Response to Course Material V: December 10th

                I have been really enjoying the discussions of Ceremony in the last two weeks.  The book is so fascinating and complicated, and I love how there are so many different interpretations of something as seemingly insignificant as the color yellow.  Actually, this novel is sort of turning out to be a novel I really love.  I love stories about stories, and things that explore the power of words and cultures.  I also find it interesting to be reading this novel from the “white person” perspective, because I think the culture from which we’re approaching novels, this novel especially, probably alters our perceptions significantly. I doubt there’s really a way to try and see the novel from a Native American perspective.  That being said, one question we haven’t asked in class is, “who do you think Silko is writing to?”

                Annotations, however, I find unusually difficult in this novel because initially there are so many different interpretations of one word, that I can’t really put down one more definitive conclusion, as I could with, especially, The American Dream.  In that play, I had a pretty firm idea of how I saw the text.  In this one, I often have no idea what Silko is arguing, so this may turn out to be one of those fun ambiguity-filled no-answer situations like Passing or Wicked, or how Stephenie Meyer could even bring herself to write Twilight.        

Close Reading V: December 10th--"54 Iraqis Die In Not Our Problem Anymore"

                The controversial satirical news site The Onion is constantly pushing the boundary between humor and revulsion, and sometimes the journalists of the so-called funny paper decide to throw away that boundary and write a very forceful article with humor so dark the reader really doesn’t want to see it.  One such article is “54 Iraqis Die In Not Our Problem Anymore”, which describes a recent and devastating suicide bombing in Iraq, but makes clear to the reader that this “not our problem” anymore, because we’re out of there come January.  Using gory details, ridiculous syntax, and innapropriate language, the author of the article conveys his opinion that withdrawing from Iraq is inhumane and ridiculous.  The effect is to convince the reader that America needs to be there regardless of their political views or position on the war that first placed U.S. troops in Iraq in 2003.

                The grisly details used to describe the bombing, and other grisly events occurring in Iraq, are the first thing which grab the reader’s attention, sympathy, and anger towards those who endanger the lives of innocent civilians in Iraq.  In case the actual act of the bombing does not sicken the reader enough, the author supplies more details to tug at the reader’s heartstrings, such as describing how “four trucks loaded with explosives detonated…wounding more than 200”, and how the bombing coincided “with the height of Friday prayers”.  The act was also described, using very negative diction, as “senseless” and “cowardly”.  To disgust the reader further, the sheer horror of the human injury and death sustained by this bombing, the author describes the situations as a “grisly, chaotic scene of scattered body parts, [and] shattered storefronts.”  Finally, the author repeats these horrors, demonstrating that this bombing is more than an isolated incident, occurring alongside the “kill[ing of] six police officers and 19 children”, and “four [people] gunned down outside a nearby army recruiting station.”

                However, the reader does not read these details uninterrupted: powerful and obviously pointed syntax is used to convey to the reader how America is inhumane and crazy to be withdrawing their help from such a suffering nation.  At the end of each sentence, to stress this point, the author emphasizes how “none of this matters” because it’s “not our problem anymore”, and how “they’re just going to have to deal with it on their own from now on”.  Furthermore, this grabs the reader’s attention by interrupting the actual news and the details of the explosion, creating an effect of denial and a refusal to hear or care about the suffering of the people in Iraq.  For example, a typical “interrupted” sentence reads this way:  “according to city officials, local morgues have been overwhelmed with we're seriously not going to give this a second thought”.   Other examples are “President Obama offers his deepest condolences to the it's completely outside our mandate at this point, and his thoughts are with those Iraqis and their families who frankly none of this matters much one way or the other.”   These quotes both alert the reader to the ridiculousness the author sees in the prospect of US withdrawal, and juxtaposes the seriousness of the topic with a casual tone that unsettles readers. 

                That being said, the casual dismissal exhibited in that instance is nothing compared to the obscene or just plain inappropriate language used predominantly in the second half of the essay, to both create a mood of desperate denial.  This gives the reader the impression that the US is struggling to stop caring about Iraq, alerting to the reader that there is hope for our empathy.  As the tone of denial grows more frustrated, the article becomes more obscene: “somebody else's problem now, goddamn”, the article states, and “look, we did the best we could here, okay? We tried. We fucking tried.”  This both minimizes the professional credibility of those supporting withdrawal and emphasizes how hard we must be trying to not care about the tragedies in Iraq.  Other language which is innapropriate in a different way achieves the same affect.  Due to the seriousness of the situation, the reader recognizes that whoever is saying “it was a lousy situation to begin with. That really shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. And now it's time to cut our losses and go. It's over. Done-zo. So best of luck to all of you” is not someone who can have any empathy at all.  Diction such as “Adios” and “look, buddy” jar the reader because they’re totally at-odds with any feelings of empathy or maturity.  The reader can’t help but to associate denying the suffering in Iraq as ridiculous, and as what the US is doing when they withdraw.  The reader does not want to feel like America is saying “everything can go to shit for all we care, because we're leaving and never looking back.”  Therefore, there are inclined to say “let’s stay in Iraq, so we aren’t, and don’t seem, insensitive and inhumane.”

                Through this casual and dismissive language, the author puts his audience at odds with those supporting withdrawal from Iraq, because those supporting and enacting the withdrawal are acting so inappropriately and inhumanely toward the suffering described in the article.  First, the author introduces this suffering, gaining his reader’s sympathy, and then interrupts their horror by commenting that this doesn’t matter.  This statement shakes up the reader; they want to protest that no, they do care about this suffering.  The author’s “final blow” is that dismissive language, which puts withdrawal in a ridiculous light, making it both absurd and inhumane.  This article’s use of diction, details, and language is so effective that whether the reader actually agrees with withdrawal from Iraq or not, they definitely reconsider their opinion and can see the author’s point of view.


http://www.theonion.com/articles/54-iraqis-die-in-not-our-problem-anymore,26766/

Open Prompt VI: December 4th--"The First Scene of The American Dream"

1972. In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.

Often, looking back on the first scene of a play or other work, the reader realizes that it introduces the major themes of the work.  The American Dream, by Edward Albee, does more than introduce major themes: it effectively summarizes and reflects the play’s plot as a whole.  Everything, from the setting, to the dialogue, to the topic of conversation that occurs right after the curtain goes up, in the first scene of this play shows the reader what is and is going to happen.  This includes Mommy and Daddy’s conflict in the beginning,  Mrs. Barker as the personification of consumerism and big business in the middle, and the Young Man’s replacement of the murdered baby at the very end of the play.

