Aldous Huxley is a Clairvoyant

This week was a crazy, but interesting one, in English and in general.  When I wasn't taking AP's or studying, we learned about dystopian society , and conflicting visions about it.

I'll be honest, up until this point, A Brave New World was unknown to me.  But I had read 1984, and I suppose it was enough to make the comparison.  The difference, as told by New Postman's cutting-edge social critique, lies in the mode of developed dystopia.

In a nutshell, 1984 predicted an apocalypse dominated by external forces, and A Brave New World predicted a social death from within. One of the most chilling comments, of course, made of the fact that books will become obsolete on our own accord, instead of being taken away from us (Huxley), with truth being "drowned in a sea of irrelevance"(Huxley).

One of the major discussion points on this had to do with technology, namely cell phones.  With such a distraction, that we truly love, Huxley's vision does seem to ring true, to an ridiculous extent. Everywhere I go, I see people on their cell phones--not talking, not laughing, just fiddling.

Which reminds me:

This piece of spoken word is beautiful, and telling. It has over 50 million views.  Saddest part is, so many of those views must have been from a phone.

~Chris

Numbers

In this passage, Spiegelman uses both images and words to draw spirituality, hope, and imprisonment together, and thus conveys a strong message--in times of darkness and struggle, people seek to pin their desires onto symbolic objects, even those out of their control. 

The arrival of the priest into Vladek's life provides a sense of support and comfort.  Although the priest himself isn't even a Jew, the words he provides to Vladek instill in the young prisoner a faith, and a continued will, to continue fighting for survival.  

Ironically, the numbers on Vladek's arm were not traditionally mean't as a symbol of hope.  They drew their beginnings as dehumanizing figures, symbols meant to marginalize the Jews as a race.  However, the priest offers Vladek more than saintly advice--he also allows Vladek to convert the dehumanizing numbers into powerful symbols of freedom. Vladek "started to believe"(Spiegelman) in his "very good omen"(Spiegelman).

It is this contrast and juxtaposition that seems to characterize Spiegelman's message throughout the book. In its pages, the good and the evil of both sides merge, and hope to extend their wills by forcing it on to others.  The identity of symbols, such as those on the prisoner's arms, are as important in the book as the people themselves.  They are the lifeblood of the survivors, the hope that flows through their veins.  

-Chris

Unorthodox Opinion

Unorthodox Opinion: from the entire book, this was my favorite part of Maus:

              Of course, from first glance, an opinion like this may seem a bit strange.  After all, the vast majority of Maus focuses on Vladek's story, and the Holocaust, and it deliberately refrains from addressing consumerism and fame as a social issue like those in the pages above.  But when I read these two pages, I really felt how poignant they were.  I was moved by the author's intentions, but more importantly, all that wasn't intended by the story.  And this passage really underlines that distinction:

1. The desk on the corpses (Spiegelman 41):  This image underscores the author's true motivations and thoughts about the story.  His writing builds off of the horrible tragedies, the unspeakable truths of history.  His writing is inspired by the past.

2.  The flies (Spiegelman 41):  The flies haunt Art constantly while writing.  They are a reminder of the souls lost during the holocaust, a sobering reminder to honor their stories and lives. It represents how inherently tainted and evil the bulk of the story is, and the worst parts of human nature that he must portray.

3.  The masks (Spiegelman 42):  The businessmen, with their masks, are the consumerist, opportunistic, profiteers who wish to use Art's work for their own sake.  They hide their true intentions by wearing a mask, and putting on a superficial facade.

4.  The aging (Spiegelman 41-42): Personally, the most touching motif in these two pages.  The attention and fame that Art receives causes him to revert back to his childhood, and restores the vulnerability to evil that now pose a threat to him.  

When the businessmen demand to hear Art's interpretation of his stories, they fail to see that Art had no real intentions or personal opinions.  To him, Maus is a story that dares to reach the unspeakable, and attempts to reach truth under the stifled stories of millions.  Adding a single interpretation would be grossly inappropriate, and it would discount the enormity of the tragedy, the Holocaust.

Absolutely life-changing.

~Chris

Pragmatism to Sentimentalism

                Anyone, including Sontag herself, must agree that pictures can be immensely powerful.  Rooted in inspiration, vision, or worldly emotion, pictures can evoke jubilant and sadness, anger and forgiveness.

American tourist offers his shoes to a Brazilian orphan

      Put in the hands of a skilled artist, photographs can be symbols of the human experience.  Although the photographs "will always be some kind of sentimentalism"(Sontag 24-25), in no way are they a source of "mental pollution"(Sontag 39).

        If anything, photographs are a source of mental purity, to see truth in a world too often filled with thick smoke and empty mirrors. To me, even the most horrible of propaganda through pictures is beautiful, not in its message but in its delivery.

