blog #6/7 - faulker question

Question 8 (the one about Caddy):

Caddy is the central character in The Sound and The Fury. All the plot motion (well, what little there is) circles around her actions, her motives, and everyone else's opinion of her. Yet she is without her own chapter -- never does Faulker allow her the opportunity to express her own sentiments. The four narrative characters' perspectives shape her figure: Benjy's, as the loving, caring sister; Quentin's, as the jealous, sex-obsessed trophy; Jason's, as his cruel source of wealth; and Dilsey's, as the sweet girl tarnished by her family's declining image.

How these characters interact with Caddy determines the course of the novel. The interactions within the narrators themselves are relatively insignifcant. From the onset, her magnetic lure is revealed, drawing Benjy's childlike obsessions long after she departs the Compson compound. He roams the fence on Sundays, pitifully mistaking golfers' "Caddies" for his lost sister. For the most part, Benjy captures her sweet, innocent, and friendly demeanor, as she is the only member of the family who can control the "idiot."

Then Quentin arrives and blemishes everything. His twisted, introspective, indecipherably complex chapter delves into their sex-crazed relationship. Each tries to outdo the other, and both conclude disastrously. Quentin is left feeling jealous and unfulfilled, traits which effectively combine to expedite his suicide.

As those characters spiral out of control -- one literally dead; the other, figuratively -- Jason responds with his characteristic frustration. He blames all his personal suffering on the mistakes of his older siblings. When, in fact, he controls much of his own blasted fate. His interaction with Caddy is subtle and cruel -- he robs her daughter, his neice, of the money Caddy sends weekly. While essentially removing her from the family in one respect, he ironically feeds off of her efforts. It's sickening, and Faulker plays off the crookedness to remove any sympathy for Jason.

While Benjy and Quentin drown in their obsession, Jason tries desperately to escape Caddy's gravitational pull. By the end, he falls down with the rest of them. He and his mother, the defiant "Blascomb," erradicate her name from the household. In doing so, stretching the connecting thread, they merely tighten it. Caddy's centrality, in the physical form of Quentin, continues to pester the family until they finally break. Quentin escapes with the money, and the rest remain to suffer the emptiness -- financial, personal, otherwise.

Only in the end does Faulker explicitly concede her prominence to readers. Dilsey, the one firm soul in the family (ironic, seeing as she's a black servant) treasures Caddy's memory and scorns the anti-Caddy wing of the household -- Jason and Caroline. As the family descends into the Old South's grave, Dilsey endures the suffering, and she praises Caddy for her escape. Everyone else is trapped in their own misery. Dilsey, positioned atop an awareness unmatched by any Compton, truly understands Caddy's place -- she is the tragedy of the Old South, the nameless soul, who escapes and out of the ashes creates a new life. In death, she is the rebirth -- the ressurection.

blog #5 - darkness and light

Out of the shadows, a blinding light

While the plot of both the movie and the book focuses primarily on the descent into the "darkness," at the end the audiences are left wondering what will happen to the protagonist when he returns to the "light." Marlow and Willard, though hardened adventurers in their own right, suffer through the depressing presence of Kurtz. Both react frighteningly to the "Heart"'s corrupted soul, and neither seem prepared to easily drift back into the civilized world.

In both instances, whether written or visualized, the setting and plot are integral to capturing the descent into the wild. Conrad twists readers' emotions with tales of slavery, savagery, and downright murder, all the while linking plot elements with sensual details. Apocalypse Now takes a similar approach with the Sanpan disaster and the catastrophe at the bridge; once Willard reaches the other side of both experiences, the whole aura of the movie turns creepy and insular. By combining plot and setting elements so effectively, Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now construe the original scenes in retrospect. After visiting Kurtz's camp, neither the Thames nor Toledo exudes the same appeal as they originally did for the protagonist or the audience.

In Plato's allegory of the cave, those who reach the light beyond the cave can never look into the darkness the same way again. Conversely, the protagonists in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, having witnessed the depths of human nature, will never view their advanced societies from their previous perspectives. Happiness, joy, and contentment will never carry the same attraction, now that the men's lives are forever linked to Kurtz's misery. Like in Plato's allegory, where enlightened souls cannot communicate their revelations to the ignorant ones, Marlow and Willand cannot translate the suffering of the jungle to the people back home. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow totally fabricates the actual story, instead telling Kurtz's sister that he lived nobly and died respectably. Though the Kurtz in Apocalypse Now tells Willard to relay all the events to his son, the assassin will never be able to convey the colonel's descent to anyone who did not venture into Cambodia.

Most striking for the audience is a glance back at previous scenes in either the book or the movie. How bright and exciting the Belgian outpost and the American headquarters seem, respectively, in comparison to Kurtz's crooked lair. Through environment and subtle irony, both engender the same reaction; readers and viewers must deconstruct deeply-held perspectives and assumptions. In Heart of Darkness, the exposed prejudice is the European pro-Imperialist attitude; in Apocalypse Now, it is the American romanticism of war. Both reveal a universality at the primordial heart of humanity. Neither questions the progress of civilization lightly.

blog post #4 - short stories

Question: #1 - Answer: Everything That Rises Must Converge

While any piece of literature can delve deep into the abstract, particular stand-outs thrive on concrete social connotations. Rather than theoretical personal insights, these works depict real people in real problems in real situations. Backed by a heightened simplicity, Everything That Rises Must Converge brilliantly deconstructs the sentiments of the Old South as it collapses under a modern reality. Because of its layered allusions, this short story lures readers with seeming simplicity, while still suggesting the most complex of issues.