                Before the first scene really even begins, or a single word is spoken, the reader is introduced to a prevalent issue in the work: Mommy and Daddy’s bad relationship.  Albee gives few stage directions, but when he does give them, they are meant to serve and very important and significant purpose, and the stage that the audience sees as The American Dream begins is the means through which Albee introduces the problematic American household.  In the directions, Albee indicated that there are to be two chairs, facing opposite one another at an angle, so that they do not directly confront one another, but instead halfway face the audience, with a two-person couch between them.  Mommy and Daddy are to be seated in these chairs.  The fact that Mommy and Daddy are not seated comfortably together in the “love seat” alerts the audience to the fact that theirs is a relationship which is clearly rocky or even lacking love altogether.  The result achieved by their opposing positions shows the audience that they are in fact on opposing sides, perhaps even locked in a two-person, while the angling toward the audience both foreshadows the audience’s later connection with the characters through Grandma, and hints toward the passive-aggressive nature of their relationship.  Albee introduces perhaps the most prevalent issue of the play in the first scene, and so begins to make his argument: something is wrong here; something is wrong with the American family.

                Once the characters do begin speaking, another major theme of the play is introduced: the impending arrival of “them”; that is, the corporate entity that is Mrs. Barker.  Mommy opens her disjointed conversation with “I don’t know what can be keeping them.”  Initially, the reader does not realize that “them” is in fact Mrs. Barker, but in hindsight, one realizes that this refers to Mrs. Barker. Toward the end of the play, it is apparent that Ms. Barker represents big business and corporations, and this is hinted at in the early part of the play through the use of the third person plural.  Her arrival is not just alluded to in this first scene, but openly discussed.  This is also the second thing the reader notices, and in this way Albee sets up a chronological summary through his first scene: first, the problem relationship, second, the arrival of Mrs. Barker.

                The third major landmark of the play is foreshadowed and represented later on in the conversation between Mommy and Daddy, when Mommy begins to tell Daddy of her consumer woes.  She tells him, in great detail, that she bought a beige hat, but then the chairman of her woman’s club (a figure of power and wealth) told her it was wheat, and so she took it back to the store, and got another hat back, exactly the same color as the one before.  Bizarrely, Mommy seems to realize that it was the same exact hat, but the satisfaction of her outing seems to come from throwing a fit and getting what she wanted.  This story introduces several themes which are on Albee’s radar throughout the play: consumerism, the American way of pandering to those rich and powerful to “climb the social ladder”, and the childishness of Mommy and Daddy through the childish language Mommy uses when telling the story.  However, the most important function this story serves is to essentially summarize Mommy and Daddy’s lives.  They bought a baby, the twin of the Young Man, symbolized by the beige hat Mommy first purchased.  They were then unsatisfied with him, and so through Mrs. Barker (who is the chairman of the woman’s club) got another child.  This child was the Young Man, the spitting image of the child before, just like the second hat was exactly the same as the first one.  In this simple hat story, Albee outlines for the reader the entire plot of the play and also shows the problematic society in which people treat everything, including their family, as a shallow consumer item, through the parallels between the hats and the children.

                Mommy’s story about her customer dissatisfaction both introduces major themes of consumerism and shallowness prevalent throughout the play, but also takes the reader (or viewer) through the entire play.  Mommy’s whole conversation with Daddy demonstrates their focus on materialistic values, and references Mrs. Barker as a symbol for the big businesses which enable those values to exist.  By introducing Mommy and Daddy’s flawed relationship first, through the cold and opposing set, Albee sets a chronological summary of his play and its arguments in motion.  He shows the reader that in the beginning of the work, Mommy and Daddy will have a bad relationship, in the middle Mrs. Barker will arrive, and in the end, they will get a new hat and a new baby, and be temporarily satisfied.  However, through showing the reader that the hats, and in turn the first child and the Young Man, were the same, Albee hints to the reader that at the end of the play, the “satisfaction” will not last.  Because the characters have only been temporarily fooled, and because the “hat” is exactly the same, Albee shows the reader that the consumer and materialistic society in the play, and the society in real life which Albee intends it to comment on, is a problematic one which will never end with happiness.

Response to Course Material IV

At this point in the year, I am happy to say that I feel a lot more comfortable in the AP-style essay.  I think I have improved in the structure and organization of my essays, especially the open-prompt, and while I still dislike timed tests and struggle with the time limit, I have been working on limiting the time I take to write my essays over the weekend, with varying success.  I think this is the main thing I want to the work on, still: getting my ideas to be coherent within that annoying time limit.  I also struggle with the time limit because I, for some reason, write a much better essay when I verbally give my thesis to someone.  Once I have verbally clarified my ideas outside my head, then I write a much better essay.  Obviously, doing this during the AP exam isn’t going to work. 

I have really enjoyed analyzing Death of a Salesman, and it’s been really cool to close read the whole thing, because this is not a way I have had the opportunity to read it in the past.  All of the different perspectives on the meaning of the play are also incredibly fascinating to hear.  My favorite way to approach literature is a verbal group discussion, so I’ve been loving it.  It’s also interesting to me how many parallels there are between Miller’s play and The American Dream.  It’s also interesting to imagine what these authors would be writing if they lived today.

I look forward to start reading Ceremony today, and for reading a novel, because as much as I love plays, novels are wonderful things.  I also have never reader any Native American literature, so this should be really fascinating.

Close Reading IV: November 20th--"New Decoy Website Launched to Lure Away All Moronic Internet Commenters"

Anyone who has ever viewed a comment-chain on a social-media site has undoubtedly been frustrated by the large amount of annoying, nonsensical, or inflammatory comments people leave in order to incite others or just waste everyone’s time.  The satirical article “New Decoy Website Launched to Lure Away All Moronic Internet Commenters”, found in the online news site The Onion, makes fun of those who leave these comments by covering a fictional news site designed to contain all of these useless, brainless comments.  The author uses details concerning the comments and the new site, offensive diction, and sarcastic language to contribute to the mocking tone of the article, which condemns these useless comments while making the reader laugh, and simultaneously evokes a humorous irony: this is the same language that the online commenters use, and The Onion is a technically a social networking site.

The article’s humor works on several levels, as does its commentary.  Initially, the reader is shown how the site works, and how the author disapproves of those who rant pointlessly online.  In order to effectively demonstrate the annoying problem at hand, the author provides rich and humorous detail, especially concerning the comments people leave on Outkube.  Throughout the article, the author makes sure to choose specific subjects these internet trollers focus on, subjects designed to cause the reader to laugh and realize what true idiotic jerks these commenters are.  The offensive conversations cover preposterous topics such as “Jewish control of the government and media” and “whether Adam Lambert should get AIDS and die, or the government's secret plan to mentally incapacitate citizens using the HPV vaccine.”  While these details demonstrate that the commenters are essentially crazy, the author also focuses on their lack of intelligence and profanity in their discussions over “Ryan Gosling…whether Kobe is better than LeBron, [and] the New York Jets”.  A “sample” of the site is even given to illustrate the sheer stupidity of the commenters.  For example, the “incoherent” comment “a hahh a!!!111 OH shit!” demonstrates the mindlessness of the commenters, while this is underlined by the commenter’s profile picture being a cartoon Calvin peeing.  The rudeness and inability to argue civilly and intelligently is underlined by the ungrammatical syntax in the comments, misspellings, and run-on sentences, especially in the rants of user jlrMTL.

