Final Blog Report

There were many different ways that the different theories of literature could be used to interpret “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. The two main theories I acknowledged in this story were queer studies and gender/feminism studies. I related Okonkwo’s dire need to be different than his father to both the theories, choosing the idea of the homosexual panic from a queer studies view, and the idea of gender and masculinity from a feminism/gender studies view.

In the beginning of the book, Chinua Achebe describes Okonkwo as being an admirable, strong, ideal masculine male figure. What does being masculine actually look like and sound like though? Through feminism and queer studies, gender and queerness are concepts created by numerous different ideas. There are many different ways to be female, male, gay, lesbian, and straight. Our cultures define what these concepts are to us individually. Okonkwo’s masculinity is described as being the winner of a tough wrestling match, he’s “tall and huge,” and he has an anger that many people around him fear. Achebe describes Okonkwo’s masculinity even more by describing how unmasculine his father was. He say’s Okonkwo’s father was weak, frail, old, and lazy. He was unsuccessful and poor. This does not necessarily mean he was feminine if we were too look at him through the lens of today, but in their village if you didn’t have many wives, were strong, or were rich and successful you were not a typical man. Achebe states that Okonkwo’s biggest fear was to become like his father and to be seen as less than a man.

The homosexual panic, as Robert Dale Parker defines it, is when straight people have a fear that people may see them as homosexual in a culture where gayness or lesbianness is not accepted. In a way, although Okonkwo and his father are both not queer and they do not seem to live in a homophobic or even homosexual culture, Okonkwo has a fear of being seen as less of a man by the rest of his village. Instead of his culture being judgmental against homosexuals, his culture is judgmental and degrading toward the idea of women. Women, like gays, get less respect in their culture. If Okonkwo lets himself fall to be like his father, who he sees as feminine, lazy, and unsuccessful, he is afraid of the people in his village looking down on him as they do with the women.

Blog Report 3

There is no more bothersome intellectual struggle to humankind than the search for an answer that does not exist. Literature both exploits this perpetual curiosity by leaving ample room for speculation and allows irresolvable questions to circulate across audiences for generations. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 and Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” are two such examples of literary works that employ the use of ambiguity to captivate their audiences and provoke them to question the unknown.

 

Slaughterhouse-5, a famously ambiguous novel, cannot be consumed without the reader asking themselves several fundamental questions about the story’s structure and ideas. The wildly nonlinear storyline adds a great sense of ambiguity to the story, as its tendency to jump arbitrarily from one decade to another may cause a great deal of confusion for readers. The narrator, Billy Pilgrim, reveals himself almost immediately to be a remarkably unreliable source of reality. Yet despite this, his supposed journeys through space and time bear a fascinating ambiguity: is this truly Billy Pilgrim’s reality, or has he fabricated the science fiction components of his life to reason with a cognitive disability? If so, then to what extent has Billy embellished his life? Billy is likened to an actor in “a constant state of stage fright,” which prompts the reader to question the nature of free will, one of the great inquiries posed by the novel (Vonnegut 29). If everything Billy says about Tralfamadore and time travel is true, then is Billy simply a helpless actor at the mercy of an already-written and unchangeable script? The discussion of fate and free will is a main idea of Slaughterhouse-5, and the ambiguity Vonnegut employs to facilitate this discussion adds to readers’ continued fascination with the novel.

 

The ambiguity of “Recitatif” is more specific in nature, but it, too, forces readers to ask questions concerning its characters. Morrison tells readers her main characters are different races, but writes without giving readers any clear idea as to which girl, Twyla or Maggie, is black or white. Even though their races seem very relevant to the plot, “Recitatif” still manages to be an extremely intriguing read without a solid answer. The ambiguity of Maggie’s race is also a relevant plot point, and it also goes undetermined throughout the entirety of the story. Twyla and Roberta not only remember Maggie’s race differently, but they also have a different understanding of the events that conspired that day in the orchard. This also brings into question Twyla’s bias as the narrator: is her description of the events accurate, and does its accuracy differ with respect to Roberta’s? Is her point of view biased in any way, and if so, then how? The main ambiguity of “Recitatif” largely concerns just one major aspect of the story, yet it prevails in creating massive uncertainty that piques the interest of readers.

