The Lesson

Written in vernacular from the point of view of a pre-teen inner city girl, Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson" speaks to the disparities between rich and poor in the free world's most powerful economy. A hord of children, most of whom sport "ghetto" monikers like Junebug, Big Butt, QT, Flyboy, Sugar, and "I," are escorted by a college-educated young black woman and descend on a very expensive toy store set in what may be New York City, judging from the toponyms: Alley Pond Park, Gentral Park, West End, Drive, F.A.O. Schwarz. The purpose of the excursion is to teach the children a lesson about the socio-economic climate they inhabit. Now, just what each child actually "learns" seems different in each case. Is the answer that Sugar gives her "teacher" compartmentalized, so that she "says-what-the-teacher-wants-to-hear" without really believing her own words? Does Rosie Giraffe really learn that "white people are crazy," and if so, what is the value of the lesson? Does the lesson breed resentment of the rich? Does it "open their eyes" to the inequalities inherent in a free-market economy? Does it "equate" happiness and material wealth, and if so, was that Ms. Moore's intention? Does Flyboy's nonchalance sum it up? Or does it foster a sense of shame and defeatism? Or does it spawn a sub-culture of "privilege" (as with Mercedes) among the underclass? Does the narrator use it to justify the fact that she stole four dollars from Ms. Moore? To become as Hobbesian or Machiavellian as those who made it rich, trying as she does to do better that her parents? Or does it inspire her to struggle to level the playing field for herself and her peers, thus giving back to her community as Ms. Moore does, and subsequently attempt to compete on equal terms with everyone else?

A & P - John Updike

A breath of fresh air kind of story, light and yet with a good grip, like a fancy jump rope with five-pound handles encased in rubber. But seriously, folks, A & P is told from the point of view of a nineteen year-old boy (man?) who happens to work at the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company in his neck of the woods. Enter girls. That's it! We focus (enargeia) with hollow-pitted stomachs on the loving description of three curvacious semi-nude female bodies dancing (wafting?) down the store aisles lined with cardboard boxes and cellophane wrapped merchandise. The image Updike creates is that of a pinball machine, and the narrator is waiting to see out of which tunnel the balls will fly in a bee line toward the flippers. Suntan lines, the complexion of luscious vanilla breats, an ethereal gait in the making (think teenage goddess), jiggling cans (ahem!), the soft and clicking inflexion of a young voice. Voyeurism? Sure. Coming of age narrative? Sure: Sammy quits his "swell" job over a flap with his manager. His manager, it seems, embarrassed the girls with his no-shirt, no-service policy enforcing mien. The leader, Queenie, had persuaded the other two to accompany her wearing nothing but bikinis into the supermarket to pick up a vat of smoked herring in sour cream on an errand for her mother. And who should come along to burst Sammy's bubble but Lengel, the store manager, with his puritanical demeanor. And with no job, he realizes how hard the world will be with him from then on. A & P is also a critique of modern consumerism and the vapid, "gray" lifestyle that it spawns among American suburbanites.

Everyday Use

This is a story about sibling rivalry between two sisters told from the mother's point of view. This is also a story about coming to terms with one's own heritage, in this case an African American heritage. Like so many "evolved" black women, Dee changes her name to Wangero in the attempt to value her African roots. She takes up with a young man who has become Muslim, which further underscores their connection to Africa, although Wangero does not affect any dietary restrictions. And now she has come to reclaim her heritage from her mother in the form of a butter churn and her grandmother's quilts. The value that she reclaims from her African roots transfers, in her eyes, to the butter churn and especially her grandmother's quilts, articles that recall a rude 19th century lifestyle during slavery. She sees these items as having acquired monetary value as a consequence of her newfound Afrocentric consciousness. And she accuses her sister of putting them to "everyday use," rather than showcasing them in a museum. The irony here, of course, is that these items were intended for "everyday use. "Maggie, her sister, bears the symbolic scars of slavery on her hands and arms where she suffered burns when the house burned down. The cause of the fire may well have been action by the KKK, a racist group known for their violent tactics. Maggie is also a bit slow witted, and has always been in awe of her sister, to whom, in her eyes, nothing has ever been denied. Wangero, although evolved and more "aware" of the issues surrounding being black in America during the Civil Rights movement than either her mother or sister, treats them with cold calculation, as unenlightened victims whom she might justifiably exploit for the greater good and in the name of some abstract ideal. The mother wins a victory when she sides with Maggie and refuses to part with the quilts.

