Cheever v. O'Connor

Cheever…what the hell is that? So, I’m reading this story, and slowly at the back of my mind something starts to tickle as I realize this guy is off his rocker. I honestly thought at the beginning, it would be pretty funny to see this guy pool hopping across the county. Stupid, but funny. Then you start to realize that time seems to have sucked him through the water, the water being years. With every pool this guy enters the more time he loses, he can’t go back because he’s stuck in this cycle. He wants to finish what he started though he’s losing everything he had. Yet, he prevails for what? He finishes his deed for the satisfaction of finishing it and yet, nothing comes of it. He comes home to an empty house, a poor man, a broken man, with no discernable clue as to where his family is. However! He still has his pride at swimming across the county…and even that is almost a loss. It’s a fast paced tale, confusing, and hard to keep up with. He doesn’t really develop the characters around him. It’s a focus on the main character and what he is doing himself. He creates the setting, the movement, and the story line but nothing else really comes to touch him. Ned doesn’t LET anything touch him. He has to keep moving, keep going through with his plan.

O’Connor…wow. At first I thought this story was going to be about the nosy old lady; apparently not. This story is almost as depressing as the first, but for some reason Cheever makes you feel a little more light-hearted than this one does. No one wins in the end. It’s people tricking people. They keep referring to this elusive good country people but yet she never comes out and tells you exactly what that is. Its left open for discussion I suppose. Her characters are fully developed, except for the late comer (the Bible seller). She gets down to the surface of them, their habits and such but let’s the reader come to the conclusion of what makes them tick. Helga for instance; she says she’s gotten degrees, she’s bitter about her leg, and she’s a fema-nazi I believe for the most part. She considers herself above the rest of the ‘good country people’ and doesn’t believe in anything; or so she says. When it came down to the end though the Bible seller calls her out when he steals her leg. It’s actually a really weird plot. Who wants someone’s used peg leg? It’s USED! Besides, what is he going to do with it? Just weird really.

These two authors are both a little unconventional. They try to make a point, but it seems to be in the translation of the interpreters. Both kind of rely on societies norms. Cheever talks about the whole ‘I’ll call you’, Hollywood upper class kind of thing and O’Connor is about the simple, country folk. It’s stereotyping. Helga thought the Bible dude was ignorant; he pulled the con on her. Ned thought he was above everyone and went off on his little adventure, but in the end ended up being screwed over somehow. I believe O’Connor’s would be easier for a reader to read. Cheever is just confusing. It actually made my head hurt to read it, trying to write about it makes it even more frustrating. He’s writing at a furious pace, keeping the movement of the piece going, and not letting the reader catch up with the main character until his final laps in the pools. It is a really busy piece. So much is going on and it’s hard to keep track of. O’Connor writes with a lot of detail. It’s hard to separate out who she’s talking about. She throws in a lot of random facts and characters that don’t really pertain to the story but add to the character solely to the character outlines. I’m not going to lie. I didn’t much like either piece; if I had to pick one I’d pick O’Connor’s.

Women

So tackling this project shouldn’t be that hard but it is. Hurston tries to give Janie a life of her own, a mind if you will, that roams outside of her body. Her corporeal body however, is an entirely different manner. It’s tied and or bogged down in this life that she can’t handle. Her first husband wanted to use her as a mule if you will. He ran a farm and he expected his wife to help him with the farm. Understandable, my dad expects my mom to help out with certain things too; to the extent of plotting seeds while he plows? HAHAHAHA no. I am pretty sure she would draw the line right there. Janie however, is in the land where girls get no say and she is to do exactly what her husband tells her. Another example of this is Joe, her next husband. He starts out as this really sweet guy who would “rope the moon” for her if he could. Then, he gets caught up in the whole mayor idea. He breaks her is what he does. She takes that Janie she’s always wanted to be and hides it. A direct example of this is when he makes her hide her hair under the handkerchief. It’s a sign of submission. Until the day he died Janie had always had to hide behind this mask and be the mayor’s wife. She couldn’t be anything but because Joe didn’t want her to be. She was almost like a trophy wife now-a-days. She was a husk walking around with a planted smile on her face. She was more free with Tea Cake but was he any better than the others? He thought she was getting a little out of hand and he wasn’t mad at her but he hit her anyway. To teach her how to mind I suppose. Women were almost like a cattle and or pet dog. They were expected to submit, give all of themselves to their husbands while they give nothing, and were meant to mind every order they could think of. Now, it sounds ridiculous but then it was the law. I’m not going to sit here and say I haven’t seen something like that. My parents have been together for over twenty some odd years now…maybe longer but I don’t keep track. My dad expects my mom to take care of the house. He’ll pitch in now and then but he doesn’t really think it’s a guy thing to do. Understandable, it was how he was brought up. My mom was brought up the same way. No big deal. It is a big deal however, when someone decides they can beat submission into someone. I’ve never agreed with that policy. I’m not saying it for like…a little kid when you give them a slap on the butt go get them going or something but I’m talking about the kind of beating Janie gets when Tea Cake is simply mad. Now that’s ridiculous. I guess that’s what it was all about back then. There was a lot of love between the two of them but they couldn’t just talk out what was going on with each other. Tea Cake didn’t know any other way to get her to mind other than by using his fists. Ridiculous? Yes. Was it the way they lived? Yes. For women, that’d degrading. It makes you nothing more than an animal.