 

While constructing definitive answers for these questions may prove impossible, the mysteries they leave keep people reading. These mysteries also allow audiences to facilitate sophisticated and speculative conversations concerning the ambiguous elements of literature and other media. While filling in all of the blanks may never be a reality, the desire to seek completeness is perfectly natural, and it drives avid readers to pursue a greater depth of discussion and analysis.

-Megan L.

Blog Journal 4

In last week’s literature circle, I challenged my classmates to consider the relationship between Okonkwo and his father, given the ending of Things Fall Apart, and how it relates to the relationship between Okonkwo and his son, Nwoye. To address Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, I questioned the significance of the title with respect to the story, considering it is the French word for “recitative.” I wanted to hear my group’s ideas on how the concept of performing might relate to the story Morrison tells.

I found that Recitatif necessarily employs a strong sense of ambiguity. In fact, its lack of clarity at many points seems to characterize the story itself. Through Morrison’s use of language, the races of the main characters, Twyla and Roberta, are ambiguous, as well as the race of Maggie, who is only described as “old and sandy-colored,” a seemingly innocuous fact that ultimately brings the women to a fundamental disagreement later in life. What I liked most about the story’s ambiguous nature is that it presents the opportunity for multiple interpretations of the story, and it seems to play a role in the identity of Recitatif itself.

-Megan L.

Blog Journal; Recitatif (11/27/2017)

Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif’ is about two girls who were in the same foster home, who continuously meet through their different journeys in life. The times that they meet aren’t always the most convenient, and they find that they don’t always see eye to eye either like they might have when they were younger. Their relationship from their younger selves to their older selves brought me back to a movie I loved when I was younger called “Now and Then.”

In this movie, a group of girls grow up together. Their lives are each entirely different with all different personalities, just as Roberta and Twyla were extremely different with different backgrounds. They find a bond in the most unexpected things. Twyla and Roberta bonded over how bad they were each doing in school, or how much they disliked the woman they referred to as the “Big Bozo.” The girls in the movie bond over things such as a family’s divorce, and they also sort of make fun of one of the older characters in the movie and make him out to seem creepy. Also, in both the story and the movie, none of the girls had the best home life. Roberta’s mother was ill, Twyla’s mother wouldn’t stop dancing. In the movie, one of the girls grew up with only the men in her house, another had parents who were divorcing, and another had a mother who was extremely over bearing. As the girls in the movie grew up, they kept meeting at different times, and never harbored any negative feeling toward each other. In the story, although Roberta and Twyla would run into each other, it wasn’t a warm and inviting conversation of “How have you been?” and it seems as if they continued to have negative feelings toward each other that neither could really explain.

Blog Report 2: Just a Work of Literature, or Something More?

Chinua Achebe’s magnum opus, Things Fall Apart, has been controversial since its conception. However, this controversy has failed to keep it out of classrooms across the globe, and over fifty years later, the world’s fascination with his writing has yet to cease. This has brought to light a new question: in which classroom does Things Fall Apart belong? Is Things Fall Apart solely worth considering as a work of literature, or is its premise more inclined toward that of a powerful educational tool in Nigerian history and culture?

 

Although a true definition of literature may be its own subject of contention in some contexts, most dictionary entries make mention of written works that possess a timeless quality. Things Fall Apart, originally published in 1958, has certainly met this standard of longevity, as it is still appreciated and discussed in literature classes today. The melancholic story of an Ibo villager and his family meets the harsh reality of imperialism, and Achebe’s telling reads like a cohesive tale from start to finish. Achebe’s skillful use of literary devices and language (more specifically, “African English”), is also characteristic of great literature; when Nwoye hears the songs of the missionaries, he makes expert use of an impactful simile: “The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the planting earth” (Achebe 147).