A Worn Path

Phoenix, as her name implies, rises from the ashes of her life to hunt down medicine for her only grandson who had swalllowed lye a few years before and still suffers from the burn. On her way to the dispensary, we learn that she is old, very old, perhaps a hundred. She is a living link to the past: she remembers the Surrender. She has one foot in the culture of the past, and one foot in the historical present. She seems to inhabit an animist belief system or world, and transforms even simple gestures like crossing a log bridge into mythical events imbued with spiritual significance. In that regard, she is very child-like, and in fact she does appear like a child to the nurse at the dispensary despite her extreme old age. Having grown up as a slave stunted her matrurity, and in fact she is diminutive in stature, as well. Her fears arise in response to the natural contingencies of making her journey on foot through the woods, alone: wild animals, her battle with a thornbush, the presence of a vulture, the dead, ghosts, a scarecrow, and a big black dog that makes her fall into a ditch; yet she is not afraid of stealing money under God's watchful eye, or having a gun pointed at her (the vestige of institutionalized racism), or of contradicting a white man and making such a long journey, or of asking someone to lace up her shoes once she reaches the town, or of begging for money to buy her child a toy. She seems to accept her role as her grandson's caretaker as her fate and expects the medication for him as her right. But for all her fears, she seems at home in nature, which she transfigures through her imagination to the point even of hallucinating being served a slice of cake by a little boy. The link between imagination and memory is very real for Phoenix, and this fact too may lend significance to her name, perhaps more real that the link between memory and intellect, for she even forgets for a moment why she made the journey. Her presense in the dispensary seems entirely anomolous and out of place, except for the fact that she must leave and return whence she came. And we don't know what awaits her once she reaches home.

The Death of Opposites

It's a well told story that turns my stomach. Sparkling detail utterly disjointed from the sorrow they portend. Such disparity between the grandmother's good intentions and the results of her actions. Such senseless divergence between the mood of the story at the start and finish. Yet the narrator's tone is even and steady and fateful. Such misfit between the spoiled childishness of John and Jane and their horrific end. Bailey, murdered for his clothes; the wife and the baby, euthanized. Such a difference between Georgia and Tennessee. Such stoicism demontrated by the grandmother in facing the death of her children; and such tenderness in comforting their killer. Such cold-blooded meanness versus middle-class sloppiness. Pity and terror for sure, but the only tragic death is the grandmother's, and as in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" the hero is a half-crazed, unrepentant fanatic, who kills when people get too close, whose humanity gives a shudder as he pulls the trigger.

Circus, anyone?

The hunger artist is a kind of circus freak whose true value has been co-opted by commercialization. The hunger artist is powerless to do as he believes because he must follow the dictates of his employer, the impresario, who tries to control the artist's act by using logical fallacies that dishearten the artist. He cannot resist the force of that propaganda machine which aims to keep him in business, regardless of the loss of "truth." Subjectively, the artist feels like a martyr to this form of commercialization. Howeer, it ironically enables him to starve himself, albeit for a "greater purpose." We seem to arrive at a point of intersection between two major paradigms: art, spirituality, and the moral life, on the one hand; and the profit motive, on the other. The conflict is born between the artist’s desire to overreach himself and break his old record in order to further develop his inner spirituality, a course which however does not garner him any militant “power;” and the changing tastes of his audience, to which the impresario caters, that make him appear as an old washed up artist whose ambition pushes him further and further into a world of fantasy. The clash of these two paradigms creates the hunger artist's conflict and may imply that the artist’s practice is ill-suited, not only for the times, but for his spiritual purpose as well. Of this, the hunger artist is painfully aware, in stark contrast to a character like Young Goodman Brown. Moreover, his inchoate awareness of history leads him to make a deathbed confession that undermines the reason for which he should have been admired as a great hunger artist, namely that he couldn't find the food he liked, so consequently fasting came easy for him. Therefore, he acknowledges that he is unworthy of admiration. He is a fraud, not because he ate when he shouldn't have, but because he didn't when he could have. But this is not the reason that his audience's tastes changed.

