Beneatha and Beyonce

When Beneatha reveals her hair to be “close-cropped and un-straightened” (80), her family and George are extremely appalled.  Their abhorrence is significant because curly hair is an attribute that epitomizes black pride.  Starting in the 1960s, black men and women stopped cutting their hair and grew afros to embrace their black heritage.

 

2016

Still today, natural hair is used as a symbol of empowerment and allows African Americans to express their culture.

 just look at Queen Bey herself rocking corn rose to embrace her black heritage.  Her new album, Lemonade, shocked the (white) world because Beyonce diverged from her girly, white-washed image and embraced her roots.  Songs like “Freedom” and “Daddy Lessons” had soulful rhythms that marked a stark contrast to her previous pop tunes.  (Saturday Night Live did a great parody of the world’s general shock at Beyonce’s new beats and you can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ociMBfkDG1w )



2008

But anyways, the reason why I’m including this is because the shock the world felt at Beyonce expressing her black heritage is similar to how Beneatha’s family and friends reacted to her form of “expressing ME” (48). 

Additionally, I found that when Mr. Linder came to visit the Youngers and Beneatha answered the door, amidst her nervousness in the presence of a white man, Beneatha finds herself “smoothing her hair” (113).  This imagery depicts Beneatha trying to smooth out her curls, and in turn, hide her black heritage from Mr. Linder because of her “embarrassment”.  This is one of the only times in the novel that Beneatha is shy about who she is.  Even when George and Asagai criticize her appearance as being “eccentric” (80) and “assimilationist” (63), Beneatha stays true to her views.  However, Mr. Linder evokes feelings of inferiority and insecurity.  This reminded me of the passage in The Bluest Eye when Pecola felt excited to purchase her Mary Janes, but after her nasty encounter with the cashier, she feels ugly again.  This similar relationship between white men and black girls demonstrates the theme that society inflicts emotional abuses on minorities.     

Grapes in Water

A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates the struggle of black minority groups through its skillful depiction of family relationships in the first act.

First of all, I find it significant that Hansberry set the time period for her novel as anytime between “World War II and the present” because it demonstrates the everlasting nature of the struggle for equality.  I also connected this time frame to “The Aesthetics of Segregation, Black Liberation” literary criticism.  This article states that Hansberry did “not offer desegregation as the ultimate answer to segregation, but rather as a necessary step” toward achieving equality for all of mankind (222).  The time frame adds to the notion that the fight for equality is ongoing by allowing readers in the “present” to take ownership of the problems presented in the play and apply them to their own lives.

Secondly, I thought that the characterization of the items in the house as “tired” not only emphasized Ruth’s weariness but also served to represent the exhausted lives of the black community as a whole.  In the 1950s, it was very difficult for people of color to attain white-collar jobs.  The majority of black women worked as maids or nannies for wealthy white families, and most black men worked in factories or held other blue-collar jobs.  These jobs offered little emotional reward, and there was little opportunity for advancement.  As a result, blacks were kept in an inescapable state of poverty and inferiority to whites.  This position in society took an emotional and physical toll on minorities.  In fact, the “American negro had a life expectancy of five to ten years less than the average white” (To Be Young 177).  The adverse effects on the emotional and physical well-being of blacks in an oppressive society is represented in Hansberry’s personification of the Lee’s house as “tired”.   

And finally, I found Walter’s rant about Ruth not supporting his dream very ironic.  He accusingly asserts that Ruth doesn’t understand her spousal duty to “making’em feel like [he] somebody” because she reasonably refuses to blindly support his dream of opening a liquor store.  Walter says that she suppresses his hope by indifferently offering him eggs without listening to him.  However, despite Walter’s whiney complaints that he is the one being oppressed, as a black woman, Ruth is ultimately the inferior partner in the relationship and therefore could never oppress him.  In fact, Walter repeatedly emotionally mistreats Ruth by referring to her as a “colored woman”(27) in a derogatory fashion.  Through this dynamic, Hansberry demonstrates the marital issues that develop as a result of a twisted and harmful society.

From 20 to 30

“’No…I just remembered that today’s my birthday.’

I was thirty.  Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Island.  Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamor on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead.  Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.  Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.  But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.  As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.” (135-136)

 

I find this passage tragically beautiful because it essentially demonstrates the inevitable end to the glamour and the impossibility of Daisy and Gatsby’s romance.  This scene takes place right after the big fight scene between Tom and Gatsby, and once Gatsby and Daisy have left, Jordan, Tom, and Nick are left silently soaking in the events that had just taken place before them.  Reflecting on the fight is somewhat sobering to Nick, and he is suddenly pulled from his state of wonderment of the follies of the Easterners around him when he realizes that it is his birthday.

