Walt Whitman

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

I really liked this opening passage of Song of Myself. Whitman rejoices in himself in the opening lines of this poem and reveals his identity to the reader. He discusses his closeness to nature and his separation from society by saying, “Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, the distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.” He says that he wants to follow what society wants but he refuses to let it rule him. Instead he says he will, become one with nature.

Known by many as the “father of free verse,” Walt Whitman was a humanist and wrote at a time of transition between transcendentalism and realism. Yet he was somewhat controversial man of his time. He wrote about democracy, war, politics, race, and slavery, being patriotic, and about nature and homosexual love with vibrant descriptions of the human form. He was an outlaw in literature because of some of his poetry.

Walt Whitman was the first to experience celebrity or fame because mass media was beginning to flourish at this time. He loved being photographed and became the most photographed author. Because he experienced this new for the time kind of fame he also experienced “groupies” or fans. I thought the love story that was discussed in class was fascinating. British widow Anne Gilchrist fell in love with Whitman when she read Leaves of Grass. She was so enamored with him and his writing that she slept with the book under her pillow. She wrote a book review of Whitman’s in the hope that he would see it and fall in love with her just as she fell in love with him through his writing. She defended him and his writing at a time when many wouldn’t. It took him two years to acknowledge her review, and sent compliments…. through his assistant. Whitman had many fans, but Anne was different. She was different because Whitman wrote her back. Not only did he write her back but they devised a system of communicating with him while he was traveling. He would pick up newspapers from various cities and highlight specific information then send it to her. That way she knew where he was and how he was doing. I think that this was a very sweet story of a long lasting friendship. They didn’t have a romantic relationship although Anne did offer to marry him. After her death, Whitman said that she “was the most perfect woman he had ever known.” This relationship was so sweet and innocent and it really was something that I enjoyed learning about.

Whitman and Conception of the Body:

Whitman believed that there was no physical death. He also believed that everyone was at a bodily level. In class, we watched a film clip from Kinsey. In the clip blame was passed around, the father was not to blame for anything. Alfred Kinsley and his wife’s life experiences were better once they sought out help and learned more about the body. Whitman also believed in democracy. He thought of democracy as a way for people to integrate their beliefs in their everyday lives. He believed that for democracy to work it needs to include everyone equally or it won’t work.


The movie, A Home at the End of the World, questions what it means to be family as well as the traditional roles in the family. It questions things such as love and complications of love. Just as this class has been about origin stories, this movie shows Bobby’s origin story. During Bobby’s life, he searches for meaning and for who he really is. Once he meets Jonathon’s family and they take him in, he seems to be more at peace knowing that his life has meaning and a direction. He seems most happy when he is with Jonathon, and after moving in with him in New York and he meets Clare, his life seems complete. The trio makes a home and life together and begins to raise their daughter together.

I really enjoyed this class and thought we had some really good conversations on many different topics like love, survival and obsession and origin stories. I had learned about some of the readings in the class, but was intrigued by the different spin that our class took on it. I learned a lot about history and backgrounds of the authors from this class. I really liked how Suzanne brought in media connections and real life applications to the reading. It was very helpful with connecting to the text that was written during a much different time than the time we live in now.

As a future teacher, I am going to try to connect the information that we are learning in class with the types of things my students can relate with on a daily basis. I think that when you do that, you can give your students a richer understanding of the material you are trying to teach them. I think that if you can connect information to student’s lives than they will be more interested in what they are learning and work harder. I have tried to do this during my student teaching, and it seemed to help the students be more invested in the class. Being in this class has given me a different perspective on some of these topics, through our class discussions that I will definitely be able to take into my classroom someday. It is always important to be able to look at things with a different perspective and that is something I have always enjoyed in all of my college classes. I believe that class discussions really open up new ideas and make a person decide how they personally view multiple topics and so that is one thing I have appreciated throughout my college career and this class as well.

A Twist on Fairy Tales

There are many similarities between Dickenson and Sexton. Just as Dickenson has an interesting biography, so does Sexton. She was the youngest of 3 daughters and didn’t really know what her role in the family was. Her eldest sister was the “smart” one and her other sister was her father’s favorite. She grew up privileged just as Dickenson did. She was known as violate, untamed and very social as a young girl. She was also very popular. There are allegations about molestation by her father and possibly her favorite aunt, whom she was very close to. When she was 17 she was sent to boarding school in hopes of making her come back more of a lady and refined. She met Alfred Sexton and eloped with him. She first started becoming unfaithful to him while he was on his tour of duty and was compulsive about sex. Her husband was very sensitive and understanding about her indisgressions.

It was in 1974 when she gave birth to her second child that triggered her mental illness. She had depression and suffered from catatonic stupors. She attempted suicide multiple times and was sent to psychiatric hospitals for counseling. One therapist, Martin Orne seemed to help her and had her begin writing poetry about how she feels and what she experiences. She still drank a lot, and was heavily medicated with Thorazine, an anti psychotic. Orne diagnosed her with Bipolar disorder but many people dispute the validity of it because she had a sexual relationship with Orne. Her public persona was that of a “sexy crazy” such as a Marilyn Monroe.