Moore Translation of "Poetry"

I hate it; some things are more important than this crap;
Reading it, while I hate it, I found it to be truthful.
The natural functions of life are cool but it's because
it's cool on it's own, not because of fancy words.
We don't like that fancy shit. We don't get it.
Dumb it down so everyone can like it.
All the animals and their natural functions, the fanatics in life
the twitchy people, all these natural things are important.
They're all "natural wonders".
However, if you can't write don't try to tell me about this shit
It's important things in life and you can't half-ass it.
You make the rest of us real poets look bad.
Poetry is about the real, the truth, what's hardcore in life.
If you can write this, amazing, if not get the hell out of here.
p.s. if you like all the above, read poetry, it's a good time

Stevens and Moore

This is the most confusing moment of my entire life. So I sign on and I read the assignment and right away I'm confused. Great. Another time where I am going to feel like I half-assed it due to my inferiour knowledge of the topic. So I'm going to try this out and whether or not I'm right...well right now I figure it doesn't really matter. Probably no one is going to get this right and I'm okay with that.

Differences: As far as I can tell Stevens wrote with a cause. He has a lot of, what seems to be anyway, layers. It isn't just superficial nonsense spewing out onto the page. If you sit there and read a bit harder it seems as though there is something underneath all of the kind of hookey lines at times. Moore on the other hand doesn't seem to really be a rebel with cause. She's kind of going with the flow which is perfectly fine. She's more of a let's live in beauty type of girl. Not only that but she's more...structured? She pays attention to the endings of her lines and how to begin each new stanza. I don't get that with Stevens. He ends each line with a period. Once the stanza is over it's over. Moore won't do that. She put 'a' to close a sentence and began with 'high-sounding' for the next stanza. So perhaps she's pays more attention to that fact or maybe less attention...pick one. Either or I don't really know. Stevens makes me stutter over his lines. I feel like I'm back in the first grade trying to read a chapter book all over again. His word usage is inane. He invents names? So he made up Ramon Fernandez just to make me stop and think what the hell kind of name is that. Thanks Stevens. Moore is more of a let it flow girl. I wonder if she ever even revised. Seriously, it feels natural to say her lines almost like they flow right out of her pen nub. Though she must cause the breaking of her stanzas feel deliberate unlike Stevens who almost makes it feel like oops that's how it goes I suppose.

Similarities: Well, I suppose there are a few between them. They love their animals. Of all the things they celebrate it's animals. I have nothing wrong with pets but I am not in love with them. I like puppies and cats just as much as the next girl but let's not go overboard here. They don't over use rhymes and in fact I would say Stevens rhymes on accident sometimes but yet he still uses it as does Moore. Moore much more often and I think more deliberate than Stevens does but otherwise I think they both ryhyme which is another similarity. Their languages seem to suggest to something bigger. With Moore I'm not sure there IS something bigger to get but there COULD be. I think she writes to write but if you really wanted to read 'more' into it (yes, ha I made a pun aren't I clever) you can and Stevens obviously has a deeper meaning.

Sound: Sound? What are you talking about? Just to clarify I'm sure if you mean sound as in the way they are spoken aloud or in which you say to yourself. Same thing? No, no they aren't. So sound...I actually read them aloud and Stevens uses more of the sound to his advantage I think. I feel like I'm repeating myself A LOT but he does emphasize the word characters a lot more in his stanzas because he stumbles and make us fumble through it. Moore is more of a pretty flow that could put someone to sleep. Not that they would I'm just saying...right. I mean you stumble a wee bit but the words aren't hard to say. They're simpler in the basis of the words themselves while Stevens makes them more complicated. I'm not sure if he has an ego problem where he needs to sound intelligent or what but mmmhhmmm.