                Further details are provided in describing how Outkube keeps the idiotic commenters addicted to the site.  The author brings the reader’s attention to the sheer idiocy of the users by showing how Outkube executives simply throw out a picture of a woman if the user has not commented in the last 15 seconds, and ask the user to rate her, up to “totally boneable”.  The author goes on show state how this, and other similar tactics, polls, and thoughtfully placed comments by executives keep the users on site and ranting.   This brings the reader’s attention to how ridiculous these comments really are, and how stupid spending all your time on some social networking site is.  The relief expressed by workers at CNN because someone has actually had an intelligent conversation is a detail which shows the reader the sophisticated depravity we live in.  

                All of this, and the fictional social media site, Outkube, is initially described as being “used to lure moronic Internet commenters away from all other websites.”  This sets the mocking, condescending tone which progresses throughout the article while beginning to introduce the harsh diction continually used to describe the commenters.  The author refers to these annoying commenters as “dim-witted web users”, “web-surfing morons”, “obnoxious”, “idiotic”, and “the worst fucking human beings imaginable”.  And while the author views these people as “stupid” and just trying “to incite retaliatory remarks”, he peppers his article with interviews with the fictional investors in and creators of the site, and their diction is even more offensive.    YouTube’s CEO refers to annoying commenters who will use Outkube as “jabbering halfwits”, and asserts that the commenters range “from paranoid reactionaries to know-it-all pricks to racists to plain old dumbfucks.”  These “troglodytes” are also stated to be “uninformed” and a curse on society, and that Outkube is a “Godsend” which is liberating the people from these horrible commenters.  However, here the reader sees the second level of humor, and the irony in the article.  In condemning the online commenters, the article uses the very same diction and language they do, ranting very much in the same way.  And the reader is then tempted to do the same thing, as I have unconsciously done in this essay.  Moreover, the online newspaper itself is essentially a place for people to rant about society through humorous and satirical articles and videos.  So while the article causes the reader to recognize the stupidity and pointlessness in these online commenters, it also has a self-deprecating ring to it.

                Through author’s disapproval and humorous mocking of the internet trollers, the reader sees both the commenter’s idiocy, and the idiocy of some of these social networking sites.  Through the details and diction describing the commenter’s profanity, stupidity, and how they waste their time doing something so useless, the reader longs for an actual Outkube which will remove this horrible mindlessness from a society which should be more sophisticated and intelligent.  In doing this, the author uses the same language of the ranting commenters, and becomes one himself, and recognizes it, and thereby adds another layer of humor and irony to the thought-provoking article.  Ultimately, the author succeeds in this article, and not just by making the reader laugh: he ensures that they will think twice before posting their next comment telling everyone who doesn’t want to hear that the Koran advocates wife-beating.   

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-decoy-website-launched-to-lure-away-all-moroni,26393/#enlarge

Open Prompt V--November 13th: "Frailty, thy name is woman!"-----Gender, Strength, and Ambiguity in Hamlet

1984. Select a line or so of poetry, or a moment or scene in a novel, epic poem, or play that you find especially memorable. Write an essay in which you identify the line or the passage, explain its relationship to the work in which it is found, and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness.

                Women during Shakespeare’s time had a very subservient role in society and were often viewed as “weak” by the men around them.  In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this view is first introduced to the reader through Hamlet’s statement “Frailty, thy name is woman!”  Significantly, Hamlet says “Frailty, thy name is woman”, a generic accusation which encompasses more than a specific character.  In doing so, Hamlet brings forward the larger issue that is expanded upon and explored throughout the rest of the play: the relationship between strength, weakness and gender.  While this is constantly explored through his mother Gertrude’s marriage, his girlfriend Ophelia’s questionable suicide, and the constant running-to-someone-else cycle of all characters in the play, Shakespeare makes no definitive argument about whether or not women are in fact “frail”.  Instead, this is left ambiguous—if anything, Shakespeare argues that all men are as weak as the women they hypocritically term “frail”. 

                The woman actually referred to in Hamlet’s “Frailty!” soliloquy is his mother, Gertrude, and the ambiguity surrounding her strength of character is predominantly related to her hasty marriage to her brother-in-law pending her husband’s untimely death.  This action not only provides Hamlet with his first real reason to hate women and his life, but essentially demonstrates the paradox of Gertrude’s character.  In Shakespeare’s time, a woman without a husband was indeed “weak”, and had no influence, not even over her own life.  Gertrude’s inability to remain stoic and single after her husband, the King, died, points toward her “frailty”, showing through the details of her re-marriage that she needs a man, and a powerful one at that.  However, her marriage could also be viewed in another, more positive light.  Given that women had no power as widows, Gertrude’s matrimonial choices could be viewed as the decisions of a strong, conscientious woman who wanted to be empowered, and who recognized the only way to be “strong” was to be married to an influential figure.  In this way, Gertrude’s marriage was not the desperation actions of a frail woman who needed an arm to cling to, but that of an intelligent, powerful figure who wanted to retain some semblance of influence and would go to any lengths to do so.  While this may not be particularly admirable to some readers, these are the actions of a strong-willed individual.  However, Shakespeare does not offer the reader clear evidence of either reading, and Gertrude remains ambiguous as to whether she needed a husband or wanted a King.    

                The only other woman in Hamlet is Hamlet’s fiancé, Ophelia.  On the surface this character seems to unquestionably support Hamlet’s assertion about women’s frailty, but gradually, ambiguity begins to emerge, especially surrounding her supposed suicide.  When faced with her father’s death, Ophelia seems to commit suicide.  Given this, the reader becomes inclined to view Ophelia as the “frail” woman Hamlet sees her as, because traditionally suicide is viewed as a cowardly, weak action, the escape of someone too frail to handle the reality of the world they live in.  However, the reader cannot draw this conclusion and say Ophelia is frail, because Hamlet—the male protagonist, with whom the reader’s perspective is closely aligned—states in his famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy that suicide is admirable and courageous, and that the true cowardice and weakness comes from not committing suicide.  Hamlet describes in detail how only the brave have the strength to end their suffering and face the unknown.  Therefore, Ophelia’s suicide showing her weakness is extremely problematic, because Hamlet himself states that it shows her strength.  As a result, Ophelia could go both ways, just like Gertrude.

                However, there is another detail which throws Gertrude and Ophelia’s moral fiber into further ambiguity: their names.  Gertrude comes from Germanic roots and means “strength” (rather contradicting Hamlet’s assertion), and Ophelia means “help”.  While Gertrude’s name is simply either true or ironic, Ophelia’s puts a spotlight on another key issue in the play relating to gender strength: the help that all the characters in Hamlet seem to need.  Initially, Ophelia seems to need help and be helpless.  despite repeated abuse from Hamlet, Ophelia never gets angry or confronts him, she always runs to her father, brother, or the King.  Early in her relationship with Hamlet, she passively accepts her father and brother’s views on him without argument, and then when he first tells her that he does not and has never loved her, and then implies that he should indeed rest his head “on [her] lap”, Ophelia simply runs back to those male family members.  When she suspects Hamlet’s madness she does the same thing.  This weak dependence on male figures, and inability to take action, is reflected in Gertrude too.  When Gertrude witnesses Hamlet killing Polonius without even seeing who he’s stabbing first, and concludes he is mad, she runs back to her husband to have him solve the problem.  Repeatedly, the two female characters exhibit weakness and dependence toward men, and need to be “helped.” 