In Transformations, she begins to refer to herself as a middle age witch.

“I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.”

She continues the idea of the middle age witch in her collection of Transformations. At the beginning of each chapter, the witch discusses the moral of the poem or story. For example, in Rumpelstiltskin, the witch warns of a small old man inside of us that wants to get out. The witch describes this old man as an “enemy within” and your Doppelganger. With this warning in mind, Sexton begins to tell the story of Rumpelstiltskin. In her poem, there are two different stories, the dwarf’s story and the story about marriage and motherhood. In this poem the marriage between the girl and the king is not one of love, but one of greed. It is a relationship of possession and servitude. Sexton doesn’t seem to care much for babies in the way that she describes the girl’s baby with the king. “He was like most new babies, as ugly as an artichoke but the queen thought him a pearl. “ (pg. 20) For Rumpelstilskin the baby was just another object for his possession. “but he wanted only this- a living thing to call his own.” (pg. 20) Many parents seem to think this way when they are in custody battles over their children. They want to have them but not really take care of them or show them love.


Just as we discussed in class, I like when you get to see fairy tales and their characters from different perspectives. This is the newest Shrek and the villain is Rumperlstilskin, the master manipulator and deal maker. There are many movies out now that give multiple perspectives on characters in fairy tales, one of them being the movie Hoodwinked. Hoodwinked gives perpectives of every main character in the movie with the story of Red Riding Hood. The book Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is another example of twisting a fairy tale. It uses the story of a girl named Briar Rose in Germany during the Holocaust. Teachers can teach history using fairy tales, just like this book Briar Rose.






Briar Rose is kind of disturbing when you know about Sexton’s background of abuse and mental illness. When I was reading this I was wondering if she was writing about herself as Briar Rose and then in class we discussed that same idea. The king is her dad and the price who saves her is her husband. After her hundred days of sleep she is afraid of sleep and becomes an insomniac. One passage that made me think she was talking about her own experiences was “each night the king bit the hem of her gown.” (109) The passage about her father kissing the back of her neck also disturbed me. To me that is not a fatherly kind of kiss, it’s erotic and shouldn’t be shared with a child. Another was “they all lay in a trance, each a catatonic stuck in a time machine.” Anne’s daughter discusses her mom’s disease and said she would often fall into a trance at the dinner table and stare. The trauma began when the curse was put on her each night when the king “bit the hem of her gown.” That may be why she was afraid of going to sleep because he would come at night and she would have to relive the nightmare. This type of poem exposes the vulnerability of the nuclear family and what can be the horror of it.

The Woman in White

Before this class, I hadn’t studied much about Emily Dickenson. I find it very interesting that she lived a “normal” life until she was 30 when she became a recluse. I did some research to try and discover why she became a recluse. I don’t know if one single event led to her withdrawing from society, but it seems that from a young age, she was troubled by death. Sophia Holland, her second cousin and close friend grew ill and died from typhus in April of 1844. Sophia’s death caused a deep depression in Emily and distressed her. When she was 18, she met an attorney named Benjamin Franklin Newton. She was close to Newton referring to him as family and he was a great influence on her until his death. He was the second older man to whom she wrote letters referring to him as tutor or master. Leonard Humphrey, the Amherst Acadamy principal died at the age of 25 from “brain congestion.” She wrote to a friend two years after his death saying, “"... some of my friends are gone, and some of my friends are sleeping – sleeping the churchyard sleep – the hour of evening is sad – it was once my study hour – my master has gone to rest, and the open leaf of the book, and the scholar at school alone, make the tears come, and I cannot brush them away; I would not if I could, for they are the only tribute I can pay the departed Humphrey". While in Philadelphia to visit family she met Charles Wadsworth, a minister. She had a strong friendship with him until his death in 1882.Her mother became ill in 1850 and was bed ridden until her death in 1882. Emily stayed home more often to help with domestic duties. While at home, she wrote as a way to escape. She wrote over 800 poems from 1858 to 1865. She is believed to have written the “Master Letters” from 1858-1861. The person to whom the letters are written are unknown and contemplated among many critics. She began writing less some believe because of the loss of help in the house. Many think she didn’t have time to write because she had to take care of the household. After much loss, she began to withdraw in 1867, even talking to people through the door when guests tried to visit. After that, she was rarely seen and when she was it was always in white. That is when she became known as “the woman in white.”

I find Dickenson’s life to be very fascinating. She was known for being rebellious for her time period. She rebelled against the conventional ideas about religion. In her poem, "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – / I keep it, staying at Home," she discusses the idea of being religious without attending a church. I think it is also intriguing that she never meant for most of her poems to be shared with the public and so they are better read silently to oneself.