        To see black Olympians raise their fists in solidarity, or to see liberated Jews during the Holocaust, is humanity is its raw form. Undying                                                                                         emotions are weaved into the pictures, and they                                                                                       move me in their cause.

Lone pacifist during the Tiananmen Square Massacre

          Photographs have got me thinking, "filling[ing] the blanks...of the present and the past"(Sontag 9-10).  I can recall the first time I saw the picture on the right.  Still young then, I remember worrying for the man in the picture, how it was such a dangerous, and borderline suicidal, thing to do.

          But over time, as I better understood the man's motivations, I realized that for those who would be willing to sacrifice everything for their cause acts of extreme courage came naturally.  It was still dangerous, but it was dangerous and brave.  One peaceful man against an entire army.

Protester offers a flower in 1967 Vietnam War Protests

              So in the end, I disagree, Sontag. Pictures don't distort our attitudes, they purify them in a raw wave of emotion.  To see clearly a cause, whether it be political or just human, is a photograph's greatest gift. A picture isn't just worth a thousand words--its worth millions of stories, woven together into an beautiful and often terrible history.

~Chris

Tommy Smith and John Carlos in the Black Power Movement

Liberated Jewish Prisoners at Farsleben

Consider the Human

           Although I found David Foster Wallace's essay Consider the Lobster decidedly very interesting, I did have a number of objections to the main point made in the essay. Per my understanding, the essay was about getting readers to simply consider their choice of high-class shellfish, and its implications in the human rights community.

           But when I speak now, I speak for the lobster lovers out there (my parents, not so much myself)--for many of the readers of Gourmet magazine, thinking about the "moral status....and physical suffering"(Wallace) is precisely what they don't wish to think about when biting into the tasty flesh of their favorite shellfish.  After all, to consider the "rabbit-like death scream"(Wallace) of the lobster makes it much less appetizing and palatable--or if it doesn't change anything, you may want to get your appetite checked.

            My parents have been to the Maine Lobster Festival before, and their retelling differs greatly, in connotation and in image, of Wallace's.[1]  Furthermore, I've also been to the lobster-eating-festival-party state that is all of Maine.  I mean, there is lobster everywhere. To the point of gluttonous excess.  Two weeks of lobster meals later, the smell of lobster is enough to make you break into a cold sweat. Not the excited kind either. In a situation like that, avid lobster fans seem even less likely to agree with Wallace's call to gustatory action.

           Of course, this may have been the overarching purpose of Wallace's essay in the first place.  In which case I applaud its boldness: for its incredible apophasis, as well as for the biting irony of the essay's context.

~Chris

[1] If any of you ever go to Maine, be sure to try their blueberry soda, or blueberry pie along with your lobster. If there's a place where good taste-buds go when they die, we have our answer. Its one of those things where you think you've lived up until the moment you eat it, but then you realize you haven't.

For Hours they Dissolved

For Hours they Dissolved

            After reading the book Mrs. Dalloway, and watching The Hours, a movie that's largely based on the book... 

           I wondered why the director, Stephen Daldry, had chosen the title of the movie to be "The Hours".  Although the motif of time is incredibly prevalent through the book, there are a host of other aspects that seem more significant at first inspection.  Perhaps Daldry saw Mrs. Dalloway as a manifesto against the incessant marching of time itself.  Something in the way that Clarissa so often "pursed her lips when she looked in the glass"(Woolf 37)--in a fleeting, yet impressing, moment of introspection. Something in the the old lady's walk, through the rooms of a lifetime--that gifted Daldry his final vision.  But of all the evidence, this dialogue in the movie hit me the hardest.

            It might just be me, but when Richard said those lines, it was incredibly gut-wrenching.  His words stood for the bitter nature of his personal infliction, and they also hinted at the shattered pieces in all the characters--Clarissa's mortality, Woolf's mental isolation, among others. They conveyed that no matter how comforting the characters can be to one another, and no matter how much they promise to hold "parties" to fill the void--they are ultimately alone to face their suffering for eternity.

           If anything, the movie granted me new understanding of the leaden circles.  For as long as the clock strikes over cloudy London, the "leaden circles"(Woolf 4) weigh down on their victims, binding them to cruel reality.

~Chris

Mrs. Dalloway's Party

             This week, we finally finished Mrs. Dalloway!

              Reading those last few pages, I had a flashback to the scene in the movie, Les Miserables, during the repose.  In the movie, all of the characters, good and bad, alive and dead, return in a dream-like scene.  They sing the last lines of the song, a reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing", and their voices ring out from behind imaginary barricades.  By bringing these characters together, the movie finally brings together symbols of unity and revolution.

