acabinofcritiques-blog

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

taner dupre c00148333

The puritan culture is one that we study in class this semester. I greatly disliked their culture and their way of thinking. In this class everything was based on making your opinion and not just accepting what someone else had told you. The Puritan culture goes against that one hundred percent. They do not believe in forming your own opinion at all. It was actually against the law for them. They couldn’t question anything. They just had to do the job they were given the same way every time every day with out every wondering why. This is mind blogging. How can someone just do the same thing every single day weather they like it or not and never wonder why they did it. I know why I do most things in my life. I know why I go to school why I go to work and why I read what I read, and still when I’m having a bad day I still wonder why im doing it and if its worth it. Like during finals week when you have waited till last minute to do your final 3 English blogs and your wondering why you always wait till the last minute to do all of your work, when if you had done it the day before you could be taking a nap right now. But that’s not the point the point is that, to do the same thing every day and never even wonder why takes away who you are as a person. You no longer have your individualism that makes you, you. You just become part of a system, almost like a robot that doesn’t have any feelings. As a people built off of a religion I find it very interesting that this group of people would shun what would be considered by todays standards as normal person. What would that culture have done if they had a modern day hipster, someone that pushes against the social norm and questions everything that society does? That would have completely ruin there civilization and maybe brought it to the ground. How could these people be so simple minded to not want to know why? But is it a blessing or is it a curse? You see not ever wanting to know why could be a huge blessing, by give you so much less to stress about. I know why I go to college, I go to college because I want to be successful and have a good paying job. I want to get a job that doesn’t make me do manual labor for 8 hours a day just to get buy. College can potentially help me achieve that goal, but knowing why I do it also adds a lot of stress to the college experience. It means that a lot of what I want to do with my life is based on if I pay a lot of money to get a piece of paper saying that I went to school. It means that I could potentially not be able to get as nice of a house because I have to pay off my student loans. Not knowing for the puritans might have been a choice by some because they didn’t want to stress over things that they didn’t have to this way. Without knowing what the reason behind things are they had a much much simpler life. So as much as I disliked the culture, writing the very blog has lead me to having a different understanding of what it actually was.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

taner dupre c00148333

Slavery is a topic that is often talked about in grade school coming up. You learn a lot about the slave trade and how they got here, but you never really learn much about the life of a slave. Yes, you are taught that it is a horrible thing that the saves were treated horrible. That’s about it though you don’t get to see how they think, how they believed in certain things.  We aren’t taught any of that out of fear that its to much and that we are to young to learn about it. But that is exactly what they should be teaching the kids in grade school. Because with out that, without knowing the beliefs and the way they see things, you really don’t get the full picture. You don’t get to understand what it was really like to be a slave without those things. I never learn half the things I did about slavery in high school. When I got college I thought I had a pretty good understand of what it meant to be a slave. As a slave you come to America, you hate everybody here, the people beat you and force you to work in the field and trade you like cattle.  That’s what I thought it was to be a slave I didn’t know nor had never thought about all the personal things that happen in the life of a slave. Reading the memories and discussing slavery in general in class opened my eyes to things I had never thought about. I had never thought about the possibility of a slave wanting to believe in a religion forced upon them by the same people that ripped them from there homes. To me that sounds crazy why would a slave want to believe in that religion? It sounds impossible these people just ripped you from your home and put you on a boat for months. After that as if that was bad enough they beat you and tore apart your family, selling you off in every direction to go and work the fields.  Yet you believe in this religion that they are teaching you like nothing happened at all. You believe that you will be saved by a god that you had no clue of until these monsters taught it to you. Why, would someone believe that? How could they believe that these things that the slave owners were telling them real they just ruined your whole life. Not only that I had never really thought about how a would try to escape and how that might happen. I had never thought about the fact that the slave would more than likely have to be helped by a white man to be able to get far enough away. I never thought that some slaves might not hate there owners and that some of them might actually like them. We read one thing were the slave was suppose to be set free in a couple of weeks but then the owner dies and the wife sells the slave off to another owner never to be freed. I had never thought about wha that would due to a person moral or how a person would be able to go though that at all. In grade school they never taught us that some slaves weren’t captured in Africa. Some were free Africans Americans that lived in the north. The would be tricked into going somewhere a little further south only to be captured and sold like every other slave. How could a person survive that. I think mentally you would have to give up and go crazy. The day before you were a free man just looking for a job, the next day you are captured and taken away from your family never to see them again. That not the bad part you are now being beaten everyday and forced to work to make another man money and getting nothing in return. How can that happen? How can grade school leave out such important thing that happened?  They make it seem as if the beatings is the worse part, well what about what it does to them mentally? That is never covered in school and I feel as if that is the worse part about being a slave.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

