Work!

Super Sad has, in general, made me sad, but not until this section did it become truly scary. The fact that these events could happen at what feels like any moment scares me. What scares me even more is the behavior of those after the rupture. First, Joshie: Lenny's boss is just a pain right now. "I haven't really spent time with Joshie since the Slap. He's off somewhere, negotiating with the IMF or the Norwegians or the Chinese or whoever still gives a damn." His role in the workforce has been to keep a small group of employees at his finger tips. He has become an absent boss and disappears all the time, and to Lenny's knowledge, to kiss ass to the other countries that MIGHT buy them out and save them. Personally, I think Joshie is being a coward and is not facing the reality of the situation, instead he is trying to live some fantasy out by not being in the bad situation like everyone else. Then there's Eunice: "Back home, Eunice took charge of organizing the relief efforts for the older people." She's filling her time with work so she doesn't have to focus on how much her life sucks. Really, she's doing the best out of all of them. At least she's doing some good with her time. Unlike Joshie, she's seeing the effects of the rupture and dealing with them personally. He's a coward, who has caused these hard times and is running away. Finally, there's Lenny. He's filled his time with his job just so he has a routine again. Not only that, but at the rate that he gives money away to random strangers, he'll need to keep working. "Work has been a blur." He's been in and out just to do the mundane tasks. In fact, there is an entire 8 page section from his diary. It starts at work and of the 8 pages, only 1 paragraph was about work in the 8 page chunk. He's not concerned with work. He would much rather spend his time with Eunice.

M. Butterfly

I think if we had known Song's gender from the get-go, we would have felt frustrated, duped, and thought less of the play.

First off, Hwang clearly wrote the play knowing the events that occurred. Most likely, a theater-goer would have also known the events surrounding this topic. It wouldn't have been a secret that Song was a man simply because of the real events that the play is based on. 

I feel that I would have been frustrated by the ending if I had not known that Song was a man for the whole show. Maybe it's something to do with our fascination at seeing others fail, but I enjoyed seeing Gallimard struggle through three affairs and eventually divorce his wife for a man. It's sort of like reality television: we are fascinated by these people's lives, but ultimately their lives are filled with unrealistic drama and we cannot turn away. I felt the same with Gallimard. I cannot imagine how he did not know that the person he was sleeping with was not a female, but I couldn't help but sit back and see what G did to S knowing that S was a male the entire time. 

I also feel like if we had not known until Song strips at the end of the play, we would have felt just as duped as Gallimard. I do like the occasional romantic movie, and I want to believe in true love, but knowing that their love was true through the entire show and ending with us knowing that it wasn't would have made it less fulfilling for me. I actually enjoyed seeing Gallimard fall for this man and then read his reactions to Song's lack of vagina. I definitely wouldn't have appreciated seeing this love story and then find out it wasn't a love story in the long run. Again, I really enjoyed knowing that it wasn't a love story from the get-go. I felt that the play was well-written as it is and I would have thought less of it if I had been duped and frustrated by the ending. Instead I was able to see the beauty in the ending because I did not feel those emotions. 

StOoPiDDDD

Throughout Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" we get a sense of who is a good country person and who is not. The ultimate thing here is that they all seem like hillbillys. The characteristics they hold dear often have to do with talking back, eating, and sitting in random places, such as the top of the fridge.They also rename themselves so their mothers will hate them.

Even though these characteristics do not seem desirable to someone like me, they are desirable to someone. Which leads me to the point of this blog-the moral of the story. I think what should be taken away from this story is that you actually cannot trust "good" country people. They abscond with your wooden legs and leave you in such a position in a barn that you cannot get down without your leg that is also far away from your house so it would be impossible to get back. I cannot believe I just typed that sentence, but it's true. These "good" country folk are untrustworthy and difficult to deal with.

Not only was Manley Pointer a phony bible salesman, but he was just phony in general. He is the reason why you cannot trust good country people. They take advantage of you and never leave you alone. This is what I took away from the story: "good" country people are untrustworthy, difficult to deal with, and annoying.

Joy (aka Hulga) should have been able to detect that something was wrong with this guy. Her P.H.D should have given her a distinct advantage at noticing the warning signs such as being annoying and merely staying for dinner to get know the mother of the woman with a fake leg. I think I can add that stupidity is also on the list of moral take aways from the story. Good country people are stupid too. They don't notice their simple surroundings and are unfortunately taken advantage of because of this fact.

The Twitter Experiment

I personally found great fun in the twitter experiment. I really appreciated getting to know and use a tool I was not familiar with.

I think that another great thing about the twitter experiment was that I did have to get my responses to be rather short. Although it was difficult and daunting at first (which caused a greater time span between my responses), I got used to it and that made my responses feel clearer to me. Once I got in the habit of responding concisely, it made my points more valid.