We had a thought provoking discussion during the facilitation. One question that they brought up was “do our experiences shape us or do our feelings/emotions? I think that our experiences are mainly what shape us into who we are. It is not only what we go through in life, but how we deal with problems when they come our way. I feel that the experiences that we go through in life help shape our thoughts and feelings about certain things and without those experiences you are missing out on a part of life. Another question was “can we accurately believe what Dickenson is writing about even when she may not have experienced it?” I am kind of torn about this question. My initial answer, not having studied Dickenson before was no, I cannot believe what she says about love if she hadn’t experienced it. But then I stepped back and realized that she had 30 years of experiencing life and society. Who are we to say what she experienced or didn’t. Maybe she did find love, and we just don’t know about it.

The Master Letters are evidence of her “stuff of life,” that she knew love, rejection, joy. In her “Master Letters” she refers to herself as Daisy. In them, she also writes about a need to please the master. She has an intense desire, “I want to see you more – Sir- than all I wish for in this world- and the wish altered a little- will be my only one.” She shows that she is in a great pain, “I’ve got a Tomahawk in my side but that don’t hurt much, (if you) Her Master stabs her more.” When reading these letters the words that came to mind are: dreamer, young, niave, obsessed, waiting, desire, pleading and empty.





In her letters, she makes reference to herself as Daisy. In the Victorian era flowers had meanings and said things that people didn’t reel they could say out loud. They allowed for people to send out coded messages by the type of flower and color. The language of flowers began in the early 18th century first used by Lady Mary Wortley Montague who was the wife of a British ambassador to Constantinople. They were often communicated through Tussie-Mussies or small bouquets of flowers wrapped in a lace doily and ribbon. For example, a daisy meant innocence, and strength. They were wildflowers and one flower could produce over 500 seeds. Different flowers and colors mean different things, red roses mean passion, white suggust virtue and chastity and yellow stands for friendship. A sunflower is a sign of respect and a violet meant seduction, lust and appetite. When discussing the ideas of the language of flowers with regard to the letter a few brought up the idea of an erotic love.

One thought that these letters were intended as a strip tease for the master. She is being forward for a woman at that time, yet submissive at the same time. The woman is showing her devotion and commitment to him. Another idea that was brought up was that parts of these letters sound like “the other woman” writing to her lover. “I waited a long time-Master- but I can wait more- wait till my hazel hair is dappled.-“ Someone else brought up the idea of this master being her lost love that for some reason she had to leave. She tells him that she is going to wait for him forever and will always love him.

These letters also brought up discussion about the s&m relationship played out in them. Who has more power in the relationship? Some may think the dominator would, however the submissive sets the terms for the relationship. They are the ones that say yes or no. Why would someone want to be in this type of relationship? Kristina brought up that it can be freeing to give up all control because it means that you have no responsibilities. Dickenson’s “Im Nobody, Who are you?” shows why someone want to be considered a nobody.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

For Dickenson, to be considered a “nobody” means that you can live on your own terms, without having to be held up to anyone else’s standards. It allows you to create your own identity instead of relying on others to create it for you. If you are a “somebody” then you have society’s pressures that you must live up to. By writing Daisy in the letters she is giving a private name and not allowing anyone to set standards for herself. She is writing her own rules.

Source: Gips, Kathleen M. The Language of Flowers. Pine Creek Herbs, 1990.

The Shining

The Shining is a very interesting story of possession and violence. In class, we were able to come up with comparisons between Poe’s narrators and Jack. For example one comparison we made was their sanity within insanity. The narrators of Poe’s stories claimed they were sane, yet had some very insane obsessions and actions. Their obsessions were with bodily objects such as eyes, teeth and the heart whereas Jack was more obsessed with his father’s past and correcting and disciplining. Both the narrators of Poe and Jack felt a sort of isolation and both stories showed what that isolation does to the characters. It also showed how the characters reacted to trauma in their lives.


Jack can be seen in many different lights. For example he can be seen as a victim and a product of an abusive father and a passive mother. “He had reddened Jack's behind…and then blacked his eye. And when his father had gone into the house, Jack had come upon a stray dog and kicked it into the gutter.” He can also be seen as a man possessed and a man of addiction. “He was still an alcoholic, always would be, perhaps had been since Sophomore year in high school when he took his first drink. It had nothing to do with willpower, or the morality of drinking, or the weakness or strength of his own character. There was a broken switch inside, or a circuit breaker that didn't work.” (120) Jack could also be seen as a madman. He is seen as a very violent man throughout his life. When he is younger, he is violent to animals and is involved in many fights in school. He abused his son and wife and even broke his son’s arm.

Jack thinks that he is just a nice guy that is struggling. “He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand in The Great Wasps' Nest of Life.” He makes many excuses and thinks he shouldn’t be held accountable when he loses him temper.