However, no one wishes Nick a happy birthday, and the statement becomes a rather sad, stand-alone fact.  Even Nick himself describes turning thirty as “menacing”, because he is reluctant to end the fun of his 20s. Therefore, it is significant that Nick turned 30 rather than some other year because the transition from his 20s to 30s symbolizes the inevitable end of the youthful follies of the 1920s. All the easterners cling to their youth with a tight grip and forever strive to achieve the high of living fast and carelessly.  To them, the passage of time is a disdainful inconvenience.  But after this fight scene, each character is met with the ugly reality of their follies, and they are forced to retreat back into the comfort of their wealth.  For example, after Daisy’s affair with Gatsby turns serious and Gatsby expresses to Daisy his expectations for her to live with him, Daisy runs back to Tom because of the safety of his stability.  The description of Daisy’s dreams (and implicitly, her past romance with Gatsby) as “well-forgotten” mark the end of Daisy and Gatsby’s romance.   

Also, with the aid of Jordan’s comforting touch, Nick is able to accept his age and the end of his follies.  His new appreciation for wisdom and stability is demonstrated in his contrast of Jordan to Daisy when he says that Jordan “was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.”  It is at this point where Nick becomes truly disillusioned with his friends and begins to separate himself from them, resulting in his break up with Jordan and his move out of the city at the end of the book.  Because although Gatsby and Jordan and Tom and Daisy will forever chase the highs of the 1920s, Nick is able to accept that he is 30, and his time under the yellow “city lights” of Long Island has expired. 

 

 

Extra Tempestuous Seas Cannot be Trusted

One of the characteristics of Modernistic writing is that the narrator is often unreliable.

In The Great Gatsby, it is difficult for one to detect that Nick is an unreliable narrator.  His descriptions are thorough, his observations are seemingly unbiased, and his standpoint is rather neutral.  His skepticism towards others is implicit and often clearly justifiable.  For example, he takes a reasonable jab at his own family when he remarks on their ridiculous pride in their “tradition” of believing that they are descendants of the Dukes of Buccleuch, even though the “real founder of my line…sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business” (3).  This understandably comic remark makes Nick relatable and trustworthy, strengthening his credibility. 

                Also, Nick seems to see through the follies of his comrades.  For example, he views the antics of Tom and Daisy from a reliably omniscient viewpoint, as he is seemingly able to predict that despite their own beliefs, Tom and Daisy’s move East would not be a “permanent move” (6) because of their tempestuous and turbulent lifestyles.  He also sees through Daisy’s charming body language by remarking that “Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her” (9), and goes further with his observation to minimize the small-minded people who have made this judgmental remark about Daisy by adding that the criticism was “irrelevant” (9).  By summing up people in plain predictions, Nick seems to be superior and smarter than the other characters in the book, making him a reliable judge of the events because he is wiser.

                However, there is one flaw in Nick’s credibility: his unguided admiration for Gatsby himself.  Nick is absolutely fascinated with Gatsby as both a man and an idea.  When he first meets Gatsby, he feels that his mere smile encompasses “eternal reassurance” (48).  Also, he “exempts” Gatsby from his reaction to the common follies that took place during the Roaring ‘20s (2).  This indicates that Nick is literally taking Gatsby out from under his scope of judgement and exempting him from the scrutiny that takes place in the novel.  Therefore, because of his everlasting fascination with Gatsby, Nick is only able to provide the reader a one-sided view of Gatsby, making him an unreliable narrator.

 

(P.s. someone in class said that they wanted to read a book with an unreliable narrator so if anyone’s looking for a good read, I highly recommend the book, Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver J

Watching Choppy Water from a Cliff

Francis Scott Fitzgerald knew how to live.  He threw such rowdy parties, he was eventually banned from the Biltmore Hotel.  He drank a lot, despite prohibition laws.  He loved his wife, Zelda, deeply. He followed his passion and achieved success in writing. 

But beneath the glamour, consequences festered.  Fitzgerald acquired an alcohol addiction and had to be hospitalized for a short time.  He became abusive towards Zelda and drove her to insanity.  Eventually, he died of a heart attack at the ripe age of 44 in a Hollywood Apartment. 

This dire tale has been repeated countless times in modern-century America among the rich and famous.  From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Elvis Presley to Amy Winehouse, fast and exciting lives die a slow, ugly death.  The predictable sequence of fortune, fame, parties, drugs, breakdown, and, inevitably, death, has been witnessed so many times by the American public you'd think we'd be sick of seeing it by now.  But of course, we're not. 

The lavish lifestyles of the Kardashians and the Real Housewives keep ratings up and the spectacles in the spotlight.  Sales for designer bags increase each year, despite the fact that the average American considers name brands to be overpriced and unnecessary.  And personally, I've wasted entire hours looking up google images of celebrities on the red carpet and the Victoria Secret's Fashion Show and the Grammy's etc.

Because the truth is, I love the glamour.  I love the shiny, beautiful starlets and black diamond nail polish and excessive car collections.  At every award show, I beam upon America’s exclusive clique of popular, Hollywood babies in envious fascination.  And I love the breakdowns, too.  I love discussing the different phases of Britney Spears and I smile right back at Justin Bieber’s mugshot, because what makes the lives of the rich and famous so appealing is the brave, continuous fluctuation of the beauty and the horrors.