taner dupre c00148333

American literature 205 for me was a class I did not expect. This class challenged me in ways I did not expect from a course that I expected from a elective. This class challenged me to think. Not just think about the materials but about what it meant and how I felt about the materials. This class involved me reading a selection and having a class discussion. Now this sounds pretty common especially for a college course but it isn’t just that. We would not talk about the plot of the story or the characters. We would talk about the mean of it, how it made us feel, and if we thought it was a good read or bad read. We talked about things that make a lot of people very uncomfortable without having anyone get upset. We discussed in details gender, slavery, or politics. Now it may not have been current issues but our views on them are.  This challenges you not just as a student but as a person. It makes you wonder why you feel this way what has lead you to believe this or that. We discussed Thomas Jefferson, a person that basically set the original standard of what it meant to be a American, be a good person. But we didn’t discuss all the good things he did. No that would have been to simple. We talked about how he owned slaves and how he was by many accounts just a stereotypical white man from early America. We did not bash him that not what this class was about. We asked if he was really everything that the school books make him out to be. Why is he so patronized as this perfect role model even today. He owned slaves just like most wealthy white men of his time. He went on record to say that a women’s word was nothing because she was a slave and that made her uneducated. We also talked in depth about Emily Dickerson and what her poems meant. She was a women who wrote in a time were most writing was done by wealthy men in England. She wasn’t that but wrote in her own way but with their style. We discussed if her being a women affected the way she wrote. We talked about if her being women changed the way we read her works. This lead to a very detailed discussion about genders in general, a topic that can lead to feelings getting hurt more often than not. This never happened everyone was very respectful of each other and gave educated responses.  Does the gender of a author mean that we read the works they make a certain way? This is only a few examples of why the class was so challenging for me. I never question the things discuseed in this class and that also made the class very rewarding for me. It gave me a new insight on a lot of big things in life.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Alex M. C00250186

Bartleby was one of the weirder stories that we have had to read in this class. The story itself was not at all terrible. Yeah there were some parts where I can see the reader thinking “Oh my God, can this be over already?”, but to me it was kind of interesting. It was great to have a story that was not as intense as a slave narrative, but it was also great to just have a chilled reading session without getting too into the story. It was not one of the best works that I have read, but it was a good read. It was weird that Bartleby would not want to do any work and just expected to live in the place rent free. Like my idea of that is if you expect to live in that office building, you need to at least work for them to pay a little rent, but that is just me. The lawyer was not trying to be mean or rude to Bartleby in any way, shape, or form. He was just trying to keep his business up and running and having dedicated workers to be able to help the flow of work and keep everything running smoothly. Bartleby did not really care about the work flow or anything for that matter. As long as he had a place to stay and a roof over his head, nothing else really mattered to him. The lawyer was surprised at the responses that Bartleby was giving him. I can not really say I am surprised with what the lawyer’s reaction was and how he took note of Bartleby acted towards him when he would ask Bartleby to do something. Bartleby was, at first, a very hard worker, but then, things just started to decline. His work flow, his eye sight, and it almost just seemed like his will to live was gone at one point. I know it is a dark thought for that, but it is true. It felt as though he just gave up on life and was hoping everything would just end. I felt bad for him because he truly had problems and he needed help from people, but could not really afford to help himself when it came to that subject. Towards the end of the story Bartleby was arrested and put into jail for his actions of loitering and not leaving the grounds of an office building. The judge went see Bartleby in jail and noticed him in a slouched position. When he touched Bartleby he realized the cold, unbearable truth. Bartleby died while he was serving his time in jail. The ending of this story really caught me by surprise because I had never expected Bartleby to pass away at the end. It was sort of shocking, but not too shocking. Because of how Bartleby was acting before he was in jail, it seemed like this is what he wanted all along. Thank you for an amazing semester! You were my favorite professor for the semester!