This story brings up interesting ideas about the family dynamic and what it was in Jack’s family. Jack as the head of the household wanted to give him family security. He was the sole provider, and believed that he was in charge and others should be submissive to him. It was a sort of master-servant relationship. He would say things like “father knows best.” Wendy is first seen as meek and submissive to her husband. She thought about divorcing him, but felt as if she was stuck because she had nowhere else to go and no way to support herself and Danny. She also believed Jack when he would ask for another chance and think that this would be the last time. After they move to the hotel, she is seen as stronger. Even the hotel says that “she is stronger than we thought.” She grew stronger because the need was there for her to protect herself and Danny. Someone in class made the reference to a “momma bear” and the kind of fight a mom will put up to protect her young. The hotel was a sort of catalyst for her and it helped to make her stronger.

For Danny his life is a family nightmare. The scariest thing for him is the idea of his parent’s divorce or separation. “The greatest terror of Danny's life was DIVORCE, a word that always appeared in his mind as a sign painted in red letters which were covered in hissing, poisonous snakes." He was completely aware of the fact that his parents were unhappy and thinking about a separation or divorce. Because of his shine, he was robbed of his childhood and can see more than what his parents realize he sees. Halloran tries to explain to Danny about his shine and tells him “What you got, son, I call it shinin on, the Bible calls it having visions, and there's scientists call it precognition. They all mean seeing the future." Danny is afraid of losing his family as well as going crazy from his gift.

In class, we discussed the idea of the hotel being a character in the book. "The manager," Grady said."The hotel, sir. Surely you realize who hired you, sir." The hotel is sarcastic when it is speaking to Hallorann in a mocking manner. The hotel is also very manipulative and deceiving. Another word used to describe the hotel as a character was parasitic. I thought that was a very interesting word and it is true.
Another thing we wanted to do in our facilitation was discuss the book vs. the movie and what similarities were made between the two. We wanted to do this because we figured that most people have seen the movie and we thought it would be an interesting comparison. The movie is actually not close to what King wrote in his book. One difference from the movie to the book was the change in some of the characters. For example Jack is portrayed as a good man who is protective of his family but struggling with alcoholism. In the movie he is seen as a man that it is irritated by his family. Ullman’s character was also changed. In the book he is seen as condescending and tells Jack that if it were up to him he wouldn’t have hired Jack because he didn’t like him. In the movie, Ullman seems pleasant and genuine. Wendy is also portrayed very differently from the book to the movie. In the book she has a kind of strength when she needs it at the hotel. In the movie she is seen as passive, and weak. She even defends Jack when he breaks Danny’s arm. She reacts differently to Jacks madness in the movie as well. She breaks down and becomes hysterical. In the book she finds an inner strength and tries to protect herself and her son.
The kind of possession that Jack experiences has occurred to others in history. In a small town in Illinois called Watseka, a girl named Lurancy Vennum was possessed by the spirit of a dead girl named Mary Roff. She fell into excruciating pain and would fall into trances. She would speak of seeing angels and heaven. When questioned she was able to give details about the Roff house, where she had never visited before. When among Mary’s family and friends, they were convinced that she was a reincarnated version of Mary who had died 12 years earlier. She began being possessed when she was 13. Her possession in 1877 was called “America’s first documented case of spiritual possession.” “As documented by an eyewitness account and later retold in the 1977 novel "Watseka," Mary died suddenly in 1865 at age 19, only to come back 12 years later to possess the body of 14-year-old Lurancy Vennu.” There are many books written about Lurancy and her possession on called Watseka by Dr. E. W. Stevens. He was one of Lurancy’s doctors and was an eye witness to her story. Another book written about her is The Possessed by Troy Taylor.


Question:
Do you think that spirit possesion is real and if so why do you think the spirits pick the people that they do?

Source:
Taylor, Troy. Possession History & Horror of the Watseka Wonder. Whitechapel Productions, 2007.

Poe

Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston in January of 1809. His mother died when he was two, and because she had separated from Edgar’s father, he went to live with his grandparents. He was brought up well and went to school where he exceeded in Latin and French. In 1825, Edgar began school at the University of Virginia where he started drinking heavily and racking up large debts. He quit school less than a year later. With nowhere else to turn he joined the U.S. Army in 1827 and later entered West Point. John Allen, his father, refused to pay for it, and Poe soon left. He went to New York to try to get some of his short stories published. Poe bounced around to different newspapers and he published his first volume of short stories, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." He married his cousin Virginia, when she was 14 and he was 27. Even with the numerous jobs, Poe always seemed to be in financial distress. The death of his wife in 1847 caused Poe to collapse from stress. Mystery surrounds his death. On October 3 Poe was found at an auction house, and by the 7th he had died. There are many myths and speculations about what he died from. Some think it may have been alcoholism, others say he died from rabies. We may never know for sure because no autopsy was ever done.





