FINALE

I have decided for my final blog post to write about my posts on Chickamauga, The Passing Of Grandison, and my post on W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. My post on Chickamauga I responded to the story talking about how the first thing that came to my mind when I read about the sight of all the soldiers was a zombie apocalypse. In my analysis of the Passing Of Grandison I explored the irony within the short story. Last but not least my post about Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois analyzed the different styles of Black pride and styles against racism.

http://aj-s278blog.blogspot.com/2012/02/grandison-and-his-irony.html
http://aj-s278blog.blogspot.com/2012/02/private-history-and-chickamauga.html
http://aj-s278blog.blogspot.com/2012/02/webbed-booker-t.html

I decided to respond to these three posts because of the content involved within each of them. I was really engaged with the readings that were tied to each of these postings and really felt like I had a connection with each one, especially The Passing of Grandison. Decker and I got a pretty good kick out of my connection with the Chickamauga story too. If you have seen Zombieland or The Walking Dead or even 28 Days Later then you know what I'm talking about. I can't believe nobody else even thought of that connection of soldiers injured and running at a little boy then my thought process was, RUN LITTLE BOY they are gonna eat you I found the whole story funny when I thought of it in that context. Then I went back and read it in a serious manner and realized its a super sad story. Eh oh well I had more fun the first time I read it anyways. As for this course and its impact on me and my views of literature, I have to say I have more motivation to read the things that I have an interest in. I still have little to zero motivation to read a book about slave chartering or anything along the lines of that but a book on World War II or a book on pottery! I'm sold! I don't know what it is specifically about slave embargo or troubles of slaves and minorities but I just plain don't like it. It does NOT grab my attention at all. Well we all know my weaknesses are just plain flat and simply reading the story and quizzes. The one thing that I have a major strength in is the analyzing of a piece. I don't know whether it's my artistic mind or what but I tend to get some meaning out of something and have evidence to back it up even if it is definitely not what is meant by the writer or commonly seen by others. For instance with my tie into the movie Remember The Titans. It was a perfect fit to our discussion story with a few differences. Well I think that because of my participation in class and my ability to contribute to the classroom discussion I deserve a B not a B- or a B+ just a B. I'm being honest because if I wasn't I would say I deserve an A I'm the golden child BLAH BLAH BLAH. I'm not though. Reason being why I say a B and not an A is because I missed a few blog posts and quite frankly my quiz scores weren't to great half the time. But because of what I brought to class mentally and discussion wise I deserve a B.

Response to Crying

The quote that I posted about last Thursday was about the formless magic that Oedipa is faced with. I stated that she uses this magic to seduce others into doing what she wants them to do. After going back and rereading the quote and my initial response to the quote I have to retract my opinion about Oedipa. She is NOT malicious and manipulative but she does use certain aspects of her sexual appeal to her advantage. Throughout her investigation this happens. I do NOT agree with it and think that she should be going about it in a different manner. That is what I think is "manipulative" about her. I am excited to see where this story progresses and am also excited to see if she learns something about herself or the people around her and whether or not it will be beneficial or if it will be detrimental.

Discussion Response

I have decided to respond directly to Scott's comments on my post and discussion. What better way to get an A right? haha. As for resentment that is shown among the characters within the movie and Baldwin's essay there is alot. The tie among this topic is the fact that the team, as well as Baldwin himself, are hated and treated poorly because they are not the societal norm or favorite. This generates a bad repoure for the outlook of the members of the team and Baldwin's father when he tries to predict his future. In both cases they shrug the views of others off their shoulders and continue to truck along perservering their goals. Eventually they gain the respect that they are ultimitaly looking for and get past the hard times of hatred and disgust. Honestly I only see one difference between Remember The Titans and Baldwin's essay. That is that the team doesn't even get the notion to lash out at the "haters" but Baldwin does. This ties me into thoughts about the black panther society and its influences.
Baldwin's father was trying to teach him how to live life among the discrimination. He did an ok job at it in my opinion but lost his son's respect in the process. A different approach would have been to let him experience these different types of racism first hand as a child so that when he grew up he would not have been bombarded with so many things at once. Baldwin's fathers motivation to be the father he was was to best prepare his son for the future and they way that he acted although it was, relationship wise, destructive it was also constructive and did eventually prepare him for the mindset that he had to take to endure the hatred that was at the table.

DESCRIPTION

Description, description, description. Baldwin used so much descriptive detail in the 3 part story "Notes of a Native Son". My favorite aspect of this story is the fact that Baldwin used so much history so well and within the historical timeline. He incorporated it so well without even putting to much focus on it keeping your attention on the story. My favorite incorporation of historical evidence is his small tid bit of "Jim-Crow Laws":

"I knew about jim-crow but I had never experienced it. I went to the counter, waiting for a hamburger and coffee; it was always and extraordinarily  long time before anything was set before me; but it was not until the fourth visit that I learned that, in fact, nothing had ever been set before me: I had simply picked something up."