Wateland v. Modernism

I’m not really sure how anything works in this writing. I’m not going to lie when I say that it confused the hell out of me. Between looking up almost all the words to figure out what they mean and then looking down to the bottom of the page to read all the little sub-texts on what he was referencing I feel as though I missed the point. I tried rereading it just for content but it’s hard to do when you don’t have the proper background for the reading.

What I do feel is different than that other modernists was the way in which Eliot spoke. He referenced a lot of higher-class things. His writing doesn’t apply to all of the people in general. I had no idea what Shakespeare plays he was referencing and besides that who would? No other than the ‘learned’ people of the time would. How interesting is it to sit there and explain every little reference to someone? It ruins the meaning I think of the whole point.

The one that I semi-understood was The Fire Sermon. I’m referencing mainly to page 1437. I think, again I stress think, that she may be a prostitute of some sort who uses her body to survive. “Endeavours to engage her in caresses/Which still are unreproved, if undesired./Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;/Exploring hands encounter no defence;/His vanity requires no response;/And makes a welcome indifference.” To me this sounds almost like rape. This man who is “one of the low on whom assurance sits”. Who is he to think that he can take what doesn’t belong to him? Is this what Eliot is getting at? I feel like I’m missing the essential in his writing. Is it the people thinking they can take whatever they want no matter whose it is or even if they don’t have permission. This woman doesn’t want him but yet she does nothing to stop him. She allows herself to be plundered and then goes on with life with a “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over”. I don’t know the entire thing confused me. Eliot called the man her lover but is he really? Maybe that word meant something else back then but to me it doesn’t mean someone whom you allow yourself to sleep with but feel nothing for and just allow him to have his way with you. I don’t know perhaps I am reading the text wrong but to me the entire thing seemed vulgar and it made me feel queasy.

It’s almost as though this woman thinks there is nothing else out there and if this is what she must suffer then she must. She seems despairing and not able to rise above what she is. If this is the ‘lover’ then she will permit him but she will not feel anything but she will keep going because why die. Parker stated it well when she said all the ways of dying pretty much suck so we should all just live anyway. I feel like she’s all alone and as reader you want to reach out and touch her and have her know she’s okay but it’s not possible. In the opening scene she’s just sort of waiting, he knows she’s alone he says so. He goes up has his way with her and then leaves. Again, she’s left alone after her ‘lover’ comes to call. Isolation I guess is what comes to mind when I think of her.

Another point of which I did notice him bringing out the idea of the poor being oppressed type thing was in the same section but on page 1439. ‘On Margate Sands, / I can connect / nothing with nothing. / The broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect/ nothing.’ That’s just sad. These people work so hard, they expect nothing but yet they don’t have the attitude that they are better than the rest of the world what they do have they are grateful for. They work in the dirt, the grime. They get the worst jobs and yet they think that this is the best life for them. The rich oppress them and take advantage of their humble attitudes to make sure it stays that way.

I couldn’t really grasp all of Eliot. I know you said in class that we shouldn’t try to get it all at once and I won’t lie I didn’t even try to. I found this difficult to understand and I don’t think I got the whole meaning of what he was trying to say. In fact, I am downright confused about it almost the entire time. His format was easy with the rhythm. He didn’t have a rhyme scheme, no real pattern that I could discern at least. It makes it more of a story than any type of poetry. Other than that I have no clue and I hope we talk about this in class to clarify the issue.

Zitkala Sa

My over all impression…that’s hard. I didn’t live in these times and reading the history of them nothing really good came out of us converting the Indians to our life style and these documents seem to prove it.

She was…free. In the literal sense she was free. She ran around daily with children her age. She lived by the river and didn’t need indoor plumbing, she didn’t need a grocery store, and she had all the company she could ever want. She was able to listen to the legends and or old tales at night before she slept. She was envious of her life but as I was reading I was envious of her life. She had nothing to care about at the age of the palefaces invading her land and converting her brethren. She had fields to run in, acres that belonged to no one so why not to her?

Once she starts getting older it seems as though she’s beginning to be sucked in. The missionaries come and convince the children that the lives they lead are insufficient to the ones that they could offer them. Looking back on it now, they lost so much when they left their traditional ways. Even the returning of her older brother brought more changes to her lifestyle. They went from the traditional teepee to a log cabin house, her mother went from the traditional garb to the cotton of the palefaces. The things she was used to were changing and she was okay with that. She was too young to understand what it really meant as her mother thought.

It reminds me of the book I am reading for my teaching reading class. We try to stamp out all the differences in our cultures and try to make them ‘correct’. It’s the same as telling black students that they speak insufficiently and labeling them ‘verbally corrupt’ because they don’t speak Standard English. Let’s face it, no one speaks Standard English. We wiped out her culture. They no longer have the roots that they for so long had without our interference.