The Raven:

"But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered-
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before-
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

The raven is a symbol of death and it came after Lenore, this man’s love, died. The Raven only knows one word – nevermore, and after learning that it can talk, starts asking it questions to which the raven always answers nevermore.

The Tell Tale Heart:

In the Tell Tale Heart, the speaker claims he is not insane. He plots the murder of an old man that lives in his house. He doesn’t want to murder the old man, just his “evil eye.” "I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever." He claims he isn’t insane because he premeditates the murder. He waits until the man’s eye opens and kills him. He hides him underneath the floor boards in his room and just in time because the cops have been called because a neighbor heard the scream of the old man. At first he acts like nothing is wrong, but the longer they stay the more paranoid he gets and confesses to the murder. He says that he can still hear the man’s heart beating underneath the floor boards.

Black Cat:

The narrator in this short story claims he is sane just as the one in the Tell Tale Heart. He is violent to everyone except his cat, Pluto. In a fit of rage one night, the narrator takes out a knife and stabs out Pluto’s eye, and hangs him from a limb of his tree. Months later, he finds another cat that looks like Pluto and takes him home but soon finds that he hates this cat as much as he hated Pluto. He tries to kill him with an axe in a fit of rage, but his wife defends the cat and gets the axe in her own head. He hides her body in the wall of his basement. Just as in the Tell Tale Heart, the police come, and find the body in the wall.
In class, we discussed how Poe’s stories discuss in some way or another dismemberment or losing body parts such as eyes or a heart. I thought it was an interesting point that someone made that our eyes is very vulnerable. They are part of our identity and if we lose them it is like we are losing part of our identity. We also discussed how we give human qualities or characteristics to some of our body parts such as our eyes and heart so it makes it even more horrific when someone loses a body part like that.

Ligeia:
This story revolves around love. The narrator discusses a love of his named Ligeia. The only problem is that he has a memory problem and cannot remember anything about his love except for her eyes. “I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligei.” Her eyes become his obsession and a fetish for him. Ligeia becomes mysteriously ill and was a topic of discussion in class. “Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.” Ligeia was not a weak woman. Her symptoms that the narrator described were emaciated, with pale fingers, blazing eyes and her veins stuck out in her forehead. The idea was brought up that she starved herself and allowed herself to die. One of the reasons for her killing herself was that the narrator was obsessed with her.

One of our many class discussions was about love. A question we looked at was can we still love and be self-reliant? Or does love mean co-dependence? I think that you can be self-reliant and be in a relationship. I am married and feel that I am independent, have my own kind of life and friends. I am able to experience things on my own and although I love him, I don’t feel like I need him to be fulfilled. Some think that love is a co-dependent relationship where they feed off each other. I know about people in relationships like that and think that it is kind of pathetic. I feel like people in those kinds of relationships lose their identity and just become what the other wants them to be. It is sad because in my friend’s case, they are not like the person that I grew up with and knew, they are very different.

Love is dynamic, not static and therefore will change and grow over time. People expect their romantic relationships to be the same as when they first met, and I don’t believe that its possible for it to be like that. If you think that you will stay in that honeymoon stage your entire life, then you may end up jumping from one person to another and nothing will last long-term. Poe’s stories are invested in the idea of soul mates that sometimes have unreasonable expectations. For example, one of his narrators believes that his lover will come back from the dead.

Why do we search for love when it’s not a fairy tale kind of love?


I remember reading this story in high school and thinking how bizarre it was. I really am not into any scary movies or this type of writing. I find his writing interesting and strange. I also think that all of his writing is very similar story lines. If I had to pick a favorite out of all of his, I would choose the Tell Tale Heart. I know that people are pulled into the perverseness of Poe’s writing and the ideas of death and dismemberment, but I don’t really enjoy those things. A lot of people really enjoy watching perverse, scary things that we wouldn't even dream of thinking about. That is why there are so many scary movies and why these movies make more movies. The Saw movies were famous and they continue to make them, I believe that is 5 now. This movie shows people making crazy decisions in order to save their own lives. It also shows contraptions that people wouldn't even dream of normally.

Questions:

Why are people strangely attracted to the scary and perverse stories of Poe and other writers like him?

What causes a tormented memory?

For some, it may be the death of a loved one, others a bad experience. For Pollard and Chase, their tormenting memories came from their experiences on the ship Essex and the events that took place on it. People deal with their memories differently; Chase decided to keep a log of his experiences. He thought he would never be able to be free of the tormenting memory unless he got his story out.

After the ship wreck, Pollard was able to in a way forgive the whale went on another whaling expedition. Even though that second time didn’t go well, he was able to find a kind of healing through going back on the ocean. Someone in class equated it with falling off the horse and getting back on. That comment reminded me of when I was a kid and learning to ride a bike without training wheels. I lived in Arizona, on a narrow road with cactus on either side. As many people do when learning to ride a bike I fell and landed on the cactus. For a few weeks, I didn’t want to try to ride again, because I was afraid of falling again. Eventually with the help of my mom I realized that I needed to face my fears and get back on my bike. There was something freeing in being able to accomplish something after a bad experience. I think that Pollard would have felt the same way I did after I got back on my bike and it gave him a kind of peace from his tormenting memory. Chase never did find peace, had horrible headaches, and died insane.