I think that's why I am so excited by the beautifully irresponsible tragic life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Because all of us normal, middle class Americans who obediently attend 16+ years of school and pay our taxes and serve on juries will never dare to live like F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Partly because we don't have the financial means, but also partly because we lack to gull required to truly throw caution to the wind.  But that’s ok, because some of us want to live longer than 44 and not become alcoholics and not live with a piling debt, threatening to ruin our world at any moment.  But while we’re putting away money in the bank for a 401k plan, at least we get to indulge ourselves in the memory of the lavish life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and pick apart the attire worn on the Red Carpet, and flip through a magazine dissecting the details of the latest divorce in Hollywood.  Through involved observation, we can safely indulge in our reckless impulses.  Because what we are smart and careful enough not to try, those idiots in Hollywood have already tried it.  

So I thank Kanye West.  Because his tempestuous unpredictability keeps my curiosity satisfied and allows me to carry on with my stable life. 

Babies Broken like Shards of SeaShells

Everyone in class feels uncomfortable about Toni Morrison's piece, but the sex scenes don't really weird me out.  Maybe the source of my desensitized perspective can be accredited to watching all six seasons of Sex and the City.  Or maybe it stems from my deep pre-existing disgust with rape and the intense sympathy I already feel for victims of sexual assault.  The truth is, I've already been shocked.  Seriously, one time, I read the first twelve pages of The Lovely Bones at a track meet and I was rattled for the rest of the season.   (For those of you who don't know, the beginning of  The Lovely Bones contains a scene in which a 14 year old girl is raped by her neighbor in a bunker he built in the field behind his house, and then he chops her up into pieces and scattered her limbs benethe his yard).   

Anyways, I’m tough to crack.  But this week, upon reading the line in which Cholly’s mother “wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad,” I finally felt the horrors and adversity faced by minorities.  Morrison artfully constructed this image in my mind of a helpless infant –maybe crying, maybe sleeping, but nonetheless, alive—being placed on the ground.  It’s little baby face probably got all dirty, maybe a fly even landed on its lips.  The thought of the plain mistreatment of this baby was more than unsettling, but then to realize that this baby was abandoned (or at least almost abandoned) broke my heart.  Maybe Toni Morrison wasn’t suggesting this, but from reading that the baby was placed specifically at “heap by the railroad”, I concluded that this baby was going to get run over by a train.  And then, as grotesque as it is, I imagined that bloody, baby body in a heap of dismantled baby limbs and I could’ve thrown up. 

I realize that this baby was Cholly and he grew up to be a terrible man, but he was a baby too, once, and no one deserves to be obliterated on the side of the road at only four days old, so I felt deeply appalled at his mistreatment.  Toni Morrison purposefully evokes sympathetic feelings for Cholly by beginning the chapter with this line so that the reader can better grasp his perspective with an unbiased outlook.  Morrison often strips away the meanness in adult characters by telling their backstory in intense detail.  In addition to providing background for Cholly, she also devotes chapters to the lives of Pauline and Junior.  Even though Cholly, Polly, and Junior inflict abuses on Pecola, after reading each of these chapters, I always feel more sympathy for the character than I had before.  Morrison does this to de-antagonize each of her characters to demonstrate the role societal guidelines play in deteriorating the innocence and goodness of the people. 
This isn’t a tragic novel about the rape of a teenage girl, it is an exposure of the flawed nature of  society and an unveiling of the personal, far-reaching effects of racism.     

The Difference between a Sea and an Ocean

I am floored by how skillfully crafted Toni Morrison’s writing is.  It is probably the most beautiful, accurate writing I’ve ever encountered.  One thing in particular that impresses me is her ability to define the indescribable divides society naturally draws to silently and methodically perpetuate the state of inferiority of the weak and helpless.

She shows the difference between what it means to be “put out” and to be “put outdoors (17).”  When you are put out, you still have to freedom and ability to “go somewhere else.”  I imagine this type of situation would occur when a father loses his job, because although the family has been knocked down a little bit, they can still stand strong together because of their firm grasp on control and “ownership” (20) of their own life.  However, when you are put outdoors, you are completely banished from the safe bubble of society, and “there is no place to go.”  Pecola belongs in the group of people who have been “put outdoors”, and I think this distinction is important for emphasizing her helplessness because it shows that in addition to automatically being rejected from the white world for being black, she is rejected from the black community because of her irrevocably horrible predicament.  Understanding that Pecola is at the very bottom of the caste system—practically outside of it—generates more sympathy for her from the reader and sharpens the reader’s view of her as a wounded innocent, making each blow to Pecola even more uncomfortable for the reader to silently witness.  For example, when Pecola is awkwardly listening to Mama’s cruel rant about the lowliness of the Breedloves, Pecola begins “minstratin’”(27).  This incident is the icing on Pecola’s cake of vulnerability, as it only increases her state of helpless embarrassment.  This image created of a little black girl, rejected from society and apart from her family, quietly crying as some strange woman who is supposed to be her care taker screams insults about her is incredibly painful for the reader to bear witness to.  And then to make things even worse, at this impromptu time, Morrison bequeaths upon Pecola an event that is agreeably the most embarrassing situation for any woman: getting a period.  Through the use of definition and example, Morrison successfully conveys the rejection of minority groups from society and conjures mounting sympathy from the reader for Pecola to communicate the naked horrors or racism.