Race and the American Novel Project Part 4 of 4

Reader Response:

I started with Barnes and Nobel reviews of the novel Beloved. Responses rate from "A masterwork" to "Shattering emotional power and impact." Readers of the novel find this to be a very powerful and beautifully-written novel that will last forever. I can't say that I was emotionally impacted by this novel, however there were some moments that struck me as powerful. One response states "I can't imagine American literature without it". I'm not so sure I agree, coming from a student that hasn't read a lot of American Lit. books. I don't get emotionally attached to books. Some may pull on my heart strings but it's not excessive. This novel has obviously struck many readers of American Lit. as one of the greatest novels ever published, and I don't disagree. This novel is very powerful and is a great read. It's not something younger generations would read, however. That's just my opinion. 

Next I took a look at Goodreads. The reviews were similar to the Barnes and Nobel ones, from "One of the best books I have ever read in the course in my short life" to "Sorry Stephen King: evil clowns and alcoholic would-be writers are pretty creepy, but they just got nothing on the terrifying specter of American slavery!" However, I read more hate-responses on this one than the last. One review response absolutely hated this novel. He stated "I found Beloved incomprehensible to the point of absurdity." Well it is true that the book can be a little incomprehensible and confusing, but that's how Toni Morrison writes and you have to respect that. I guess it's not for everyone. To each his own. 

Lastly, I looked at Amazon. Many of the reviews comment on the confusing narrative of the novel and the chronological order of the noevel, but they also comment on how powerful it is. An English teacher writes that teaching it is difficult an to " Expect to be disoriented at the beginning, but the plot clears up as you go and then you can go back and re-read the opening chapters." I don't doubt that this novel is difficult to teach. Students need to be able to fully understand what the author's intentions were and that the novel is supposed to be complex. Being able to talk about the confusing parts as well as the more in-depth parts of the novel are really helpful when reading it. Whereas reading it for pleasure for the first time rather in a classroom might take more time to understand. Like I stated before, the book isn't for everyone. I like the supernatural genre as much as the next person but this kind of supernatural didn't spark interest. I do agree that this is a very powerful, complex, and intriguing read. 

Race and the American Novel Project: Part 3 of 4

Synthesis: 

One major theme I've chosen to represent Beloved and Uncle Tom's Cabin is FAMILY. I chose this theme because family is a valuable asset in both novels. The characters in both novels are willing to do anything to protect their families, even if that means kill one of their own, such as Sethe in Beloved. Family creates power and there is power in numbers. Sethe choosing to kill one of her children gave her power over the slave owners. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, mothers also killed their children. Family differed in the novel, though. One family was willing to help the slaves, one would have turned in the slaves, and another had a neutral feeling towards the slaves. In this sense, family also gave the characters power - power over the slaves. Complete opposites when comparing the novels together. The characters also find family in others. They are willing to fight for one another. 

However, family is also torn apart. For example, in Beloved Sethe, Paul D., and Denver cannot stay together for some reason. It seems as though Beloved tore the family apart. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, families are also torn apart. The slaves' families are separated from beginning to end. Children are taken away from their mothers, wives taken from husbands...and even when they escape, some don't make it, and some have to learn to survive for themselves. The killing of children because of slavery happens in both novels. It's horrible to think of ever killing someone you love. I don't think I could do it. 

Race and the American Novel Project: Part 2 of 4

Contemporary Connections:

I chose to use the Ferguson, Missouri riots after the shooting of Michael Brown as an example of racial issues that exist in America in 2015 (even though it was in 2014, it's pretty relevant). 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30190224

In connection to Beloved, I see the history of slavery/racism between white Americans and African-Americans impacting the reactions of events like the shooting of an African-American by a white police officer. But in this case, and similar cases, African-Americans fight back. Whereas, in the time of Beloved, African-Americans couldn't or didn't choose to fight back. 

Currently in 2015, racism still exists. And it's too excessive nowadays. Everyone is blaming actions of others on race. Like the Ferguson shooting, no one can tell the story of what really happened, and one isn't going to believe the other because of the race issue. Nobody really takes the time to think that the police officer did what he had to do because it's part of his job. It's not racist, it's the fact that someone was hostile and the instinct was to shoot. I'm in no way defending the killing of someone, nor am I saying the kid deserved to die. It could've ended differently on both sides of the argument. Racism is taken to the extremes nowadays, whereas in the times of Beloved, racism was...not accepted but it was normal. People were used to it. The people in 2015 should be used to it as well. But the race-card is played too many times. 

Race and the American Novel Project: Part 1 of 4

Critical Commentary:

Using the UW-Manitowoc library database "JSTOR", I came across an article titled "Remodeling the Model Home in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved" written by Lori Askeland. The article compares both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved in terms of setting and the structural aspects of the homes in both novels. It states that "Beloved is set in part in the same place and during the same period as Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Askeland 787), it's near Cincinnati in 1873, and that both novelists "use and remodel traces of slave history to create narratives that will also remodel the ideologies that dominate the country's power structure. Yet both novels remain haunted by the figures that represent power" (787-788). The author of this article suggests that the remodeling of the houses in both novels symbolize power. 

In response to this article, I was amazed at what Lori Askeland had written. She states that both houses are "ultimately owned and haunted by a patriarchal figure who cannot be easily overcome" (791). It makes a lot of sense. Beloved is the figure that cannot be easily overcome. She ultimately holds all of the power over every character in the novel. I would've thought that slave history and masculinity held the power, given what we know about slavery...but instead it's a figure. 


Askeland, Lori. "Remodeling the Model Home in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved." N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2015.