And yet for all that, Shakespeare maintains ambiguity, and another possible interpretation of Ophelia’s name, by having the male characters do essentially the same thing.  When the men suspect Hamlet loves Ophelia (and this is the cause of his apparent insanity), they send Ophelia to spy on him and get information.  When it is determined this is not the cause, the men don’t do much themselves, and instead send Gertrude to interrogate Hamlet some more.  It is then that Gertrude flees from action after Polonius is killed.  Through the cycle of men running to women for help, and then women running back to the men, the reader does not so much see Gertrude as not being “weak”, but as everyone being weak!  The men cannot seem to make decisions and actions for themselves, any more than the women can.  However, one could argue that then the King finally does take action, by sending Hamlet to England and arranging his murder, while Gertrude stands idly by, but he still needed Gertrude to help him gather evidence enough to take this action.

Ultimately, Shakespeare provides no definitive answer for the reader as to whether or not women are “weak”, instead seeming to imply that humans in general avoid doing things for themselves, and that the male gender tends to be hypocritical in their attitude toward women.  Hamlet’s exclamation “Frailty, thy name is woman!” draws the reader’s attention due to both the extremity of the statement and the generic accusation it contains, but the reader can never draw a solid argument from the text.  This ambiguity reinforces the conflict between the genders, and the lack of certainty, that pervades the play.

Open Prompt IV--October 30th: He Just Needed A Hug-- Sympathy for Frankenstein's Monster

1979. Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might on the basis of the character's actions alone be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary.

Murder is an act abhorred by all cultures, including the culture Mary Shelley lived in when she wrote her complex novel Frankenstein.  However, Shelley frames the acts of violence her character—the monster—commits in a way that allows the reader to sympathize with the monster, along with the expected feelings of horror and dread.  This monster murders three people and inadvertently causes the death of three others by the time his creator dies, but the reader retains extreme sympathy for this monster due to his creator’s fault in the matter, his isolation due to society’s prejudice, and the fact that he begins his life inherently innocent, and repeatedly shows a good side of his complicated character.

Shelley makes clear that Frankenstein abandons the monster, and the monster’s violence is the desperate, emotional response to this feeling of abandonment.  Frankenstein, the scientist who animated dead body parts to create the monster, cast aside his creation due to his ugliness from the moment the monster came alive.  When the monster kills Frankenstein’s little brother, the reader is horrified, but can also see why the monster has committed this act of violence.  After all, Frankenstein abandoned him with little hope of survival simply because of his imperfect exterior, and without bothering to wait and see if he had a good interior or not.  The reader recognizes Frankenstein’s abandonment as a parent abandoning a child, something despicable in the eyes of Shelley’s readers, no matter the ugliness of the creation.  Frankenstein does not take responsibility for his actions—and the resulting torment causes the confused monster to lash out.  The other two murders are likewise a result of Frankenstein’s refusal to help the monster in any way, much less love him.  The monster asks Frankenstein to at least create another, equally ugly being to be his wife so he can have the companionship and sympathy he craves; eventually, Frankenstein betrays the monster again and does not make the female, condemning the monster once more into loneliness.  The reader feels so much pain for the monster’s lonely lot in life that they can begin to see his reasoning in killing those Frankenstein loves.  The monster is repeatedly denied love—the only way he can deal with his loneliness or extract revenge is to kill those Frankenstein loves as well, and make him just as lonely. 

                However, it is not just Frankenstein who rejects the monster based on appearance alone: in the early stages of the monster’s life, his attempts to integrate himself into society result in rejection and abuse.  The monster watches a peasant family to learn to speak and write, and there encounters love for the first time.  He helps the family, but when he attempts to join them, and to find love, he is beaten and driven away.  While no killings directly result from this rejection, the unfairness of the situation strikes both reader and monster.  This rejection gradually gnaws at the monster until he can take his misery no more, and kills his creator’s younger brother.  After this initial scene displaying a lack of acceptance, despite the monster having done nothing wrong, the reader is predisposed to be more sympathetic when the monster does act badly, as society expects him to do.  The reader recognizes that he has been scarred by the way he is treated, and that he begins to fill the role expected of him all his life: that of a monster.   

                The reader also recognizes, especially at the end of the novel, that the role of the monster was not one which the monster would have inherently filled, given love: that is, the monster is clearly not a purely evil being.  Several times during the novel the monster helps the humans, and each time he is offered no thanks or acceptance.  He helps the peasant family, and saves a girl from drowning, but receives no reward.  The reader sees, and Shelley explains, through the words of the monster, that, like a child, if not praised for good, the monster will do evil because the repercussions of his good deeds are just as repulsive as the bad ones.  In addition, the violence he commits is revenge for this injustice.  Finally, in the very last scene of the novel, the monster is weeping over Frankenstein’s body.  The reader is shown indisputably that the monster is definitely capable of love, remorse, and human feeling, even toward his cruel creator.  This inherent goodness makes the reader more likely to blame the monster’s violence actions on the oppressive and unjust circumstances in which he lived, and not look on him as a wholly monstrous character.

                The horrible treatment which Mary Shelley’s monster endures makes the reader far more sympathetic toward his acts of vengeance, despicable as they may seem out of context.  His rejection and biased mistreatment since his birth provide a background which causes the reader to feel sorry for him, and therefore empathize more with his drastic reactions.  His creator’s abandonment and withholding of love, society’s rejection, and the monster’s remorse all make his murders and violence more understandable, and cause his otherwise repugnant actions to be seen as more justifiable in the reader’s eyes.

Response to Course Material III--October 23rd

Fortunately, at this point in the semester I am sort of starting to get more comfortable with the format of the AP essay.  I feel as though the structure of my essays is improving, but I think that I still need to work on my ability to work within a time limit.  With the close reading, I definitely need to work on the time.  With an open prompt, I can work within the limit, but only if I barely have anything to say.  I struggle with open prompts because I feel like I’m not doing justice to the novel if I leave some counterarguments or pieces of evidence out.  This is definitely something I need to correct, because in this sort of essay it is a crippling flaw to need to analyze every bit of a novel as complicated as, say, Song of Solomon.

In class, I loved close reading The American Dream in a group discussion setting.  Verbal analysis is by far my favorite part of literature.  It’s just so fascinating to hear everyone’s different ideas and discover what the text means.  While I completely disagree with Albee’s anti-feminist message, I find his point about the consumerism in our society a very interesting and probably true one.  The looks-oriented and shallow society in which Albee’s characters live is one which I think still holds true today and is definitely an aspect of the “new” American Dream which we as citizens in 2011 are living or trying to live.  I especially believe that the corporate entities that Mrs. Barker represent, and Mommy’s need to toady by Mrs. Barker as a wealthier, more powerful economic figure are definitely true today—indeed, I would venture to claim that this is the reality for pretty much all of the wealthy and powerful figures in our society.  I was, however, disturbed by the cutting up of baby Johnny, but that is absurdity for you. 