 

While Things Fall Apart embodies the qualities of a work of literature, both the story’s plot and Achebe’s decision to initially publish in English make it a powerful educational experience in history and culture. Achebe’s decision to write the novel in English invites western readers to explore the culture of the Ibo people and the hazards of imperialism. The first thirteen chapters of the book contain nearly as much plot as they do cultural significance, and Achebe uses this section to convey important aspects of a very sophisticated and well-organized Ibo society. In this segment of the novel, readers are privy to a host of Ibo cultural practices, including a trial, storytelling episodes, and a wedding. In addition to the inclusion of several cultural elements, the second section of the book features a poignant reminder of the impact of European imperialism, a significant undertaking in Africa’s history. However, the fact that Things Fall Apart was written as a work of fictional literature does limit the assumptions readers can make about Ibo culture of this time. Although the experiences Achebe recounts are based on authentic history, Things Fall Apart is not a textbook or historical document, nor should it be read like one.
Perhaps the world’s captivation with Things Fall Apart has more to do with one interpretation than the other, but it is impossible to say which. This is, arguably, what makes it such a fantastic piece of literature; not every novel can so masterfully tell a story and teach an important historical and cultural lesson in the manner Things Fall Apart does. Ultimately, the experience is determined by the disposition of the reader, and Things Fall Apart provides one for those seeking either a well-written story or a unique cultural education.

–Megan L.

Report One

Although it has been examined, dissected, and debated for decades, much of the story of Billy Pilgrim remains quite mysterious based solely on one key aspect of the structure of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five: Billy, the unreliable narrator. From the opening lines of the novel, Billy hints at his fallibility as a storyteller, and his later tales of time travel and alien abduction do not inspire confidence in his sanity. However, despite Billy’s questionable monologuing, he exits the war and assumes a rather prosperous career as an optometrist; an interesting choice for a man who seemingly cannot see how his own life moves from beginning to end. Billy Pilgrim’s career as an optometrist provides the story with irony that manifests itself in two distinct ways: Billy’s literal, physical vision, and his moral vision.

To properly explore the idea of irony in the context of Billy’s sight, it is first necessary to acknowledge the interpretation of Billy Pilgrim as a mentally ill individual suffering from some variety of trauma or psychosis, likely a result of his experiences in World War Two. Taking this perspective into consideration, Billy’s visions of the Tralfamadorians would be just that: only visions. It is curious that a man whose career requires rigorous schooling, an extensive knowledge of biological sciences, and the ability to remain in a steady job for any period of time would hold fast to perceived hallucinations of time travel and green aliens. Thus, it is ironic that Billy, who has made a living for his family helping other people see, lacks the acuity to see his own life and surroundings clearly.

Another interesting point worth examining is the irony of Billy’s belief that the moral views of humans are inferior to those of Tralfamadore. During his discussion with his daughter, Barbara, he makes clear his thoughts on the state of humanity: “So many of those souls were lost and wretched, Billy believed, because they could not see as well as his little green friends on Tralfamadore” (Vonnegut 36). The “souls” he refers to are those of the people of Earth; those who subscribe to the “delusion” of free will. Here, the idea of sight is contextualized not as one’s sight of the physical world, but as sight or acknowledgement of one’s beliefs and values. Billy’s assertion that the alien world he has imagined possesses more developed moral sight than most of humanity is also ironic; since he created the world of Tralfamadore, he essentially (and perhaps unknowingly) claims that he alone bears this heightened sense of sight. All the while, his means of argument, Tralfamadore itself, is nothing more than a construct of his own imagination, augmented by mental illness.
While this irony is an interesting point to examine, it is contingent upon the perception of Billy Pilgrim as a man suffering from severe cognitive illness. In doing this, any science fiction interpretations are lost, but the conversation of Vonnegut’s ironic choice to make Billy Pilgrim an optometrist is worth following, as it provides further evidence of the sophistication of Slaughterhouse-Five as a work of literature.  Both the connotation and denotation of “sight” are relevant in this discussion, as his physical vision is understandably unclear, but his vision of how humanity should view certain ideas, such as free will, is arguably clouded as well.

-Megan L.

Blog Report #1: Slaughter House Five

The idea of the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, being solely science fiction is not how I see it. I think it is a combination of at least three genres as well, one being a historical: war drama, semi-autobiographical and even has hints of humor: dark/black comedy. I will share with you three different examples with supporting facts from the novel itself. In doing this, I will show you how I came to believe that there is more to Slaughter House Five then that of a science fiction novel.