              During the party scene of Mrs. Dalloway, I had a similar feeling.  Finally, characters like Dr. Holmes, Clarissa, Peter, Hugh, and Lady Bruton come together. Even characters like Sally, until now fixated into memories in the past, "reprise" their roles in the present. And just as a passed Jean Valjean looks on proudly from the crowd, Clarissa watches over the party, pondering over the notion that "If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy"(Woolf 184).  But there isn't all pride and happiness in this quote, and in Mrs. Dalloway's reunion. Clarissa thinks about this "young man [who] had killed himself"(Woolf 184), Septimus, and wonders if his death was the best option.  She thinks that through death, Septimus's societal pressures are relieved, unlike the most superficial of English society.  I compare this event to the death of the French revolutionaries in Les Miserables.  Like Septimus, they gave up their lives struggling against authority.

              Perhaps the aim of Virginia Woolf, like Director Tom Hooper (of les mis), shared some key components.  They both seeked to bring together their characters to create a sense of union in their work's final moments. They both juxtaposed characters good and evil, hinting that in the end, these conflicting forces in society remained inseparable, and were bound to struggle eternally.  But perhaps most importantly, both artists suggest that in the end, there is hope for humanity, despite the pain of the world.
~Chris

It's About Time

"'The time, Septimus,' Rezia repeated. 'What is the time?'"(Woolf 70)

          As I read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, I can't help but draw an unlikely connection to these characters from their struggle to grapple with time.  In the book, time, as an overarching motif, heals and wounds: it makes for a more introspective Clarissa, and also creates a more broken Septimus.  Taking this immense polarity off the page, I began to see the entire spectrum of effects time could have, and already has had on my life.

          From my earliest moments, time seemed to be an exploration.  I would dream and wonder, of the day so many years later, when I would finally take my first drive as a race car driver; when I would take my first flight, my first spacewalk, high in the sky.  Time seemed to be a promise, always there to be fulfilled.

         But just like the Big Ben striking, an ambivalence to the effects of time hit me first like "a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable"(Woolf 4). My first day at school, a first of a mundane many, struck me as endless. How many days left until I can put on the spacesuit for the first time? Months? Years?  The idea of time became magnificently double-edged, as I lay fascinated but fearful.
         Like the characters, though, the cold reality of time finally served to teach me.  Clarissa sees time as an endless march, and Septimus sees it as stream of endless, haunting reminders.  Time was "frail, quivering...an ancient spring spouting from the earth"(Woolf 80), and it constantly conveyed to me my own mortality; but for the first time, time didn't seem quite like a sword.

         Instead, time was more a mirror, reflecting back to you what you already know. It reminds you of a state of being, in all the ecstatic, and in all the distraught.  It is biased but at the same time unbiased, letting your own attitudes create your own self-perception.  Paradoxically, it is by showing you your own psyche that time creates change.

        Time constantly gives us the choice to create ourselves anew, positively, or negatively.
~Chris

Rampant Streams of Consciousness

This week, we did a stream of consciousness activity involving rushed writing and distractions.  We also started on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

I have to say, Mrs. Dalloway, so far, is a strange character (perhaps purposely so).  With a "narrow pea-stick figure"(Woolf 10), "ridiculous little face"(Woolf 10), and face "beaked like a bird"(Woolf 10), doesn't the author's description seem a bit harsh? Virginia Woolf, what has a kind, old, rich, elderly woman ever done to you?

But now that I think about it, perhaps there was logic behind this madness.  By describing Mrs. Dalloway unflatteringly, the authors intention is to contrast a paltry physique with a beautiful, complex, mind.  That's a major purpose of stream of consciousness, anyways; to offer the reader a rare look inside the mind, instead of commenting from the outside like so many other works of her time.

Every thought, every pondering, of the kind old Mrs. Dalloway is recorded, after all.  Although it confuses me often, and doesn't seem the most cohesive sometimes, it must have taken a lot of deep thinking and effort.  #respect.
~Chris

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Bonus round! Some of the highlights I wrote from our activity:

"People around me mirror my actions, and we’re all, in one moment, living in the same life force, in the same cocoon…outside the spell is broken, and the hectic chatter like songbirds freed from their cages"

"I am distracted, and yet annoyed. How does creative flow arise from such a distracted environment? Where do I draw my inspiration if not from my own silence?"

"Perhaps it is the external forces that strike me, knock me down….push me most. Is all work, all thoughts, just an amalgamation of the worldly forces existing at that moment?"  

Conclusion: This is frightening. Its a wonder i’m able to communicate at all if this is going through my mind every second.

Rage against the dying of the light

As I was reading "The Death of the Moth", by Virginia Woolf this week, I was constantly reminded of this poem:

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

...

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night."