Interestingly enough, the only other play in this genre I have read—Endgame—also involved people with missing body parts, Ham and Clov.  However, The American Dream is much easier to analyze than Endgame.  I’m excited to begin our next play, especially because I have already read and analyzed it, so I have some experience with the text which will therefore enable me to access the next level of its meaning faster (that is, I will achieve the analysis of a fourth read without reading it in class four times).  At least, I hope I will… 

I have been drilling myself on the vocabulary, and fortunately I know most of the terms, especially those which relate to drama and comedy, those being some of my favorite things to read.  However, many terms are completely unfamiliar to me and I cannot keep them straight.  I keep trying to think of a vocab list I have been more confused by, but I can’t think of any.  Once I learn them, however, I will feel extremely intelligent.  And will hopefully get a good grade on the test.

I am extremely excited to see Twelfth Night this week, though I don’t know if that’s something I should be putting on a self-assessment.  I love to watch and read Shakespeare’s comedies almost as much as I love analyzing his tragedies.  I was unable to make it that time my ISHALL class went to Stratford, so I’m really looking forward to this experience.

Close Reading III--October 23rd: "The Bleakness of the Bullied" and Their Happiness, Too

Students are continuously lectured about the horrible effects bullying can have on the tormented, and the suicide which can result from their desperation and misery, but they rarely have the opportunity to be told this story from the perspective of the bullied, and never are they shown how precious life really is in a way which goes beyond the typical “be nice”. Charles M. Blow’s emotional article “The Bleakness of the Bullied”, published in the New York Times in 2011, does not focus on directly encouraging the reader not to bully, but instead treats them as the bullied, implying that we have all at one time been bullied or downtrodden by life. The article shows the incredible value of life in all of its small gifts, and that despite the hardships we encounter, it is those precious things and God which we must remember to keep ourselves from succumbing to the temptation of escape through suicide. Blow empathizes with this need to escape as the bullied, and then shows how we must push through our hardships and realize what a wonderful thing life is even in your darkest hour, through specific details, imagery, and language, and especially metaphor.

The details and images Blow provides describing the skating rink, his mother, and the music he hears helps to underline to the reader all the little things children committing suicide do not have the wisdom to remember, as he did, and stop themselves. He describes the skaters in the rink as a “dog chasing its tail and with the same mesmerizing delirium — laughing and dancing”, and his mother’s voice—who’s singing comes to him and prevents him from committing suicide—as coming “out of her heart and into a steering wheel, coming to save me”. The peaceful scene created by details like “lovers holding hands” and the “dipping and swaying to the rhythm of disco tracks” helps to illustrate the wonderful and truly joyous nature of life, no matter how many times we fall down on the ice.

Blow uses these flowing descriptions—and the actual flow of the skaters—to reflect the dreamlike state of perfection he enters before thinking about committing suicide, and show their similarity. The dream-in-reality skating rack represents the fact that life is as a whole is as wonderful as the mental and spiritual bliss Blow encounters, should we look past our current sorrows due to bullying. The language he uses to describe his epiphany—“ I seemed now to be watching the scene from beyond the pale of my own humanity” and “there, in the ephemeral nothingness, in the quiet space of the mind, I found peace”—is mirrored by the “synchronized lunges, dipping and swaying” of the skaters and the “sticky-sweet love and salty-dry longing” of his mother’s songs. The alliteration and the imagery of flowing movement in reality reflects his dreamlike state of wisdom when he realizes he must push through, and so shows the reader that God and freedom (as he associates it with his out-of-body epiphany) are all around us.

The songs of Blow’s mother have another significance. The mother would never sing in front of anyone besides her son for fear of being judged, showing the reader where relief from sorrow can be found: one’s family. Indeed, in the skating rink where Blow contemplates taking his own life, the skaters who do not fall are holding onto their lover’s hands, or leaning on the walls of the rink, just as Blow leans on his mother, and God, to rest from his troubles and find the strength to keep going.

Through this connection, Blow utilizes the skating rink, and the headache which almost stopped him from skating, as a metaphor for life and its challenges, only one of which is bullying. Blow’s headache is both an actual occurrence, and a symbol of the torment so many feel due to bullying, and the unhappiness present in our lives which may tempt us to commit suicide and escape from our troubles. Blow returns to skating after his epiphany/salvation, realizing that God and his family will care for him through his troubles. The song playing while he and the others skate is very specific: “Shining Star”, by Earth, Wind, and Fire. Blow shows the reader that they are a “shining star” on the skating rink of life—the details of the band Earth, Wind, and Fire help to reinforce this, as they are elements of the “beautifully human” world we live in. Life is a skating rink, Blow argues, and we all fall down or have headaches. But what we all must do, he shows us, is look past our present state and look at the situation “from beyond the pale of [our] own humanity”. We need to rely on our loved ones to hold us up—not judging us like the bullies we face, appreciate the small gifts in life, take an aspirin, and keep skating.

Blow demonstrates to the reader through rich details, flowing images, and metaphorical language that we all encounter hardships, many of us due to bullying, but that we all must push through and continue with our lives. He shows the reader that even when you believe yourself to be alone, your family is always there for you, not judging you, and God and that family can help you to find your way. He encourages us not to bully, but Blow realizes we are all bullied and judged in some way, and we all need a reminder of life’s small pleasures, and his article, “The Bleakness of the Bullied”, serves as that reminder.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/opinion/blow-the-bleakness-of-the-bullied.html

Open Prompt III--October 16th: Don't Judge a Book by it's Bank Account, Social Critique in Oliver Twist

2009, Form B. Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political oe social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

England’s industrial revolution during the middle of the nineteenth century was a time of poverty, overcrowding, and suffering among the lower classes.  Charles Dickens’ famous novel Oliver Twist explores the social debates over poverty, and in particular the question of the relationship between poverty and morals.  At the time, there was a prevailing theory that the poor were inherently immoral and to blame for their own situation.  Dickens explores this idea and ultimately shows the reader that the relationship between class and morality is much more ambiguous: rather than poor people being inherently immoral and upper class people inherently virtuous, good and evil, morality and vice, can occur in both the poor and the rich.  He demonstrates this through several key characters: Oliver, the pure but poor protagonist; Mr. Bumble and Monks, rich but evil men; and Nancy, a poor and morally ambiguous character.  Dickens thereby encourages his readers to be more benevolent toward and less judgmental about the poor—an attitude he reinforces through a pattern of images of watching and being watched, suggesting that we, too, are being watched and judged by God on how we treat our fellow man. 