Keith Anderson's "Every time I hear your name?" reminded me of the idea of a tormented memory. He thinks he is doing ok and then something triggers it and you are haunted by that memory.







My Own Tormenting Memory:
In class, Suzanne asked us to think of our own tormenting memory and how we think about it. My memory deals with my uncle who passed away in 2008. But before I tell you what it entails, I need to fill you in on some details about my relationship with him. His name is Robert, and after my parents got divorced him and my aunt became like another set of parents to me and my sister. We would spend weeks during the summer at their house, and they even went on family vacations with my sister, dad and me. We had a close relationship with them until my grandmother passed away. After she passed, a rift was created in my family. Because of a large fight between everyone in my family, I stopped talking to my aunt and uncle and was very upset with everything that was going on. I allowed this fight to affect our relationship and I quit talking to him. The last day I saw him, I left him bitter and mad at him. It torments me that I never reconciled with him and that I can now never fix our relationship. I allow myself to think about the memory, but a lot of times I choose not to because it makes me sad that I held a grudge and ruined the last day I ever had with him. This memory affects my dreams and the dreams come out of nowhere and catch me off guard.

"Nantucketers saw no contradiction between their livelihood and their religion. God Himself had granted them dominion over the fishes of the sea." (pg. 9) The people of Nantucket were Quaker and therefore nonviolent people, yet the men on the whaling ships were violent, greedy and brutal. I think it is very interesting that Quakers are pacifists and yet they thought it was ok to brutally murder whales and even praised those who were on those expeditions.

We also discussed in class how the whale acted with the vindictiveness of a man. The whale was given human qualities. Asma said that “human qualities in monsters must mean monster qualities in us.” I thought this was a very interesting way of thinking about the men aboard the Essex. Were they trying to kill the whale because they saw something in the whale that was also inside of them? We lose superiority when the whale can be vengeful and angry. If we humanize the whale, than it is like killing another person because the whale can show emotions like humans can.
Some may take the view that the whale was revolting against a kind of tyranny, sort of a “give me liberty or give me death” kind of statement. It could be considered that the whale’s attack was calculated because no whale had ever attacked a ship before this time.


Another thing that I found ironic was that the crew of whalers made for the coast of South America which was 3,000 miles away in 3 tiny boats to avoid the closest island because their feared cannibals. They themselves had to resort to cannibalism because they were starving to death and began feeding off of each to in order to survive. The idea of cannibalism brings about questions in our own minds about whether we would be able to do something like that in order to survive. I don’t know how I would react when put in a situation like that, but I think the instinct to survive would prevail above all else.

Character traits from two leaders:

Pollard Chase
Democratic confident
Sloppy bragging
Weak Flexible: more men survive
More emotional, invested in people Diligent: controlling food supply
More logical, keeps log

Fight Club:

At the beginning of the movie, Jack is introduced as a corpselike corporate drone whose only idea of pleasure is about consumer goods from Ikea. He looks empty with dark circles under his eyes. He was alive but not really living, just going through the motions of his day unable to even sleep. Someone in class pointed out that you are never more yourself than when you are sleeping. I had never though about it like that and thought it was a very interesting point.

When Tyler is introduced he becomes a sort of cure for Jack and helps him begin to really start living. Tyler gives Jack advice and told him that “things you own end up owning you.” I find this to be very good advice as most of our society is consumer based on material possessions. Tyler has some ideas that are very Emersonian. The idea that you should not follow what society wants for you and to make your own future is one of them. Tyler displays that by not being materialistic to the point that his house was falling apart and he had to shut off the electric every time it rained. He lives simplistically to live life to the fullest. He wants to feel so he has Jack punch him. It takes violence to free them both from the drone of their lives. They also use the violence of fight club as a vehicle of self- formation and Jack feels more empowered through fight club.

Questions:
What definitions of evil govern the men of the Essex?


Music video by Keith Anderson performing Every Time I Hear Your Name. (C) 2005 BMG Music

Trust Thyself

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,- that is genius.” (pg 80) I believe that this sums up what Emerson is saying in this piece. He believes that the individual should think for themselves and not conform to what society says they should think or do. “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” He thinks that each person is made unique and has a divine purpose. He says that people should never be afraid to voice their own opinions, even if they believe that their opinions may be unpopular with the majority.

Dead Poets Society is a movie that reminds me of Emerson’s idea of non-conformity. John Keating, the boys’ teacher urges them to think for themselves. He also urges them to seize the day. (Carpe Diem) Keating also told his students, “Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Break out!”(Keating, Dead Poets Society) I believe that Emerson would agree with Keating.