Blog #5: Diving into the Wreck

I chose to write this blog about Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" on pages 1386-1388. I found this poem really confusing and intriguing at the same time. I specifically want to discuss the part that really intrigued me, lines 62 through 77. 

Starting on line 62, where Rich writes "the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck/the thing itself and not the myth" (Rich 1387). Rich wants to point out that there's a lot more to her journey than a shipwreck. To others like Jacques Cousteau, they dive to discover something beautiful and unique; Rich has discovered that there's nothing beautiful and unique about a shipwreck. Looking at the wreck is just sad. The "drowned face always staring/toward the sun" (1387) Rich describes turns out to be one of those mermaids you see on old ships. Everything about this wreck is depressing to look at, but it tells a story. Which is why at the end of her poem, Rich writes in the last stanza that we all have to write our own stories; otherwise we'll be lost like the "half-destroyed instruments" (1388). 

Another part that got my attention was the line that says "And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair/streams black, the merman in his armored body...I am she: I am he" (1387). These lines intrigued me because one, I love mermaids, and two because she writes them without boundaries between the two sexes. The use of "we" signifies unity and given that Rich participated in the Second Wave of Feminism, it makes sense. I'm not saying that the whole poem revolves around Feminism, but this part definitely does. 

Tennessee Williams: "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Earlier in today's class, we discussed who we felt more sympathy for: Blanche or Stanley? In this post, I'm going to focus on Blanche's character and specifically why I have more sympathy for Blanche and not Stanley. 

Stanley's actions cannot be justified. He is a controlling, abusive, anger-filled "man" who doesn't deserve to be treated as well as Stella does or by any woman. Just because he was in the war or because he didn't grow up in a stable or wealthy family like Blanche and Stella doesn't give him the freedom to control or hit his wife. Saying that Stanley's abusive actions toward Stella and Blanche is justified because he's filled with anger due to his past is just like saying the serial killers you see today are let go because they're "unstable" because they were abused or neglected as a child. Any justification for his actions is invalid. We don't feel sorry for those serial killers, but some feel sorry for Stanley? Stanley had the choice of bettering his life when he was old enough. He had the choice of growing as a person and not being an abusive ass. (I'm not targeting anyone in the class, just making a point.) I mean, did he really have to throw the entire radio out the WINDOW? For real? He simply could have walked in the room and asked the girls to turn it down. But no. He had to go psycho-bitch on them and throw it out the window. There are other ways of handling your anger. "Stanley feels really bad about the radio so he's fixing it." He shouldn't have thrown it out in the first place! Just saying. 

Blanche may have been a little unstable and bitchy herself, but like I mentioned in class I know what it's like to lose your best friend because of a guy and unhealthy relationship. It's one of the worst, most heart-breaking experiences someone could ever go through. And I've been through it four times, and counting. Blanche tried to tell Stella that she needed to get out of her marriage with Stanley because he's bad news. But Stella denied that anything was wrong with her marriage and chose Stanley over her sister. And doing what Blanche does best, she pushed Stanley's buttons to get Stella to see what kind of man Stanley was: a controlling, anger-filled, testosterone-raging caveman. Women don't have to get physical with someone to make a point. Words have a way of cutting deep like a knife. 

I watched two of my best friends be controlled for months until one day they dropped me like a hot potato. Now I know it wasn't their faults, obviously it was the relationship. I tried to tell them, and unfortunately I lost them. My best friend is currently getting back into the relationship that made her lose me in the first place, and I have to bite my tongue because I know the more I push her and tell her that he's bad news, she'll get angry and chose him over me. She's done it twice. I'm giving her the time she wants with him because she's believed that he's "grown" in the four months they've been apart. But like Blanche, I can see through his nice-guy act. But I'm not one to get between their relationship and prove that he's a bad guy. 

Before the movie clip we watched in class, I had already created my perception of Stanley and his relationship with Stella. So anything in that movie or the rest of the play couldn't redeem him. 

Literary Movement: Imagism

I'm going to focus mainly on the Imagism movement in this post. 

Imagism rose in the early twentieth-century, specifically in 1912, and it was created by Ezra Pound. According to poets.org, Imagism "included English and American poets in the early twentieth-century who wrote free verse..." Imagism was a reaction to "flabby abstract language and careless thinking of Georgian romanticism." According to poetryfoundation.org, it relied on resonance of concrete images drawn in precise, colloquial language, rather than traditional poetic diction. Examples of Imagist poets include William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.). 

I've found two scholarly sources: the first is titled "The Screenplay, Imagism, and Modern Aesthetics", and the second is titled "Pound's Imagism and the Surreal". I'm going to focus mainly on the second scholarly article that I've found, since that one explains Imagism a little better. 

According to the article written by William Skaff, Ezra Pound worked with a Japanese poet named Yone Noguchi played a huge role in Imagism. Pound implies that principles of Imagism relate to those of Surrealism. The article then goes on to explain how Pound relates his reasoning to the psychology of Bertrand Hart. Pound believed that Imagism and Surrealism both used metaphors in the same way, and that both are used to unlock some form of the unconscious. 

The use of metaphors in Imagism relate to the unconscious. Images are based on intellectual and emotional complexes, according to Pound. I can understand that, but others might not. Many critics suggest that they don't see the possibility of images representing "a complex through the content of sensory experience" (Skaff 198). 

"A Brief Guide to Imagism." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.

"Glossary Terms." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.

Skaff, William. Journal of Modern Literature. 12:2. July 1985. (UW-Manitowoc Library resources) Web.             15 Mar. 2015.