Dickens uses his innocent protagonist, Oliver Twist, as a demonstration of the moral purity which can exist despite poverty.  Oliver begins the novel as an example of an innocent human being doomed from the beginning, showing the reader that he himself was not to blame for his own misfortune.    Indeed, far from portraying Oliver as weak in any way, as the Social Darwinism of the time suggested about the poor, the details surrounding his birth suggest that Oliver is actually stronger than the upper classes.  The narrator notes that, had Oliver been born into a wealthy home, he would have died, and that it was the necessity of a struggle which caused him to gain the strength to live.  From that point on, Oliver is hit again and again with all of the struggles of the poor, and yet never wavers from his saint-like disposition. Despite thievery seeming the only way to survive, Oliver is appalled at Fagin’s pickpockets and refuses to steal.  Through this, Dickens presents a society in which the poor are pressured to turn to evil as a means to survive, and where the poor can be virtuous despite this pressure.  At the same times, Dickens critiques the solutions presented for poverty, especially the workhouse, which was based off of the idea that the poor were “evil” without exception and from birth.  He shows that the workhouse is counterproductive, and that someone poor like Oliver must leave that environment in order to have even a minute hope for survival.  Demonstrating his biting humor, Dickens wrote that the lower classes choose between “being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.”  In this environment, Dickens argues, it is extremely difficult for the poor to remain virtuous—if they cannot, like Oliver, they will meet their demise as victims of society.

Dickens juxtaposes Oliver’s poor purity to an array of decidedly evil characters who are upper or middle class, showing the reader that bad can exist in the rich as easily as in the poor.  One example of this is Mr. Bumble, the cruel owner of the parish-house in which Oliver spends his early childhood.  Mr. Bumble embodies the type of human who is supposed to be helping the poor; instead, he is using his power for personal gain and increases the lower classes’ struggles.  Mr. Bumble ends his life in the very workhouse he once presided over, representing the ultimate downfall of those who act immorally.  Another “evil” and wealthy character is Oliver’s half-brother, Monks.  Monks is Oliver’s rich, high-born brother, but he is both unhappy and a despicable human being, and likewise meets his demise.  Dickens shows us that the rich and poor alike can be horrible people.  Indeed, the only “good” people in the novel who are wealthy, like Rose, are the ones who assist the poor.

Though the novel contains mostly characters who are morally “black and white,” there is one morally ambiguous character who exhibits both good and evil traits: Nancy.  This ambiguity serves to demonstrate the good which can exist in everyone, no matter their social status.  By all of society’s standards, Nancy is evil: she is a thief; a drinker; and is even implied to be a prostitute in the description of her “free and agreeable…manners” and high “colour”.  However, she commits a clearly good action in sacrificing herself to save Oliver’s life.  This surfacing of Nancy’s conscience despite her seemingly immoral character shows that there is hope for those who are “evil” because of their situation.  It is not the lower classes inherent nature to be evil, Dickens shows us through Nancy’s change of virtue.  We all have good in us which yearns to be brought out, so by changing the flawed system, we may eliminate both the evil brought on by poverty, and the evil, as in the case of Mr. Bumble, brought on by control of the poor.

As the reader decides how to judge these various characters’ morals and status, they are confronted with recurring themes of being judged and watched by God.  Oliver and Mrs. Mann watch Mr. Bumble approach the workhouse in the very beginning of the novel, Mrs. Mann passing judgments on Oliver and the Beitle all the while.  Noah is instructed by Sikes to watch and follow Nancy, and form a conjecture about her actions -- a judgment which will ultimately decide her fate.  Another example of judgment deciding fate is Sikes’ vision of Nancy’s eyes after he has killed her.  He is afraid of her ghost watching him—and he finally sees “her”, and loses his balance and plummets to his death, accidently hung by his own rope.  The reader can see that these “eyes” are the eyes of God, or God acting through Nancy’s soul, pushing Sikes to his demise so that he can be duly punished.  Indeed, all of the characters in the novel are watched and judged by God, and only those characters who are good and benevolent and help others have a happy conclusion to their tales.  Those who do not, like Sikes, or Nancy—still an ultimately “fallen” woman—are punished. 

These characters—Oliver, Monks, Bumble, and Nancy—collectively represent the possibility of good and evil in anyone, despite their circumstance.  Through eliminating the conventional perceptions of the poor’s inherent evil nature, Dickens encourages his upper class readers to help the lower class, but in a different, more effective way than the corrupt workhouse.  Dickens provides an incentive for his readers: in showing the unlimited and ambiguous nature of what kind of people are good or evil, Dickens demonstrates that anyone can and should attempt to be good and help those less fortunate. Dickens does this by showing many positive upper class characters helping the poor and being rewarded, and negative upper class characters ignoring or exploiting them and being punished.  Dickens suggests to the reader the threat of consequence in the afterlife through the unhappy circumstance of Monks.  Handed a second chance to be good, Monks throws it away and end his life in suffering.  Dickens’ readers are handed the same chance as they read Oliver Twist, and learn from Monks’ mistake not to throw it away.

Through this array of characters Dickens critiques society’s conventional perception of the poor as automatically evil, and shows the reader that good and bad can exist in anyone, poor or rich.  Oliver’s purity despite his unfortunate circumstance is contrasted with Monks’ and Bumble’s evil despite their good fortune, and all three characters’ flaws and virtues are compared in the contradictory character of Nancy.  Through her and his other characters Dickens argues that to try and “fix” the poor is the wrong way to approach England’s growing poverty—it is the oppressive system which must be fixed, and the evil rich who run it who must be corrected.  By showing that the poor can be saved, Dickens encourages his upper class audience to help the lower class.  Monks throwing away his chance at redemption is a light threat added to Dickens’ message and broader meaning—the upper classes have sinned by hurting the lower ones, and the only way that the reader can avoid God’s wrath is to change.

Close Reading II--October 9th: "Grilled Chicken, That Temperamental Star"

                David Segal’s mouth-watering article “Grilled Chicken, That Temperamental Star”, published in the New York Times, gives the reader a backstage pass to some of the most famous celebrities in our country.  But the reader isn’t learning about Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.  Segal introduces the reader into the little-known but widely viewed world of tabletop directing, the complicated art of making food in commercials look more scrumptious than it actually is.  While Segal could have easily written in a flowing, descriptive, mouth-watering style, with vivid detail, rich imagery, and careful syntax designed so the reader focuses on the words flowing chocolate, the author instead choses a more scientific tone for his article.  This more calculating (and traditionally journalistic) style stresses and underlines the author’s main point:  it is only the precision and technology used that make the food look good enough to eat.

                “The sauce will not behave” is the first sentence of the article, and is a perfect example of one of Segal’s goals in the essay: that in making the food like the ambrosia of the gods, the tabletop artists must reduce that actual food to an element that needs to be controlled.  The sentence is short, with a tone of slight annoyance and frustration conveyed through this type of syntax.  The point of view of the sentence puts the reader into the position of the one who is attempting to control the sauce—as the reader, you are presented with the problem.  The language of the sentence personifies the sauce as well, as a troublesome agent, but the sentence remains devoid of rich detail which would make the sauce into something tasty and tempting.  The lack of detail and rich language, the point of view, the short syntax, and the frustrated tone all serve Segal’s purpose of underlining the precision required in molding the resistant food into something appealing.