Not only does Keating have the same views as Emerson with becoming their own person he also believes that every person is unique. “Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, that's baaaaad." Robert Frost said, "Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." (Keating, Dead Poets Society)

In the film clip, Keating encourages his students to think outside the box and strive to look at situations in different ways. Some of his teaching styles would be considered to be strange or nonconventional, but I think it is through this style that he makes the most impact on his students.

As a future teacher, I want to try to make an impact on my students like Keating did in the film. I also agree with Emerson that every person is unique and that trusting yourself should be more important than thinking about what the majority think. I want my future students to realize that they can have a voice and that what they have to say and think is important even if their views may be unpopular. I hope to convey some of Emerson's views to my students.




"Dead Poets Society (1989) - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=deadpoetssociety.htm.

Ideas of Conquest

One of the ideas brought up in class was the one of new land representing a woman and one that people wanted to plunder and take advantage of. The conquistadors told narratives of their conquests as sexual exploits. Diaz discusses the difficulty of the hunt to conquer Mexico. “It won’t be an easy conquest.”

I see Cortes as a cocky man who asserts his power over others who are powerless. He is a bully who believes he is superior to the Aztecs because he has God on his side and thinks he is saving them from damnation. His thoughts about his superiority show when the natives gather to watch him and his men “No wonder, since they had never seen horses or men like us before.” (69) “Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me. “(Napoleon Bonaparte) I think that Cortes would agree with Bonaparte. He became power hungry and even burned down his ships so that no one would be able to retreat.


When discussing the idea of conquest and females, I was reminded of a TV show that I watch call How I Met Your Mother. One of the characters spends an enormous amount of time trying to get women to sleep with him. He even has a “playbook” in which he discusses all the different types of cons he has played on women to get them to sleep with him.






This greed and lust for conquest make me think of the Berlin Conference in 1844-1845. European countries scrambled to gather up as much African land as they could, to gain new resources as well as assert their power on the natives of the land. They believed they could convert them but more importantly knew they could exploit them and their resources. Even though the African countries got their independence eventually, their cultures are still marked from the effects of the Berlin Conference.




The Corquette:
In class, the example was made between Boyer and Sanford as England and America at the beginning of the American Revolution. I thought it was a very interesting way to think about it and it really helped me to understand the characters in a new way. Sanford (America) was seen as unpredictable, the “wild one” and one with passion. Boyer (England) was seen as a safe, stable and consistent choice. He was tame and somewhat boring choice.

Someone in class brought up the idea that Stanford uses guerilla warfare as tools of seduction. They likened him to Mel Gibson in the forest scene of the Patriot, when he was covertly killing the British. He has a kind of predatory aspect to his character. He spoke of Eliza saying “If I can’t have her, no one can.”

Questions:

Why do men always think of being violent as a form of power?
What does The Corquette teach us about relationships between men and women?
Why did Eliza see marriage as a loss of freedom?




Sources:
"Conference of Berlin." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 3 Feb. 2011 .

Crowe, Sybil Eyre. The Berlin West African Conference, 1884-1885. London: Pub. by Longmans, Green and, 1942.

Förster, Stig, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, and Ronald Edward Robinson. Bismarck, Europe, and Africa: the Berlin Africa Conference 1884-1885 and the Onset of Partition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.

The Scarlet Letter and Desires

The Scarlet Letter is the story of a woman named Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne is a woman from a Puritan village in Boston. She is a woman who got pregnant while she wasn’t married and her punishment was to wear a red A on her clothing to let everyone know of her sin. Her punishment becomes a sort of sermon to the others of the village of what not to do. It also serves as a constant reminder of her sin and the time when she choose passion over what she knew she should do. Her identity becomes her sin, and she is not able to create her own identity for herself. She tries to make the A her own by embroidering it in gold thread, but she cannot really create her own identity without her punishment following her. She is seen as an example of how the devil is alive and working is the village.

Not only does she have to wear the embroidered A on her clothing, she also had to stand in the pillory for 3 hours. A pillory was made to publically embarrass people of the community. It was kind of like the stocks and held your hands and head down. There was often a placard nearby to tell of the person’s crimes. Not only did the person have to stand in front of the entire community in this wooden contraption, they were often abused while in the pillory. People would throw things including rotten food and other objects at the person stuck in the pillory. They would often get hurt in the process of being humiliated by the community.

Her punishment becomes a sort of freedom to her. Women at that time had no voice or freedom whatsoever. But Hester was able to gain power from it and do things other women at the time would not be able to do. “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers - stern and wild ones - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” (Chapter XVIII "A Flood of Sunshine")She travels into places that other women would never go. She was liberated by knowing that she could live beyond the law and to know that she knew the darkness that was inside others in her community.

