and death. Tolkien himself fought in World War I and almost all of his friends were killed. While Frodo’s companions are able to heal and live their lives happily in the Shire, Frodo leaves, sailing into the West with the elves so that he can receive their comfort and healing, but effectively dying to the people he has left behind. I like this ending more than a traditional happily-ever-after because it is more realistic in establishing the trauma that Frodo went through in carrying such an evil object, and also the sense of loss that I think any hero would feel after going on a journey that nobody at home can really relate to, and how distanced they would feel.

While I may be a little obsessive and repetitive in my LOTR comments, it’s because the story is meaningful to me and was a significant part of my childhood. The excellent movie soundtrack, the ease at which one can quote it, the maps, cultural nuances, and other languages that Tolkien provides for his creations, and the themes of caring for the earth and a warning against reckless power, all make The Lord of Rings my favorite heroic journey.