Her last line was perhaps what touched me the most “I was as frightened and bewildered as the captured young of a wild creature.” In a way that was exactly what she was. We thought of them as savages and we wanted to correct them. That’s all we wanted to do but in the process we ‘fixed’ their entire lifestyle. Huge moments of their lives, their histories, their old stories, many are lost because they stopped passing them on in their traditional manner. She wasn’t expecting what we gave them. We fed them lies about our lives. Maybe not lives but we told her the truth in the way that we saw it. We never really told her what to expect, a huge culture shock to say the least.

Booker vs. Du Bois

Washington is all about black rights but not RIGHT now. In the Atlanta Exposition he’s basically telling the everyone in the country that ‘No, don’t make us equal, we don’t need nor want to be on the same ‘level’ as you.’ It almost seems as though he is contradicting himself. He wants equal rights but he wants his race to earn it because forcing them to blend, to be given these rights, would make them artificial and not worth it. He wants them to WAIT for something that they shouldn’t have to wait for. “I believe it is the duty of the Negro…to deport himself modestly in regard to political claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from the possession of property, intelligence, and high character for the full recognition of his political rights” (p.767-68) It’s almost to the point of him ignoring everything but making money for the black people. How is that not greedy?

Du Bois sends all his respect to Washington but disagrees in namely all of his beliefs. He clearly states “…men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things: 1. The right to vote 2. Civic equality 3. The education of youth according to ability” Isn’t that what whites get from this country from the moment they are born? Why should the blacks feel as though they shouldn’t get the same treatment due to the pigmentation of their skin? It’s not as though the black people as a whole expect an immediate and abrupt change to the way of life. So really, they see Washington’s point that it’ll be eventual; they want it to happen sooner rather than the later Washington speaks of.

What happens between the two texts is that Du Bois is arguing with a dead guy. I know he’s not speaking directly to Washington but he gets awfully close. He wrote this whole article based on Booker’s life, so in essence, he’s arguing with him but it isn’t disrespectful. They are agreeing to disagree because no one can continue the argument. Booker is lying in his grave so that right there causes the point to be moot between the two of them. What it does do on Du Bois part is bring to light that perhaps Washington was wrong after all and it starts a whole new kind of rebellion. His followers, Bookers that is, get a whole new point of view of the man they respected and followed his beliefs.

Regionalism (?)

It was cold; colder than Dawn could ever remember it being. Grumbling to herself she swung her legs out of bed and as her feet touched the ground she stifled a yelp as she felt the cold, frozen floor under her bare toes. Wrapping the blanket round her she shuffled over to the window. Of course, ever since she moved here to Fredonia it never failed to amaze her how much snow they got. Not only that but for some reason they never canceled classes. Moving up here from Florida was a big culture. Fredonia should’ve had a sign posted on it that said ‘Welcome to small town USA’. She shouldn’t complain though. It was one of the main reasons she came here. It wasn’t a large town. Everyone could say hi to one another even if they didn’t know who they were speaking to and it wasn’t considered weird. Their main street that held all the bars was considered “downtown”. That idea made her laugh out loud. All the bars were basically around the block from each other. It still amazed her that she could walk from one to another without having to travel far. There didn’t need to be a DD because everything was in a reasonable amount of walking distance.
Dawn shook herself and started preparing for the day. When she moved here she had to go shopping immediately once the winter came. A hooded sweatshirt was not sufficed to keep off the onslaught of cold that seemed to attack this region. She pulled on her big boots and her heavy winter coat. Settling her hat on her head and wrapping the lower half of her face in a scarf she headed out the door. Immediately stepping out of the door the cold hit her and stripped all warmth from her body. If she walked fast enough she could get some of the heat back into her feet at least. It wasn’t the cold that she hated so much, it was the wind. Fredonia seemed to always have a wind blowing from somewhere through the college campus. It always managed to find the crack in her heavy winter armor and relentlessly dug deeper until the chill went down to her bones. Only then did it feel like it let up a little but she always thought that was because she couldn’t feel it anymore.
Getting to class was always a chore. Dawn always gets distracted by the scenery. She may not like the cold but she liked the way things looked covered in snow. This particular morning she couldn’t help but admire the trees. They had an ice storm the other night (go figure) and the trees were covered with the sleek mass of frozen water. The icicles made the branches so heavy that they hung low to the ground. Dawn slowed down and broke off one of the smaller ones toward the end of the branch. She knew that getting cold enough, and if the ice was heavy enough, the tree would crack and break. She didn’t think that happened too often around these parts but then she didn’t know for sure. It had only been a few months since she moved up here. She turned back with the icicle in her gloved hand and sucked on it as she started moving faster again. The water tasted cool and clean and she enjoyed it as it slid down her throat.
Along the way she stopped in the Williams Center to get a cup of coffee. Being to class on time be damned she was going to try to at least get something warm in her before she got there. It would perk her up before she had to go and watch the middle school students pretend to learn. It was ridiculous the teaching methods that the teachers were using over there at the Dunkirk school. They taught reading by using pictures. Ridiculous, as if that is really going to help the students. It was no wonder that those children were testing so low on the state exams. It amazed her how atrocious their spelling was as well. It’s disgusting really that even the teachers don’t seem to care anymore.
Dawn gently sipped her steaming hot Irish Crème Latte and headed off to class again. It was only over in one of the McEwen lecture halls but she always made it a point to get there a little earlier. She was just so cold. Walking along she felt her blood pumping again but she was afraid that if she hadn’t gotten the coffee into her she was going to freeze. She really needed to earn her New York thick skin soon or else she would never survive in this town. Opening the doors that led to her classroom she paused as she didn’t see a huddled mass around the door. It was odd because almost everyone waited outside the door until the class was about to start. Walking to the doors she saw a sign posted. ‘McCords American Lit class is canceled today.’ Well go figure. What are the odds of that? Dawn smiled to herself and headed back to her room. She was calling in sick and going back to snuggle in her warm bed.