Plato believed that desire was so strong that it could if left unchecked, enslave your other parts. Can we control these desires? I believe that we should at least try to control our desires because if we don’t, just as Plato says our desires can enslave us. Think of it like an addict, the more we feed our desires, the more we will feel the need to keep doing whatever it is that we are feeding. I think we need to try to keep all three of the parts reason, emotion and desire in balance with each other.

Hester became an outcast to others in her village because of her sin. Other women are treated the same way in some places today. In some strict Muslim cultures, women must remain pure until they are married. If for some reason, they are not, they are immediately thrown out and thought to have brought shame upon the family. The punishment is stricter for these women than Hesters, they are stoned.

There was a case in the United Arab Emirates in 2000. An Indonesian woman named Kartini binti Karim was working as a housemaid and was found to be pregnant without being married. She and an Indian man were both charged with adultery, but the man fled the country before he could be arrested. She was on trial and wasn’t given a lawyer or even able to speak the language in which the trial was being conducted. She was found guilty, and sentenced to death by stoning. The whole time the trial was going on, her embassy had not been aware of her or the trial against her. When they heard about it, they immediately stepped in, appealed and got the sentenced reduced to a year in prison. She was an outcast from that society because she chose passion over the rules of that society.







Sources:

Wheeler, Julia. "Death by Stoning Appeal." BBC News 13 Mar. 2000.

"Kartini granted clemency by UAE court." Indonesia News 25 April. 2000.

(http://www.hamline.edu/apakabar/basisdata/2000/05/08/0052.html )

Cotton Mather and On Withcraft

Cotton Mather was part of a prominent family of Salam. Village during the Witch trials. He wrote about the trials in his book On Witchcraft. His book gives valuable insight into Puritan life and their thoughts on witchcraft. The Puritan people were a very close knit community. They believed that everyone was born as children of the devil and that only God’s grace would lift them out of original sin. Mather as well as other Puritans in the town believes that Satan can assume different shapes. In addition, he believes that people can be seduced without their conscious knowledge. The only way to protect yourself according to the Puritan faith is to pray that you can be protected from the devil.

I think one of the reasons that the trials got to be so massive was the mentality of fear that the Puritans were living in. They were taught to be afraid of the wilderness and land that they were living in. They believed that it was Satan’s land and that they had to war with him in order to win it for God. So they were consistently living for when he would attack, and they saw witchery as a way for him to break the Puritans and hurt God’s work that they were doing there. So when the girls started accusing people of being witches, everyone was afraid that Satan had come to attack the village. Mass hysteria broke out at the thought of their neighbors or friends being witches. This type of hysteria reminded me of the kind of hysteria that Europeans had about the Jewish people leading up to World War II. Hitler blamed all of Germany’s problems after World War I on the Jewish people. People at the time were looking for a reason as to why they were blamed for the war, and why Germany’s economy fell so far. They believed the hysteria that Hitler told them, and began to be afraid of the Jewish people. Just as the number of accused at the trials rose, so did the people blamed for Germany's fall. Now anyone who was different than Hitler’s Aryan race (twins, mentally disabled, gay, gypsies and others) began to be targeted as well as the Jews. In both cases, the people were worried and so wound up that hysteria broke out.

I have learned about the witch trials before, but learned new things that I thought were kind of interesting. One thing is that the trials were the first time that spectral evidence was able to be used in the courts. Spectral evidence was things that were only evident to those who were affected, for example the ghosts of someone coming to haunt the girls. Another thing that I thought was interesting was that the first wave of accusations of witchcraft was people that didn’t go to church and had low stature in the community. The second wave of accused people had high status and was respected. For example, many people respected Rebecca Nurse as a pillar of the community and a good Christian woman; however she was accused in the second wave of accusations. The town was split; the western side of the community had a lower status and was farmers. The accusers lived on the Eastern side of town and were richer with more liberal views. Children as young as 4 years old were being accused in the second wave of accusations. The only sure way to live was to confess, out of the 200 people accused, 55 confessed to witchcraft. Overall, 24 people died as a result of the trials and accusations.

The Puritans may have continued the accusations as a way to provide excitement in their otherwise somewhat boring lives. They could also have continued them to become famous as the news of the trials spread all the way to England. Although these are both plausible explanations, I don’t think these were the reasons. I think they believed that it was their mission to destroy Satan and to maintain God’s work in their community. They believed they were fighting a war and that this was a necessary evil in order to continue God’s plan for Salam.

What is evil? I think that evil could be either an internal or external force. It can be an external force that works against people such as Satan and demons. I also think that some people can be inherently evil such as Charles Manson, Jeffery Dahmer and other serial killers. I don’t know what would make a person evil, whether it’s a bad home life, or abuse but I do think that some people are evil.



Questions
Were there really witches in Salam?
Did the girls make it all up, or were they really afflicted?
Is there a chemical explanation for what happened to the girls such as ergotism in the rye bread?

Source: Randall Bytwerk, Bending Spines: The Propaganda of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004). A paperback edition is also available.