Another benefit to the twitter exercise was that I felt more vocal. I felt more comfortable knowing that I could respond. I really don't know what it was, but I tweeted 22 times and that is certainly much more than I speak in class. Perhaps this is because I couldn't rely on other to speak what I'm feeling. I had to speak it myself-which is not always the case in class.

I did think it was hard to do this using literature as our discussion topic, but I do feel that it went well. Clearly, we weren't engaged with talking about the Hart Crane epigraph, but once we talked about casting characters with real actors and what these characters mean, the conversation was sparked. The use of twitter did make the discussion seem more choppy, but using this medium for discussion was really unique and brought a new perspective. I laughed a lot at how responses were phrased and I felt that this was really valuable.

I think one thing that can be improved is having a clear starting point. Yes, it was obvious that the casting with modern actors was the starting point, but I think maybe giving the class a head's up of where we'll be starting would have been beneficial. I could have thought more about my decision and I actually did not even respond to this question because I was so busy trying to narrow my thoughts down to certain actors.

Jason Compson

I do believe Jason is a villain. Looking at this from the perspective of Caddy's daughter, Quentin, I definitely think he's a villain. He is openly racist, sexist, and clearly does not think highly of lower classes. Given that Caddy's daughter is girl, he's overly rude to her. Yes, she skips school sometimes to be with boys, but he is just plain mean to her. In the first four pages of the chapter, we encounter unnecessary violence towards her when he is grabbing her by the arm, she tries to slap him, and then he drags her into another room-only just to talk to her about her absence from school. This man is filled with hatred.

The mother of the Compson's also fuels Jason's psychotic doings. By showing her favoritism so openly to Jason only fuels his belief that he can get away with anything. It appears as this is the case as the chapter opens. She tells him not to be too hard on Q, but he is anyway because he knows the mother won't do much to stop him. He also leaves work to follow Q around-again fueled by the belief that he can do whatever he wants without worrying about repercussions.



Jason is clearly the villain. He stops his family from doing what they want or need to do. He constantly is trying to send Benjy to Jackson. He won't let Caddy see her daughter. He hardly mentions his brother Quentin at all. He also speaks ill of his father too. When you add all that he does to Caddy's daughter, he is disgusting. He should be despised by all of his family members and it appears as though he is. When you look at Benjy's and Quentin's chapters, it is apparent that Jason is the villain. He is the wrongdoer of the family and he is a psycho. He needs to get help.

Dos Passos

The Newsreel and Camera Eye sections certainly do offer an interesting piece to Mac. Although it feels easier to disregard these sections as irrelevant to the story, we know Dos Passos has added these sections in his writing for a purpose. There must be a reason why these are present throughout the narrative, but this reason is unclear just on a first read.

The very first Camera Eye section could easily be a memory that Fainy has of him and his mother. Although it is not explicitly stated in the section, it seems reasonable to me that in the next section where Fainy's mother dies, Fainy would have just had a flashback of his mother in a stream of consciousness thought process.

The final Camera Eye section shows the narrator seeing a man reciting Shakespeare's Othello. This could also be a view into the eyes of Fainy inside his mind. Given that Doc Bingham recited Shakespeare on several occasions and it was his recitation of Shakespeare that landed the two of them into trouble in the final few pages of the story, it would seem reasonable again to believe that the Camera Eye sections are through the point of view of Fainy and that these shed insight into what Fainy is really thinking at the times of these incidents.

The Newsreel sections are harder for me to figure out the purpose of. The only idea that pops into my head is that when these sections occur, it also occurs around the same time of when Fainy was reading a newspaper. The sections cover a vast amount of material, most of which are news clippings or happenings of the time when Dos Passos wrote. Alexander's Ragtime Band is mentioned in one of the newsreel sections and this was a song that came out around the time of the publishing of this story.

Although none of these things are stated explicitly throughout the story, this seems most logical to me.

Tired to Death, At Best

Frost's poetry is deceptively simple. At first reading, it would appear as though Frost's poetry is straightforward. However, it is not. His poetry is laced with metaphors about life, stopping to smell the roses, and what it actually means to be a good neighbor. In "After Apple-Picking" it appears as though a man has worked very hard to pick all of his apples. He states that many went to the cider-apple heap as if they meant nothing and no energy was given to them. This man has worked for a long time and wants the readers to know it. In the final lines of the poem, the man states that he is about to enter sleep. He comments that the woodchuck may look and think that the man is entering a hibernation sleep or a regular human sleep. The man narrates that it would be hard to tell because the man is simply so tired. Overall, this poem talks about apple picking, but is actually talking about the man's tiredness. It almost seems like the man dreads not picking apples. This may be a stretch, but the fact that the woodchuck would seem confused about hibernation or a regular human sleep may be because the man looks like death and has worked himself to that point. This is how simple Frost's poetry is. All of this meaning came from a couple of lines, but was easy enough to determine it from a second read or even a first one, unlike the readings from Crane.