The first example is that the novel has elements of a historical war drama. This is not your typical idea of a war drama, such as these novels “The book thief” set during WWII or “Cold Mountain” set near the end of the civil war. The vast majority of “Slaughterhouse Five” is taken place during the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim’s time as a solider in WWII. So much so that the climax of the story, which was given away right in the beginning of the novel, was the death of “poor old Edgar Derby” (as he is referred to throughout the novel) a fellow P.O.W. (Prisoner of war) with Billy Pilgrim.

“I think the climax of the book will be the execution of the poor old Edgar Derby” (Vonnegut, p. 6). We see that Billy’s time in the war, stayed with him throughout his life. Even as he time travels to different times and places, the story always ends up back to the war. Where it started, Billy/narrator wanting to write about his time during the war. This and many other parts in which he returns to the war makes it in my eyes a historical drama.

The next example is that I see this book as a semi-autobiographical novel. Although the story is told through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim I can see how elements of the author’s life is parallel to our main character.  One is how the narrator is sometime seen as Vonnegut himself. In the first chapter we read that the book is to be dedicated to Mary O’Hare, which also happens to be one of the people the actual book is dedicated too.  “I met his nice wife, Mary, to whom I dedicate this book” (Vonnegut, p. 15).

There are also the parts in where the narrator seems to have written himself into the story. In the first chapter, the narrator is says “I get drunk, and I drive my wife always with a breath like mustard gas and roses.” {Vonnegut, p. 5) This is later written into the story with Billy. Where in chapter 4 Billy answers the phone and on the other end is a drunk caller, “Billy Could almost smell his breath—- mustard gas and roses” (Vonnegut, p. 92). These examples along with the fact that Vonnegut himself was also a solider during WWII with similar experiences, tells me that he was sharing a part of his true story through Billy Pilgrim and or the narrator.

The last example of the idea that there is more to this novel then it being science fiction is that it has hints of dark/black humor it. The one that stood out to me the most is the line “poo-tee-weet”. This is somewhat ironic as well. First “poo-tee-weet” is what birds say during the silence after a massacre. I see this to have a hint of dark humor, in that when we think of birds singing it’s usually done in the spring time. When life is new, meaning this is the time when baby animals in the wild are born and nature comes back to life after the dead of winter.

But in this story, the birds singing is being done after a massacre. When all is dead and the polar opposite of how life is seen when hearing birds sing in the spring. Another example of this dark humor is when Billy pilgrim encounters the British officers. They seem to try to show Billy and his comrades a “good time” during his P.O.W experience. They even put on a musical of Cinderella. That alone is pretty silly and absurd to think of when reading a book showing us the horrors of war.

In conclusion, with these examples I hope you see the many different genre seen within this novel. There are many more examples that could be stated but these are the first to pop in my head. There is always more to what is originally seen when reading a book and “Slaughterhouse five” is no exception. There is more to its story then it being a book on time travel and aliens.  Which makes it an interesting book that covers several genre.

-Jamie Martin

Blog Post Report #1, 10/09/17

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a short story based on a little village who continues with and age old tradition that ends with one of the villagers being stoned. Although they have no clue why they continue with this practice, they mindlessly do so for the sake of not taking any chances with the future prosperity of their crops. In the second chapter of How to Interpret Literature, Robert Dale Parker explains the word irony as a concept of new criticism, and he defines it as, “…. It [irony] refers to an expression or event that means something different connotatively from what it means denotatively.” New criticists would read The Lottery and find many instances where Shirley Jackson used irony to not only uncomfortably intensify the age old tradition of the village lottery, but to also bring a small sense of humor into the work to take away from some of the intensity.

One of the main instances of irony in The Lottery is when Tessie Hutchinson shows up to the center of the village where most of the other villagers have already gathered. If we fast forward to the end of the story, we know that Bill Hutchinson, the father of the Hutchinson family, ends up drawing the unlucky paper that causes his family to have to redraw to figure out which one of them will have to be stoned at the end. Tessie Hutchinson, the wife of the family, ends up being the unlucky one. When Tessie first gathers, though, she is calm and collected. She brushes ‘the lottery’ off as a mindless event that is quick and easy, much like many of the other villagers who just want to get ‘the lottery’ over with and return to their homes. When she finally arrives and moves through the full crowd to her husband Bill, Mr. Summers states that he thought they were going to have to do ‘the lottery’ without her being there. She warmly and calmly replies to him with, “Wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now would you, Joe?” In this part of the short story, it’s almost as if she knew that in the end the person that would be getting stoned would be her, but she really didn’t know or expect it which is an example of irony.