This description make my mind go crazy along with all of the other historically descriptive moments, which in this it's chock full. When I was going through reading the story one of the things I couldn't help but think about was a movie that was made when I was a kid. Probably the best football movie I have ever seen. Remember the Titans. Students involved in the first biracial football team try to compete against all white schools not only jumping over the hurdles of racism and hatred being throw at them but also trying to overcome the hatred amidst themselves to work together as a team. This movie ties in so well with this story because there are the riots as well as hatred of races within communities, such as the white woman coming over to the black families house. I am excited to talk about this and see if anyone else brings this movie up in class. If no body does I will have to by the end of the talk.

Deckers Poem

This poem is great. When you transition from being children not knowing what they are saying or doing into becoming adults that have a conscience and heart behind whatever it is that the person is saying. Whether it's feeling of hatred, envy or even good responses, as an adult you understand how to portray those feelings through speech and words. Trial by error is how we learn these things within our society along with growing and learning from the people we look up to most. This leans towards why racism has and still is around. What you may not have meant to imply is that the best way to learn how to make art with a medium like clay is trial by error. Hence why I responded to this post haha. CLAY. I am wondering if this is what you meant by incorporating clay in the poem or if the words incorporation was to make it more child related.

Response to Kassie

Kassie's post talked about The Invisible Man and her reactions to it. My initial thoughts on it was that this story is about white men and their inherent ability to enjoy fighting and its possibilities. I thought that it was about the "battle royal" as Kassie says but there is also a hidden meaning behind the need to be "above the crowd". Being on top of the world was a huge thing back in the days of racism towards African Americans. I saw it as if the white men of the  time wanted to control the black population they also had major aggression issues and I think that is what this story was written to explain why men tend to strive towards being on top and using sport or aggression to become self satisfied. Over all I thought that the story did pretty well in describing the derivative point of most mens' strive to have competition and to be on top of the world. 

Berryman

Berryman's poems is the literature from this week that really connected with me. I liked that he connected with the Greek Iliad bringing up Achilles. One thing about that allusion that I am having a hard time understanding is the fact that when he alludes to Achilles he does not capitalize him. I'm not sure if that is out of disrespect for Achilles or that he just did not feel necessary to bring him up other that for a small thought behind his name. This poem really connects with me because of the repetitive parts concerning boredom. When he writes about the boredom among literature he hooked me as a reader. Just like in listening to a speech no matter how good it is I lose interest within about two pages of reading in. Berryman made me realize that literature is an acquired taste and takes time to get interest within something.

The Waste Land

This poem was a wasteland of ideas and thoughts.  Honestly I just finished reading TS Eliot's The Waste Land, for the third time, and it still makes absolutely no sense to me. I read it through once to just get the idea of it in my head, then when I got to the end I didn't even know how I had started this "poem". So I went through a second time trying to decipher every part. Then I broke it down even further into every topic and then one step farther going inot depth on every sentence. STILL nothing. It even says that on page 684. "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?". EXACTLY! Thank you T.S. Eliot! He bounced around so much that I could not even remember anything at all. This poem was so so so confusing and I cannot wait to get into class tomorrow morning to hear what everyone else thought and to see what Scott has to say about it because I'm going to have a hard time sleeping thinking about "nothing".

I read Frost's After Apple Picking. My thoughts were mixed on the poem. He seemed to almost being using his poetry to whine about some kind of work that he himself had to do or wanted to connect to the readers that work in jobs that they dislike or don't enjoy.

 

 

How to Close Read a Poem

1. How is the title of the poem working? What information is it giving? How would the poem be different with a different title?  The poem is talking about a man/woman whose job is picking apples and the title is letting you know that the poem takes place after a day of apple picking. If it was titled gold panning then the poem would be about gold panning instead that is the revolving point (work).
   
2. List all of words you don’t know, or think you don’t know. Look them up in the dictionary. Write them down. Hoary:Greyish White.
   
3. Read the poem out loud. What sounds do you notice in the poem? Is there rhyme? Are there any repeated sounds? Write down the sounds you hear at work in the poem.  I am noticing that there is ryhme within the poem in several spots and it also seems to take on the "sound" of apples falling out of the tree. Seemed like there was some kind of a massive amount of flow in the middle and slow amounts in the beginning and end.
   