Two very defined conflicts, racial tensions in the mid 20th century and the southern aristocracy's struggle to maintain prominence, descend into serious thematic undertones. The mother's reaction to her son's seat next to a black woman, the family's fall from grace, and the son's own personal weaknesses sting the readers' consciences. While the fundamental conflict, that between a failed son and his nostalgic mother, does not dive into indecipherable convolution, it does provoke thought on the nature of the South's complex problems.

Most deceivingly simplistic of all is the mother. Seemingly racist, ignorant, and pitifully innocent, she suffers the intellectual snipes of her collegiate son. She snarls when he fronts genuine respect for blacks; she reproaches him for detesting his elite heritage. Plotwise, Julian's mother is the ultimate victim: she dies as her heart can no longer bear the errors of her perspective. Yet the son, the apparent protagonist in the struggle against discrimation, is no poster child for reform-minded readers. The kid doesn't have a job; he busies himself with worthless thinking. He still lives off his mother, for God's sake. And when he sits next to the black man, he does not do so out of respect but out of spite for his mother. He less represents change than the oppostion to it.

Through Julian's weakness, his mother's true strengths emerge. Her persistence, her dedication, her devotion: those qualities could never be matched by Julian's attempts at a heightened sense of awareness. Though she still holds on a dream she could never reach, that of retaining her family's past glory, her son has already lost his purpose. He is jaded, cold, and self-absorbed: not exactly your liberal advocate for progress, either.

In the end, it is Julian who suffers the most. For the mother, "everything that rises" constitues her false hopes and her racial intolerances, and she dies from them. For the son, "what must converge" is his cruel behavior toward his only patron; now he must live on without suffering. As the South lives on, trying to reclaim itself, Julian is the true loser.

blog post #3 - moral pyromaniac?

In Othello, Shakespeare strips bare the moral structure of civilized society, exposing the primordial struggle between good and evil. In the author's twisted battle of lust and desire, the fallacies of human nature are his strongest weapons. By author, I mean not Shakespeare but Iago.

From imagery to setting to language, Shakespeare clearly reveals the play's overarching shift from refined to primitive. The scene opens in the royal beauty of Venice; by Act V, it has descended into the chaos of war-torn Cyprus. Running perfectly parallel to the change in language, the change in language conveys the growing subconscious tension. While the first Acts are dominated by flowery monologues and rythmic meter, the later ones are characterized by hurried speech and flagrant urgency.

At the deepest layer of imagery and metaphor, the play's language shifts from allusions of romance to allusions of despair. These two emotions are, of course, interrelated and brilliantly played off each other throughout the play. To provide adequate detail of this transformation, compare Iago's raunchy comparison of sexual relations to a garden with Othello's sensationalization of the events as a deep and dark ocean.

By tearing into readers' consciences with well-placed literary devices, Shakespeare allows Iago to fuse with the inner soul as pure evil. Every moral construct has no bearing by the end of the play. Iago becomes the ultimate moral relativist, ignoring any universal sense of right and wrong. Instead, he capitalizes on all the other characters' morality, pitting them against each other with nearly Satanic mastery.

In doing so, Iago controls humanity. He tears apart the fabric of society at the behest of his pyromanic anger. He deconstructs glory and honor and reputation, all to satisfy his own personal desires.

In doing so, Iago is controlled by humanity. Though on the surface he conquers hearts and minds, his own soul lays in ruin, torn apart by the same emotional complexes he exploited in others.

blog post #1 - time stood still as these words were conceived...if only time existed to begin with

These are a few of my favorite quotes, literature style...

A particular revelation on the life of the mind, from Plato's famous cave allegory:
"Come then, share with me this thought also: It isn't surprising that the ones who get to this point are unwilling to occupy themselves with human affairs and that their souls are always pressing upwards, eager to spend their time above, for, after all, this is surely what we'd expect, if indeed things fit the image (coming into the light from the cave) I described before." - The Republic

Possibly the greatest opening setences of any novel ever:
"I am a sick man . . . I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine and doctors. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I'm sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness." - Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And as a credit to this class, here's my perspective on time, spoken by Tralfamadorian:
"I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is." - Slaughterhouse Five

blog post #2 - fate's so relevant, it's nearly irrelevant

As Oedipus follows his destiny to the dire end, Sophocles emphasizes his vain efforts to resist the influence of "The Fates." Connecting to the rest of Greek lore, this theme of human weakness in the face of Gods reverberates throughout the play. With literary devices like dramatic irony and paradox at his disposal, Sophocles twists readers into a conclusion that can not only be predicted, but expected, from the onset.

From a post-modern perspective, this Greek mythological approach, replicated for centuries, assumes too much about the human perception of time. Along with other Ancient World literature, Greek drama establishes a linear storyboard, where one event leads to the next. After a century of quantum physics and spacial relativity, we've finally realized that this concept of time is merely sensual with no real logical foundation.

I tend to side more with the school of Vonnegut, who in Slaughterhouse Five portrays time as scattered parallel events. Even moment simulateously happens, happened, has happened, and will happen. From this perspective, the human idea of fate is inconsequential, as no clear set of events leads to the next. On the same token, the future has already been determined, similar to the prophecy of The Fates, but it's not really the future at all. It's already taken place.