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.