~Dylan Thomas

                     The life, and subsequent death, of the moth reflects the lives of humans, living ephemerally, like the flash of a burning sun. The same light that grants youthful passion also removes it so abruptly.  In the poem, Thomas explores the reactions of three kinds of people:  wise men, good men, wild men, grave men, and finally his own father, to the prospect of death.  The moth described in Woolf's work, similarly, struggles with its own transience. It "slips on the wooden ledge and falls"(Woolf 697), and "his legs fluttered again....in last protest" (Woolf 697).  

                   Each action of the moth, in this piece, mirrors a similarly human action.  In the rapid fluttering of the moth at the beginning, I saw a youth devouring the world which bombarded his senses.  In the middle, I saw a middle aged adult, "dancing and zigzagging" (696) with his significant other.  At the end, I saw an old man, "stiff or awkward"(697).  But Dylan Thomas views this aging process differently.  

                 In his poem "Do not go Gentle into that Good Night", Thomas urges his father to "rage, rage, against the dying of the light"; instead of slipping and falling like a dying moth, the poem seems to suggest being energetic, and being a "bead of life"(Woolf 696) until the very end.  And if you've lived a fulfilling and adventurous life, I suppose, that's the very best way to go.  

~Chris

"Nian Nian You Yu"

"Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone" ~Amy Tan

            This week, the "Fish Cheeks", by Amy Tan was a piece that I could really connect to.  It tells of Tans experiences eating a Chinese-style Christmas dinner with a Caucasian family guest. Effectively, this piece combines two of my favorite things: Food, and Christmas, together into a work that resonates with my Chinese-American Heritage.

             Like Amy Tan, I also have felt the awkwardness and shame of "noisy Chinese relatives", and their seemingly boundless capability for faux pas (at least in an American context).  I have also had phases of wishful thinking, where I would be born white, and raised on such stereotypically American foods as steak, potatoes, and burgers(all of which I do consume nowadays.  But like the Tan family, I also commonly consume "rock cod", "tofu", "dried fungus", and "squid"(Tan 95), as well; perhaps having experienced both sides to this story, the contrast I see in the piece may not be as stark as the reactions of readers of other backgrounds.

              In many Chinese families, we have the saying "nian nian you yu", which is a play on words: the word fish is a homonym for abundance: the phrase itself means "every year has abundance/fish", and its the reason that fish is part of every Chinese new year, or marriage, or special occasion meal.  So I guess I have my own "fish cheeks".

             In the end, Tan does a remarkably good job of capturing the awkward, the embarrassing, and sometimes outright hilarious life that is a Chinese-Americans. And before I forget, the new show "Fresh off the boat", which tells the story of an Asian-American family? Amy Tan would definitely approve.
~Chris

And The Caged Bird Will Fly

“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.”   ~Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

First week of this class!
             This week, the most notable study for me, was an excerpt from Maya Angelou's memoir I Know When The Caged Bird Sings.  My first experiences with Maya Angelou had been through her poetry.  "Still I Rise", and "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" really resonated with me in its themes of the struggle for black rights, and it gained me even more respect for the movement.

              Anyways, the story itself was called "Champion of the World", and it described the boxing match between Joe Louis and Primo Carnera in the context of the entire black race.  In the story, a number of overarching ideas really stood out to me.  The parallel journey between the match itself and black pride was a fresh perspective on a subject too often told insipidly in history books.   The second major motif, religion, is one of the topics which we talked about in our seminar on the story: the idea that even God's judgement on the African American people depended on the results of a single boxing match.  Besides the obvious references to God, I found this quote interesting:

"...that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever"(Angelou 90)

             The expressions with the hewers and drawers belongs to Joshua 9:23, and the biblical story involves a group of people being cursed, to become menial laborers for the rest of time.  Although a bit of research on the semantics of the phrase revealed to me that the phrase is sometimes used with a positive connotation, to denote hardworking people, they are laborers nonetheless.

               Yet another literary twist that Angelou weaves skillfully into the story is the irony that exists even at the end of the story.  In the final paragraph,Joe Louis emerges victorious, and the African Americans watching in the store consider themselves "the strongest people in the world"(Angelou 90). However, the author then remarks that "it wouldn't do for a Black man and his family to be caught....on a [victorious night]"(Angelou 90).  By maintaining that despite the previous hours of pride and moral epiphany, being on the road is still dangerous, Angelou hints at something deeper with the struggle between blacks and whites--that the hundreds of years of mutual hatred requires time and effort--is too much to overcome in a single event, even for a legend like Joe Louis.

               But to Louis I say this: what must it feel like to have the hopes of an entire race resting on your shoulders?  Would be crushing, or inspiring?  Would it be beautiful or ugly, sentimental or terrifying? Perhaps even the greatest literary tricks refuse to reveal such private thoughts. Either way, it seems like Joe Louis rose up to the occasion.

For the first time of many, thanks for reading!
~Chris