4. What is literally happening in the poem? Write a paragraph describing what is going on. Where is this happening? Who are the people in the poem?  There is one person in the poem and it is the apple picker. He/She is taking a break or is quitting for the day and proceeds to take a nap and think about how his/her feet hurt and ache. Then during the individuals sleep they begin to dream about barrels and buckets and cellars full of apples and the sound of them "rumbling".
   
5. What are the images in the poem? List five images you see in detail. What do you know about them? How is the poem using imagery? Apples rumbling out of a cellar and I also see a woodchuck randomly just hanging out in the background. The apples are a dream being had by the main character and the woodchuck I have no clue.
   
6. What do you know about the speaker? List ten facts you can infer (the If-Then game).  The speaker is a working person. Probably male, maybe female. Doesn't make much money. Has sore feet. Has a disgust towards apples. Person is tired. Person works alot. Speaker doesn't like the ladders that the apple farm provides. Speaker uses every last bit of each apple even if its bruised. Before the end of the day the Speaker did not finish there job because of the empty bucket by their ladder.
   
7. Write a paragraph describing the tone of the poem. Remember, tone is the speaker’s attitude toward his/her subject. Most attitudes in poetry will be complex, i.e. more that one attitude. List 10 words you think helps set this tone.  The speaker is very negative towards their job. It almost seems like they are whining or crying because their feet hurt or they deal with to many apples.  Ache, I have had too much, over tired, no worth.
   
8. Does the poem have a formal structure? If not, what effect does the lack of structure have? If so, what effect does the structure have on the meaning of the poem? There is no real structure it's more of a free verse poem than anything else. The lack of structure makes the reader more able to explore through the mind of the speaker freely without it being choppy.
   
9. Where does the tension lie in the poem? Poetic tension can come in many forms. Is there any conflict in the plot/action of the poem? Do images form a tension? Does the speaker and/or tone create tension in the poem? List three poetic tensions you see at work. The tension lies as soon as the speaker begins to see all of the barrells and buckets of apples. They themselves begin to become tense and agitated as if it was like they were at work again. "I keep hearing from the cellar bin", "There were ten thousand fruit to touch", "My instep arch not only keeps the ache" 
   
10. Are their any images, phrases, words, and sounds in the poem that you can't shake out of your head? List three that resonate with you.   Woodchuck, hoary grass, apples in the cellar piling out.

I understand this poem  a bit better and really enjoyed thinking deeper into in. Frost is literally talking about the working class of his time and how they go through hardships and disgust of what they do to put food on the table. It also almost seemed like he thought thats the way that life is supposed to be and that is what everyone goes through on a weekly basis. There still is one thing I have no idea what it is. THAT DAMN WOODCHUCK!!!!

Essay

In my essay I am going to write about the irony in two of the stories. I am going to further examine the irony in Booker T. Washington's work and also I will jump deeper into Grandison and the multiple accounts of irony in that story.

Webbed Booker T.

I found Booker T. Washington much more conservative and also found that he really wanted to win over the white Southerners so that he could get his point across to them. W.E.B. Du Bois  seemed to be much more Northernized in his mannerisms towards slavery. He also seemed very hostile towards all racists. As for Washington in his language he almost wrote like there was a white man peeking over his shoulder making sure he didn't say anything to bad about white folk. Altough he didn't forget about his own "black pride" thats for sure. He definitely stood up for what he believed in and in my opinion was more convincing that W.E.B. Du Bois because he lived the slavery and the hatred day in and day out while he was a slave. Du Bois' language came off as being a black man that had "heard" of slavery but never experienced it. I almost thought that his approach was just written out of hatred and written out of the want to stand up for his own people. This quote that Du Bois says really portrays the fact that he had only heard/read about the harshness of slavery.

"The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home."

Booker T. Washington's subtleness makes him so much more admireable. Like this quote for instance.

"I do not believe that the Negro should cease voting, for a man cannot learn the exercise of self-government by ceasing to vote any more than a boy can learn to swim by keeping out of the water, but i do believe that in his voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence and character who are his next-door neighbours."

Response to Kassie

Kassie's thoughts on Dick and his response to Charity's "request" in my opinion is some what wrong. Kassie (@ http://kassiehansen.blogspot.com/) say's that "Dick is the heir of his father’s estate, why does he need to free another man’s slave when his father owns so many and one day they will all belong to Dick. When that day come he could just set them all free, why does he need to steal another man’s slave when he will have them all one day". The response Dick had was a quick natured act of "love" that made him want to do anything to win Charity over. Your right in the fact that he needed to take a step back and think about it a little more but implied in the story is that Dick is lazy and laziness implies that the person doesn't neccesarily take steps back and think before he/she acts.