Gloom v. Cheerfulness

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown" strikes me today as a spooky Halloween morality tale. He may just have written it for fun, to entertain a room full of children around a holiday hearth. Of course, we are probably right to read it also as commentary on the dislocations of the Puritan temperament which led to the abuses of the Salem Witch Trials. But, Hawthorne may in addition have thought to make a case against the affectation of a gloomy disposition in response to the presence of evil in the world. Therein lies its anagogic value as a morality tale. Hawthorne is reminding us of the importance of cheerfulness, of lightness, much as Nietzsche did later.

The Fall of the House of Atreus

Dupin and the Minister are brothers. The reference to the twin brothers Atreus and Thyestes is evidence of that. This fact adds a degree of probability to Dupin's insight into the Minister's habits of mind. Poe's Prefect of Police is incapable of locating the stolen letter, whereas Dupin is successful. Dupin identifies with the mind of the criminal, which is both poetic and mathematical. And this is the crux of the issue. The Prefect's dependence on mathematical logic and scientific rigor to catch a thief makes him, according to Dupin, guilty of fallacious reasoning. Just because the Minister is a "poet" does not necessarily mean that he is also a "fool." But to act on that assumption is very foolish indeed, as Dupin points out with relish. Poe quotes Chamfort's aphorism that all conventional wisdom is foolishness, as well as Seneca, who states that "Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness." In other words, Dupin gives voice to Poe's lack of confidence in the ability of science to solve all the problems of man. By applying empirical notions to our study of psychology and ethics we err, "What is true of relation - of form and quantity - is often grossly false in regard to morals."

The Use of Force Justified

"No ideas but in things," said William Carlos Williams. The short story "The Use of Force" seems to live up to this writer's credo. His characterization in particularly is striking. From a first person narrator's point of view, Williams takes the reader on a house call into what appears to be a working class family's health care choices. Alternately fawning, embarrassed, apologetic, cowardly, and distrustful the parents do not appear as child advocates. They waited three days before calling in the doctor in the hopes of saving three dollars instead of calling him in immediately once they suspected diphtheria. Notice how the father pulls back for fear of contracting the disease from his daughter. However, the girl is afraid of doctors and gives him a good fight; she lies about her "sore throat" but he respects her for it. She is a Shirley Temple-like child portrayed as willful, catlike, furious, and ultimately defeated, perhaps as much by the doctor's good intentions as by the squalor her family inhabits. Yet, she retains her youthful dignity in the doctor's eyes, while the parents become more and more contemptible. The doctor, too, has a bit of a hard-boiled cast to him, like a detective in a Chandler novel. And we see his Hippocratic Oath in action, at first not wishing to discomfort the child but then acting, come what may, from a sense of duty to the community and to his patient to stem the spread of a highly contagious disease which can be fatal if untreated. The use of force, in this case, seems justified, and the short story appears to us like a page out of the doctor's log, but goes beyond its usefulness in that regard. Especially, the last line which characterizes the girl as trying to attack the doctor "while tears of defeat blinded her eyes" does not have any clinical bearing; but rather gives us a description of her physical state, which reveals her inner character.