Edith Wharton v. Henry James

I'm not going to sit here and write that I know exactly what Henry James was talking about because honestly, I don't. I have this vague, foggy impression of what he was trying to get at but through his difficult syntax and his long winded explanations I find myself longing for some clarity. So bear with me as I try to fumble through this explanation of how James' belief of what fiction depicts directly coincides with Edith Wharton's short story "Souls Belated"

"The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life" (James 554). I don't know whether or not Wharton had ever had a scandalous affair in her life time but she portrayed it perfectly. She had me believing that I was the one at the end of my rope, that I was the one society would reject if they had ever known what I had done or that I was not married to the man whom I spend my nights with. It seemed like it was a real life occurence and let's face it, it is. How many times have we heard of someone having a scandal attached to their names due to their infidelity? Now, I'm not an avid celebrity stalker but I was hard pressed NOT to hear about the whole Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie-Jennifer Aniston triangle that had happened some time ago. It STILL gets media attention now. Things like that cause a disturbance in the "comfortable atmosphere" that we live in so of course everyone is going to talk about it and of course everyone is going to turn and stare when they see the forementioned people. (this case is mainly cause they're famous but it still is relevant to some degree) This was precisely what Lydia was afraid of.

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel...is that it be interesting" (James 557). I think Edith Wharton held to that quite well. It never really god boring reading about Lydia moan and groan about hers and Gannett's position in life and how they had compromised themselves by having this affair. The account of Lydia's emotions and how she feels about Gannett IS interesting. It reveals so much about her character and about the time period itself. It kind of leaves the reader wanting for more than just scraping the surface of her ideas and it was INTERESTING. Which was the whole point wasn't it? Wharton just had to make the story interesting and therefore she had accomplished the only obligation that James had set out for her. So does this make it a "good" story?

"They would argue, of course, that a novel ought to be 'good', but they would interpret this term in a fashion of their own, which would indeed vary considerably from one critic to another. One would say being good means representing virtuous and aspiring characters, placed in prominent positions; another would say it depends on a 'happy ending', on a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs and cheerful remarks" (James 556). So according to James no one really knows if a novel is good or not. I mean, how could they? With all the genres that people prefer to read who can really determine whether or not the story is good. Wharton doesn't necessarily make her ending a happy one. In fact you could just consider them giving in. Lydia comes back into the hotel but is she going to be happy with Gannett? Or will they forever be ashamed of how they began their courtship? Does Lydia come back into the hotel because she loves him or is it because honestly she doesn't have anywhere else to go so why leave him? He can give her support, money, a home, and security. Why leave that for the unknown?

"Catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous forces keeps Fiction upon her feet" (James 563) "...only condition that I can think of attaching to the composition of the novel is...that it be sincere" (James 567). I believe Wharton accomplished that which James believed was the true art of Fiction. Come on, the man capitalized fiction. He treated it as a proper noun, he obviously holds this genre in high esteem. Wharton, I believe, is a perfect example of what James was trying to portray. It was a highly irregular story of a scandalous affair, one that would ruin a man and a woman's place in society, and she was entirely sincere about the whole story. She had the characters be almost brutally honest with each other, especially in Lydia's case, and portrayed the situation quite candidly.

The short story was, all in all, well written and James well...he was confusing but I muddled through to the best of my abilities.