Grandison and His Irony

The Passing of Grandison
There are TONS of ironic points in this story. Chesnutt laid alot of racial aspect out on the line as well. The first ironic point that I noticed was a situational irony, the Yankee man went down south and took a slave to Canada to free him. Little did he know he sacrificed his own freedom for someone else's freedom. After taking the negro slave to Canada he was placed into a penitentiary and died later on. So in freeing one man he was then without freedom.

SITUATIONAL IRONY: ", a young white man from Ohio, moved by compassion for the sufferings of a certain bondman who happened to have a "hard master," essayed to help the slave to freedom. The attempt was discovered and frustrated; the abductor was tried and convicted for slave-stealing, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the penitentiary. His death, after the expiration of only a small part of the sentence, from cholera contracted while nursing stricken fellow prisoners"

As for the verbal irony it is plastered all over the short story. I have decided to highlight the verbal irony that arose at the end of the story. although technically it happened throughout the whole piece the reader didn't know it was irony until the end. Whenever Grandison said something along the lines of he would never want to be free or he just wants to go home that was verbally ironic. He is wanting to go home to retrieve his family them leave but that is something that he is choosing to not say to his master obviously which is what really makes it ironic.

VERBAL IRONY: ""Let's go back ober der ribber, Mars Dick. I's feared i'll lose you ovuh heah, an' den i won' hab no marster, an' won't nebber be able to git back home no mo'.""

Response to Decker

"The boy represents not just childhood wonder and innocence, but rather the boy represents the South."
This is exactly what I saw, although I had a different way of portraying it and related it to a modern day theme. The sheer thought of the lack of innocence in the world is something that would lead to the eventual destruction of the human race. If there is no one left to think of the good things to happen in the future (innocence) then all that will be though of will be ideas of depression such as death, dying, and decay. Decker hit the idea of the time spot on which techincally the thought of innocence and the fear of losing it is always going to be around. The matter of its reality will differ from generation to generation though. In the Civil War Chickamauga is the depiction of the loss of innocence and in my eyes the loss of innocence is a meer zombie apocalypse.

Private History and Chickamauga

As for the post I know is a tad bit late but I thought I would much rather have read everything and actually have good input that just make something up for a grade.

Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce honestly brought tears to my eyes and a solid lump to my throat. At first I thought that it was a great short story and then the farther I read the more it related to two things in my mind. A terrific horrifying story about the scarring of a childs life that I don't want to hear/read, and a Zombie apocalypse storyline. The reason why I bring the zombie theme up is because in a way this is very similar to that theme. Bierce is technically describing the end of this childs world as well as the one thing that could make a deaf mute make any form of noise what so ever.



A Private History by Mark Twain was a very interesting story. I always wondered if there was a short story following the experiences of a Confederate soldier. There is one similarity that I am realizing not only with these two stories but with any realist writer that writes about the Civil War. They all write as if it is the end of the world. I understand why and they have a valid point because it is such a huge point in history and the death toll was exponentially greater than anything previously or for that matter later on too. (Other that the World Wars)

Question Response:

What if Lincoln lived?

In my opinion if Lincoln would have lived we would be ten years more advanced politically than we are now. A major setback to our country is the problematic situation with our politics, specifically pertaining to democrats and republicans. Lincoln's intentions were not to better his "party's" chances at the next presidency but to better the countries oppourtunities. So from what I have studied in the past and have thought about many times I decided that the United States would be ten years more advanced politically. Advancement in politics carries everything else to do with a country along with it. If Lincoln lived American citizens would also have more trust in the American government.

Post-Bellum packet Week 1

Well this is the first time I've ever done a "blog". I really am not sure what to expect out of this but I'm going to take a ride on the wild side. Here we GO! After reading the the Post-Bellum packet and churning over all of the information in it i decided that I, as a reader, really enjoy the writers that succeeded the Civil War. As for some questions that arose from this reading I couldn't help but ask myself what my thoughts were on the thought of  these few, but deep, questions.

What would I have done if I was African American and in the situation that the majority of African Americans were after the war?

What would have happened if the transcontinental railroad was never assembled?

These questions are simple on the outside but dive deep into the depths of the possibilites of them and you may find answers that you wouldn't have thought you would come up with. I spent a couple days thinking on the railroads (I recently grew a fascination with the transcontinental railroad because of AMC's Hell On Wheels) and came up with two possibilites, in my opinion. First of all, native americans would be a more prominent aspect to the American present instead of just points in history. Secondly, California and its surrounding states in the west would not be as developed and populated as they are today. Time would have played more of a factor and equipment for mining, as an example, would not have been so easy to transport from coast to coast.