But here is another reading: Violence as "unjust force" is opposed to force, which means "to constrain to do or to forbear, by the exertion of a power not resistible." Power, in the Orwellian sense, is always power to inflict pain. So the girl may have used violence, and the doctor force. But as long as we are selfish there will always be a governement of "force" (Emerson, Politics). Because the doctor tends to be selfish, the girl's freedom is prostituted: the doctor, who is in power, subverts his (and her) capacity for empathy and compassion by the use of force, thus playing on her fears and sorrows (see Sarah Wider). Such is healthcare in America!

Ebro is indeed in the crook of the intersection of two rail lines in central eastern Spain. In a few bold strokes Ernest Hemingway's short, short story "Hills Like White Elephants" describes the locus of the train station at Ebro and is geographically true. Moreover, his description of the terrain and weather has the crispness of a journalistic report, and his attention to detail does not overlook the exact time his characters must wait for the train bound for Madrid--forty minutes. In fact, the entire story takes place between two lovers, a man and a girl, during a forty minute wait in a train station at Ebro under a hot sun. While the lovers wait, they drink beer and anis, and make sneering, snide, and sarcastic comments to each other. They are in the grips of a pressing decision that affects both of them, i.e. whether to go through with an abortion or carry the pregnancy to term. The dialogue is spare, pared down to the bone, so to speak, and focused on the matter between them, about which they lie to themselves and each other. The atmosphere is oppressive, infernally hot, and already loveless. The only lightness that enters the picture, like a breeze, is the simile the girl makes: she compares the hills to white elephants. That is the only gratuitous moment in the entire story, which like the life of the fetus, is allowed to live for only a beat.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Every time I reread Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story I find it all the more disturbing. The first person narrator becomes an other, to paraphrase Arthur Rimbaud's famous dictum. She, for the narrator is a woman, assumes the identity of a character whose existence is the product of her own hallucinations. This said, her entire ordeal, which Gilman so skilfully expresses, may also represent the fate of legions of women who were misunderstood, oppressed, and confined to lives of mediocrity and failure by jealous, doting husbands blinded by empiricism and convention. These women, as the female narrator demonstrates, were imprisoned in their own imaginations by the mores of male society which treated them like cherished but rather disobedient children. The narrator lives in a gilded-cage entirely made up of "yellow wallpaper." Her material needs being met, she is left to languish; and any attempt on her part to assert her will is met with 'loving' reproof on the part of her husband. He denies that there is anything physically wrong with her, yet her "malady" persists and even worsens, to the point where his concern for her health turns to anxiety. But her malady is in large measure a psychic reaction to the dehumanizing life she was forced to endure at the hands of a dominant patriarchal social order.

The Story of An Hour - Chopin

Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" is a flash fiction equivalent of an intellectual and emotional complex. We remember the definition from Ezra Pound's discussion of the 'image.' Chopin characterizes Mrs. Mallard as a feminist who has longed to be free from the "criminal" imposition of a man's will upon her own. The emotions she feels span a wide range. The grief she feels upon learning of her beloved husband's death gives way to the "illumination" that she is now free to live her life as she chooses. But her transcendent joy at discovering a new self is short-lived indeed, lasting about an hour, before she is plunged into despair by the sudden reappearance of Mr. Mallard, and dies from the shock. The character's focalization is internal, i.e. Mrs. Mallard and the reader know more than the other characters in the story (Richards, a friend; Mr. Mallard; Josephine, her sister; the doctor), who mistakenly attribute her death to the "joy" of seeing her husband alive again, rather than to a desperate attempt to escape her fate. The realism of her death--her heart gives way--saves appearances. Her respectability as a wife and mother remains intact in the Victorian society that remembers her.

Greetings

Hello, All. My name is Richard Capozzi and I am registered for this section of English 40. I am an educator on sabbatical. I apologize for missing Wednesday's facetime. I look forward to writing and reading with you all in this online community.