                In writing an article about food, there is no way that Segal could avoid tasty descriptions entirely, and still have the reader remember and believe that the food is food at all, and not the Terminator’s fingertips and Iron Man’s toenails.  Segal reminds the reader that the food ends up looking scrumptious early in the article, with a satisfying description of some items the tabletop artists work on.  They “make glossy vignettes that star butter-soaked scallops and glistening burgers”, Segal writes, and “their cameras swirl around fried chicken, tunnel through devil’s food cake and gape as soft-serve cones levitate and spin.”  However, he constantly reminds us that this is a difficult and scientific art, and that the food is actively resisting looking good.  Segal fills his description with adjectives and adverbs that accentuate the idea that this is a film industry as significant as Hollywood, such as scallops becoming “stars”.  Instead of personifying the food this time, he makes the cameras alive, but instead of being resistant, the cameras are the magical and appealing element.  Instead of the food, the technology is the thing that “swirls”, “tunnels”, “gapes”, and ultimately conquers and dominates the resistance food.  Segal describes how the directors transform “mundane and fattening staples of the American diet into luscious objects of irresistible beauty”.  The sentence’s syntax underlines the transition for unappetizing to appealing, something which Segal argues can only be attained through technology and precision, the only two actually appealing things in the process.

                Segal also occasionally injects humor, mocking both the amount of care involved, and his own fascination with the technological element of the advertisements.  He does this by quoting conversations between directors and workers, usually when the director is unsatisfied with the most minute detail, such as the timing of two drips of sauce—

“Anthony, the second drip is about 10 minutes after the shot is over,” says Mr. Somoroff [the director] after five or six takes, sounding faintly annoyed.

“I’m right on it,” Mr. DeRobertis says.

“You’re on it, but it’s not dripping when it has to drip.”  

Segal responds with both awe and amusement at the amount of work which goes into the tiniest detail, and then also corrects himself: some of the technology is quite advanced and admirable, yet some items used are merely devices for “un-wrinkling trousers” to make steam waft from a casserole.  Segal also uses frequent quotes and interviews with workers to further inform the reader about the complicated process of making food look good.  For instance, he quotes one director explaining why so many advertisements are almost erotic in their depiction, of, say, swirling chocolate: “You’re using the same part of your brain — porn, food,” Mr. Schrom says during a break. “It’s going in the same section; it’s that visual cortex that connects to your most basic senses.”

                At this point in the essay the reader once again questions why Segal isn’t then doing the same thing with his article.  One would assume that the language and imagery would be the article equivalent of the advertisements, perhaps even with a steady, flowing feel, long sentences, and convoluted syntax with gloriously described dishes and rich detail.  Why isn’t the article as erotic as the ads it discusses?  Segal doesn’t write this way in the article because Segal doesn’t care about the food.  The message the article is trying to convey to its audience is not that food at Arby’s is delicious—it’s that the tabletop directors spend hours and years taking something boring and resistance to looking good, and making it appealing.  The focus of the article is on the technology used and the artistry involved in making us want to eat an otherwise unappetizing chicken nugget.  Segal’s interviews with the workers reveal that the food can’t even look too good: otherwise, it would be unbelievably good.  And yet, most of the techniques used to make the food look good involving “faking it”—plaster, hypodermic needles, glue. 

Segal shows the reader, through his scientific syntax, language, and imagery that stress the falsehood of the real food and the technological aspect of the process, that in reality, tabletop directors do not take good food and make it look better.  They must construct fake food to even approach deliciousness—they must make food fly, jump, slice itself in half to appeal to us, and the only way they can do that is through hours of struggling and technological precision.  The stress on this aspect of the art calls into question for the reader the reality of everything we see, especially on TV and in commercials.  The images projected to us as viewers and readers in society are not only false, Segal argues, they are completely removed from the actual product or situation.  Segal shows us that we live in a world where the real, old fashioned thing isn’t good enough for us anymore, and that today, we must use technology to improve the disappointing world around us.  The last sentence of the article is a celebration of the workers—they have just gotten some cheese to stretch exactly so.  The last word of the sentence is “triumphantly”, a structure which emphasizes this word since reader’s focus on the last word of a sentence or phrase.  This emphasizes the triumph which must and will occur, of technology over organic materials which inhibit our needs or wants.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/business/in-food-commercials-flying-doughnuts-and-big-budgets.html?_r=1&hp

Response to Course Material II--October 9th

 

First and foremost, at this point in the semester, I am happy to say I now feel a lot more comfortable with the different elements of DIDLS, and now actually understand what syntax is.  I find syntax an extremely difficult thing to find in a close reading situation partly because of my entirely limited knowledge of grammatical terms or regularities, but at least I know that I should be finding something.  I have to become more familiar with grammar, and, say, the classic structure of a sentence, because without this knowledge my analysis of syntax will be incomplete and limited to the stress of words at the end of the sentence, and the frequent omissions of the word and.  I also have to work through my reluctance to learn grammatical terms, because while I love literature, I most certainly do not love clauses.

                I also feel more secure with banging out a thesis in a shorter amount of time, but I still feel inexperienced and unsure with writing under pressure and spinning out those arguments fast enough.  If I’m writing an open prompt, I’m okay with the thesis and argument and what I want to say, but I run out of time and end up writing too long of an essay.  I’ll be writing open prompts on weekends, and I’ll say to myself “okay, write this in forty minutes”, but then I’ll get so into my argument I’ll lose track of time and over an hour later I’ll finish, feeling pretty good, and then look at the clock and slap myself.  In contrast, if I’m writing a closed prompt, I struggle to form an argument—without enough time to sit with the text, I still cannot analyze it fast enough, such as our American Dream assignment.  Most of the time my group took up was just figuring out what we thought the play meant.  This was predominantly my fault.  Once we analyzed, then we shot out a thesis, an introduction, and some sentences relatively fast.  I loved this assignment, though, because I found The American Dream an extremely intriguing and funny play.  I have read only one other play in the absurd genre: Endgame, which I did not enjoy nearly as much.  Albee's play had dialogue equally ridiculous, but it was funny in its randomness and the meaning of the play was extremely interesting to contemplate.

                In addition, I feel better but still not great about the structure of the essays, where each topic sentence is an elaboration on the thesis.  I don’t feel badly about it, per say, it’s just a different form than I’m used to, so it will probably take a little more practice for it to become second nature.  Happily, however, it’s not something I’m struggling with too much.  It seems a bit like the five paragraph essay format to me, and I suppose my problem is that the last couple years I’ve had do not hand in to me a five paragraph essay drilled into my head, so adjusting is kind of a U-turn.   But I find it fun to write with different formats and styles because then you’re prepared for any format your professor requires later on, so it’s an enjoyable U-turn, even if the brakes squeal a little bit.

