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. 

 

All Mermaids have Tails

Everyone knows Barbie.  Her voluminous blonde hair, cunning aqua eyes, and thin figure make her the epitome of beauty and sex appeal in America.  Her name has become synonymous with good-looking; heck, if someone told me I looked like a Barbie doll, it’d probably make my day.  How could it not when I have been shown that models that resemble Barbie (for example, Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid) can make millions of dollars just because of their looks? 

Gigi Hadid

 

Kendall Jenner

  

 

 Society has accepted the Barbie as the standard for beauty, and her impossibly unattainable measurements of “a thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist (354)” play on the insecurities of young women to maintain the competition that exists among them to achieve male approval and adoration.  After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged that any wealthy man must be in want of a wife, right?

  However, once upon a time, Barbie was seen as an element of the feminist movement.  Her rebelliously scandalous clothing and independent career paths made her the model liberated woman.  Her mere existence was a visual rhetoric against the idea that women had to be complacent, casserole-baking, apron-wearing mothers. 

 

 Barbie was successful in contributing to the destruction of the image of women as wives and mothers, but her oversexualized nature gave way to sexism.  Men manipulated her empowering stance as a beauty icon, and turned her into a standard to be followed.  Today, the feminist movement is working to reverse the damage these expectations have inflicted on women (eating disorders and self-loathing) by drilling one ideal: equality is derived from the freedom of choice.  Girls today are encouraged to be whatever makes them happy, whether that be a stripper, housewife, or astronaut, it is their choice, and whatever they choose does not make them any less powerful as a woman.  If you want to be a porn star, you are no less worthy of respect than Hilary Clinton.  It’s 2016, girls, anyone who tells you to adhere to certain standards must be seeing purple elephants, because women today are saying NO to traditional guidelines for beauty.  Ashley Graham was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Madeline Stuart walked the runway during New York fashion week, and Alicia Keys is leading the no make-up movement. 

Madeline Stuart, model with down syndrome, on the runway

 

Curvy model Ashley Graham

Alicia Keys with no make up

Change is in motion, and beauty is no longer exclusively defined by long hair, tiny waists, and big breasts.  Mattel has even acknowledged this change by producing a new line of Barbies that more realistically represent women’s various body types.  Jesus may have made all of us different, but he made all of us beautiful. 

 

 

 

 

Today, feminists strive to create a society in which women of all sizes, skin colors, and professions are viewed as equally feminine and beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race is as Fluid as Water

Is race a socially constructed concept? I was asked this in English class this week and before I could answer it, I had to decide what I considered race to be.

Particularly, I thought about how the concept of race originated, and I was reminded of a time when I was babysitting.

My Caucasian 2 year old cousin once went to the park and saw an African American 2 year old girl.  He stared at her, in awe of her dark skin.  He didn’t mean to be rude, he just didn’t have the words to articulate what he was seeing. But he knew that they were different.  Not that he was better than her or she deserved special treatment, just that they were different.  So, they continued to play alongside each other.

I imagine this exchange would perfectly model how cavemen acted when they first encountered cavemen who looked different.  They probably saw a difference, and didn’t have words to label it, so they all hunted together, fought together, and died together.

So the differences have always been there.  Different skin, hair, eyes, heights; there’s no denying that we are different.  It’s our biology.

However, there came a point in history when some “good guys with big guns” went “looking for a reason” (Atlantic Journal http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-mean-when-we-say-race-is-a-social-construct/275872/).

 
These guys gave differences a meaning.  They picked which difference should define a person, (not height or weight, but skin color) and used that as their reason to be greedy and cruel, to take everything and anything they wanted from someone else.

 So basically, race, how we view ourselves in contrast to others, is an idea predisposed by society that is simply passed down from generation to generation.  But at the end of the day, race isn’t real.

When Ms.Valentino asked us,  "how many races are there?", we eagerly responded with answers like "100!" and "too many to count!" But then she said, "trick question, there is only one race: the human race." 

We all felt stupid for failing to grasp that universal truth.  Instead, we were seeing the obvious differences between people who live in Sweeden and people who live in India.  We were counting the many divisions that have been drawn to separate us by our differences.  We were only regurgitating what our parents and our presidents and anyone who uses the words “black” and “Asian” and “white” to classify any human being have engrained into our minds. 

 

Because race isn’t real.  It only exists through the eyes of the beholder.  Someone considered dark-skinned in Michigan may be considered light-skinned in South Africa.  And an Italian in America may be an American in Italy.  Our race is defined by those around us. 

 

Just like in Maus, the Germans saw the prisoner as a Jew, even though he claimed he was a German.  The Nazis enslaved several Germans and Poles alongside Jews because in their minds, the definition of “Jew” was expanded to contain anyone who resisted their rule. 

 

Race is only words created by society to divide us. 

A Survivor's Scream Heard Through a Mouse's Squeak

While Anja and Vladek are hiding in Mrs. Motonowa’s cellar, they find rats living among them.  Anja is hysterical, so to make her “feel more easy”, Vladek lies and tells her that “they’re just mice”, even though “of course, it was really rats”.   This is symbolic of Art Spiegelman’s choice to use mice rather than people in his comic. Harm inflicted on mice is much easier to witness than harm inflicted on human beings, so by drawing mice instead of people, Spiegelman is lessening the weight of the Holocaust for the reader, making it easier for them to swallow, just as Vladek is easing Anja’s nerves. 

Isn't this more depressing to look at than just mice?  You can see the sadness in their sullen faces and the weakness in their ever-so human bodies.

Also, I found it interesting that Spiegelman digresses from his metaphor and acknowledges the existence of mice in their animalistic form by including a drawing of a mouse on all fours.  We are used to seeing his anthropomorphic mice dressed nicely in top hats and trench coats, talking and smoking and typing up graphic novels.  However, on this page, Spiegelman has drawn an enormously scary mouse.  It has bushy, black fur, a dark, menacing face, and a scaly tail.  The mouse looks dirty and savageous, and it marks a stark contrast to the following frame, in which Art and his father are depicted as clean, white mice, holding a conversation. 

 

 

 This break in the mouse-as-people metaphor is a representation of the uncontainable horrors faced by Jews during the Holocaust.  At this point, Spiegelman has broken form because of the overflowing grief and guilt that has manifested within him from hearing his father’s story.  In Volume II, Art even has to start seeing a therapist because the overwhelmingly large weight of the Holocaust makes it hard for him to take pleasure in his own life.  Even after his first MAUS book achieved great success, Art feels like no matter what he does, “it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz”(44).

  To demonstrate Art’s internal struggle to hold down the facts, the mouse is not boxed or captioned, and it is kind of leaking from the comic, in order to represent Art’s sorrow leaking into his writing.  Also, there is no page number on this page because the grief felt by Art, his father, Anja, and all other Jews was real, just as the mouse drawn is real mouse, and the real events depicted in the comic happened to real people.  Therefore, they are not merely part of a plot in a storybook. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”  And although the anthropomorphism has been effective in demonstrating the vulnerability of the Jews in the claws of the Nazi-cats throughout the comic, in this scene, an image of the dirty mouse and Anja’s “AIEE!” gives the reader a clearer sense of how terrible the Holocaust was for Vladek in that Polish woman’s freezing cold rat-infested cellar, and makes the events more real, because it reminds the reader that mice are truly just animals, and the Holocaust was truly happening to humans. 

On a final note, I think that this comic itself represents the Holocaust through a “scream” rather than a “thesis” because of its unorthodox nature.