Another way that Shirley Jackson illustrates irony in The Lottery is after ‘the lottery’ is over, and Tessie Hutchinson is about to be stoned. In the beginning of the story, young boys were running around gathering many stones for the event. When Bill Hutchinson pulls the piece of paper that causes his family to have to redraw to see who is to be stoned, he and Tessie’s children Nancy, Bill Jr, Harry, and little Davy also have to draw. When Tessie is about to be stoned, somebody handed little Davy some stones to join in the throwing of stones at his mother. This is another unexpected event in The Lottery that the readers and also Tessie Hutchinson were not expecting.

Irony tends to take away from some of the seriousness in some stories, and could maybe seem relatable to sarcasm in other contexts. In The Lottery it helps readers, such as myself, understand that ‘the lottery’ is not to be celebrated as the name may suggest. Which is a final example of how Shirley Jackson uses irony in her short story from the beginning to the end. Her careful use and placement of events draws readers into The Lottery so they feel as if they need to keep reading to find out what is actually taking place if it isn’t a modern day lottery.

Journal 3: SH5 Ch.3-4

In last week’s literature circle, I was the Passage Identifier. In chapter four of Slaughterhouse-Five, I was struck by a paragraph at the top of page 95:

“The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned in to a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed. ”

Billy Pilgrim watches the WW2 movie both backwards and forwards as he once again becomes “unstuck in time.” Billy’s apparent nonchalance at viewing time both backwards and forwards was quite compelling, and it raised several questions about the functions of his time travel. Billy knows he is to be abducted by aliens, but does has he lived this “episode” of his life before, or does he know this will occur simply through context? Has Billy perhaps lived most of his life already, both in and out of order, and is cycling through different episodes of it? His extrapolation of the film to the biblical start of humanity was interesting as well; once again, the religious concept makes a brief appearance.

I was reminded of the textbook’s concepts of the tale and the telling from the second section of structuralism. These terms are used to describe the sequence of events of a story, and it leads me to question whether or not we are reading the telling of Billy’s story, or the tale of a time traveler as his life appears to him. While Slaughterhouse-Five does move back and forth in time, does Billy see his life this way? Has he ever lived his life the entire way through linearly? Will he?

–Megan L.

 

Journal Three: SHF, Chapters 3-4

My role in this past week’s lit circle was the Literary Theorist.  In looking at SHF Chapters 3-4, through the Structuralism lens. I found that the concept of embedding or nesting was a large part of not only the said chapters but the story in its entirety. I see this in the story every time Billy time travels. When he does this he is telling another story within the story. He would continue to jump from one time period to another, continuing the story out of sync.

It is almost as if reading a book from different chapters gathering bits of information at a time to piece the story together.  Every time he time travels he tells another story within the original story. Which can get a bit confusing as to which story is the main one.

The connection I made from this is to the SYFY show “12 monkeys”, it too involves time travels.  Showing the plot in many different parts of the timeline, which also brings with it a separate storyline with in the original story.  Both main characters are able to time travel but are helpless in changing the outcome of what they see. As quoted in the book, “Among the things Billy could not change were the past, the present and the future.” (Vonnegut, pg. 77). This line is what made me connect the two, in the T.V. show the main character Cole, tries to saves someone yet they still died, it just happened in a different manner then the first time.

This shows that he was unable to change the outcome even with the power to time travel. This is concept that seems to be a trend in most time travel movies I have seen. Another example of this is seen the film “The Time Machine”. The same idea is presented in this story where the lead character’s fiancé dies and he tries to prevent it (several times) by time travel. Which does not stop her impending death. This leads him to go on time traveling again bring the viewers into more stories with in the first.

-Jamie Martin