Open Prompt II--October 2nd: "Passing" Over Answers

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

Readers tend to look for an “answer” in the text: an argument which can be clearly stated, and is conveyed through all of the texts thematic and stylistic elements.  However, Nella Larsen’s novel Passing offers no such clear-cut solution.  Passing  takes place in Harlem during the 1920’s, during a time when issues of racial and class identity were both very important, and undergoing rapid change and were therefore ambiguous and uncertain. The novel debates these issues, asking the reader to question what it means to be “black” or “white,” among other issues of class, sexual orientation, jealousy, and self-awareness.  But the novel never gives answers to any of the questions.  Larsen uses a limited narrative perspective and that perspective’s lack of awareness of the world around her and herself, as a tool to convey the impossibility of answering definitively the larger issues raised in the novel.

The novel is narrated in 3^rd person, but the narration is closely allied with the protagonist Irene Redfield, an upper middle class, light-skinned black woman.  As the novel follows her life and her family—specifically focusing on her relationship with her friend Clare, an African-American woman “passing” as white—the reader can see that they cannot rely on Irene’s perspective to tell the complicated tale.  Unfortunately, this is the only option the readers have: because of this limited narrative perspective, you as the reader only know what she knows.  Larsen’s protagonist is delusional, not self-aware, suspicious, prejudiced, and as confused as the readers, creating ambiguity that could not have been achieved any other way.  Irene doesn’t know what to think, and neither does the reader.

This ambiguity becomes apparent on the first page of the novel, when Irene does not recognize Clare at a fancy (essentially white) restaurant.  She sees Clare with another man, not her husband, which becomes important later in the novel when Irene suspects Clare of having an affair with her husband Brian.  Because the narrative is closely aligned with Irene’s consciousness, the reader is inclined to look at things her way, and so initially are shocked and panicked with her and the infidelity.  However, as time goes on, the reader realizes that Irene has absolutely no proof of the affair, and that it could very well be her imagination.

This flight of fancy could even be interpreted as a manifestation of her jealousy of either Brian or Clare.  The reader realizes it may be possible that Irene herself is attracted to Clare, and is jealous of her possible relationship with Brian.  Irene describes Clare as sensuous, beautiful, glowing, graceful, exotic, and stunning, and describes her features in exquisite detail; she describes Clare’s dead body as “glorious.”  Irene does not admit that she is attracted to Clare, but it becomes a possibility to the reader that Irene is actually panicked by the affair because she is jealous of Brian. 

However, there is no proof of this either, and the reader is forced to entertain the possibility that it is Clare’s wealth and stature as a “passing” African American—her material success—that Irene is jealous of, and possibly desires to get rid of at the end of the novel.  This lack of self-awareness and ambiguity causes the reader to doubt the truth in Irene’s speculations later in the novel, especially in the final climactic scene.  One of the few things that is clear to the reader is the fact that Irene cannot decide whether she actually enjoys Clare’s company.  Certainly, she constantly tries to avoid it, only to give in because she cannot resist Clare. 

Clare’s desire to mingle with darker African Americans, and “her people”, in turn raises the big question: “what is race?” Several possible definitions of racial identity are played out in the novel, but no certain definition emerges as an argument separate from the protagonist’s narration.  The setting of the novel, 1920s Harlem, is crucial, because at that period in history the idea of the “one drop theory” was being debated.  Did “one drop” of African blood make you “black”?  If the reader only considers Irene’s perspective, this is the definition of race.  Irene says that Clare “cared nothing for her race; she only belonged to it”—but whether she acted at Irene thought “blacks” should, she was definitely Irene’s “people” because she had African ancestry.  However, for Irene, this became a sort of positive idea of kinship, not a negative and demeaning reference to slavery.  The narrative voice also complicates this singular definition of race by showing Irene’s view of class, in which middle and upper class Harlem blacks saw themselves as separate from working class blacks.  Here, class culture becomes almost like another race.  Brian brings up the possibility that race is the magnetism felt by all members of the race toward each other, and is separate from physical appearance, class, or ancestry. 

By his definition, Clare is “black”, because Clare uses Irene as a guide to her “poorer darker brethren”, and attempts to insert herself into this society any way she can.  She goes dancing in African American clubs, and goes to parties with Irene’s friends.  However, this is paradoxical, because if Clare was completely a part of Irene’s “race”, then she wouldn’t need a guide.  In this way, Clare is “white”, just like the Caucasians who would go to African American clubs like the Cotton Club, and observe the culture but only be able to spectate.  Another “race” emerges through Clare.  That is the “race” of people like Clare who are light enough to pass, and call into question the whole idea of racial identity in the first place.  As we hear the story from Irene’s point of view, we are invited to scorn Clare as a “passing” African American.  She is part of the African American race, and yet belongs simultaneously to another race of passing individuals.  So while two characters in the novel give their opinions on the definition of race, the definition still remains ambiguous and the reader without answers.   In this way, the narration of the novel is a barrier—we must struggle to see past Irene’s thoughts, points of view, and speculations toward her own interiority, for Irene does not know herself.

These racial and social tensions come to a climax at the end of the novel, when Clare, attending an all-“black” party at Irene’s home, falls, or is pushed, out of the window.  She “passes” into the next life just as she “passed” during her life, but many key elements needed to “answer” the racial questions raised are missing because of Irene’s limited perspective.  Prior to Clare’s fall and death, her husband, who has discovered she is really “black”, rushes into the party and reveals her.  Immediately, all the African Americans in the room—“passing” or not, darker-skinned or wealthy—band together against the unquestionably “white” intruder.    Irene only remembers laying a hand on Clare’s arm as Brian and Clare’s husband also start forward, and then that Clare is dead.  The reader doesn’t know whether Clare was pushed, or if so, by whom.  It is possible that Irene pushed Clare out, jealous of her possible affair (for whatever reason), or jealous of Clare’s lifestyle.  Brian could have pushed Clare for reasons unknown; Clare’s husband could have pushed her out of anger.  Or Clare could have fallen—or perhaps even committed suicide, unable to deal with her life without true and certain identity.  However, the reader cannot possibly know what really happened, because of Irene’s limited perspective and complete lack of clarity, even in her reaction to Clare’s death. 

This same lack of clarity results in ambiguity regarding all of the different questions raised in the novel, especially race.  One could argue, though, that in this non-argument there is, in fact, an “answer”.  Larsen could be arguing that there is no way to tell what “race” is; it is impossible to define what it is to be “black” or “white”, because our own limited perspective on the world will blind us from the truth, if it even exists.  Larsen could be showing the reader, through the complicated and tragic lives of her delusional characters, and the frustrating ambiguity, that we are all Irene Redfield.  We may all be prejudiced, paranoid, uncertain, and unaware as we go through our lives, and that who we are is not defined by race in any sense, but by everything from our gender to our class to our spouse.  But Larsen doesn’t even definitively make that argument—in Passing, there is no way to tell for sure.  Larsen forces you to see all of these inconsistencies outside of Irene’s acknowledgements to demonstrate the extreme complications involved with defining race. The ambiguity of the end of the novel due to narrative perspective—the fact that you don’t know exactly how Clare died—represents these divides.