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Alex M. c00250186

Slave narratives have always been a touchy subject for most people and especially for me. It is a subject that I do not really like talking about, but I figured now would be the perfect time to speak about what I feel about this subject and there is only one phrase that I can say about the things that happened to the slaves. It sucks. It sucks that they had to live a life of fear and being beaten and raped. Most women worked inside the house cleaning and making sure everything was neat and in order. There have been times where just out of nowhere the slave owner would decide to take advantage of the women who worked there and would rape them. The wives of the slave owners either knew what the owners were doing what the women, or they were clueless as to what was going on behind closed doors. These owners would either pretty much announce what they were doing, or they were keeping whatever they were doing on the sly. Either way, that is still messed up as to what they were doing to those women who were just trying to work and were not expecting anything to happen to them. It is just as bad for the men too. They have to work in the fields or around the plantation and are not expecting to possibly be beaten and seriously injured or even killed because they have been beaten so bad. It is not fair that these people lived in fear most of their lives because people can just be a jerk whenever they feel like being one. It has never been a fair world for anyone, but to the slaves of people who were complete jerks and rapists, they were treated most unfairly because of all the things that they had to deal with. People who were past slaves wrote these narratives to let everyone know how they were treated and I can not help but feel sorry and heart broken for them because they have been through so much and had to put up with so much. These people deserved more respect than what they were being given. There was little to no respect being shown or given to them. Most slave owners chose not to respect them at all even though they were doing all of the work on that plantation. Slaves have been one of the most difficult and touchy subjects to talk about in this day and age, but we need to learn about them so we do not do the same things again. Slavery should never happen to people because they should never fear their boss or their higher power whatever it may be. People need to show support for peace and equality because the slaves from that period was not shown peace or equality at all. We need to show everyone that no one has a price tag on them and we should all be peaceful and happy. No one should have to live in fear.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Alex M. c00250186

Fredrick Douglas makes a couple great points in his speech that he gave on the Fourth of July. A day of independence that for some people was not so independent. Many of the people that did not feel independent were the slaves of that era and who can blame them? Some of the things that were done to the slaves during that time are not worth freedom. Some slaves if not all were brutalized, beaten, and raped by slave owners just because the slave owners felt like it. It is not fair that these slaves had to go through such torture and pain. These people have done nothing but work their butts off on a plantation because someone else was too lazy to do their own work. These slave owners are not the best people in the world and clearly there are people who are worse off than them, but for that period of time,  the slave owners are the worst people. I never understood why people were treated so badly while they were working. It is not fair that people were sold and traded to work on a plantation. I can understand hiring someone to work for you, but owning them and treating them like crap just because you felt like being a jerk? You are the worst type of person. All that worker was trying to do was do a good job and provide a home or some kind of shelter and food for himself or herself, or even their family. While slaves are working in the fields or around the area, the slave owners are sitting on their porch or in the house in the shade relaxing while the people he bought are doing all the hard work. It is not right for someone who is working hard to be taken advantage of by a higher power or boss. In my time working for various people I have only had one boss who was not very professional with how they ran their business and I quit my job, but these slaves were not given the option to quit their job because they were owned by people. No one has a price tag on them. No one deserves to be given a set price because of their physique or their personality or whatever it may be. These slaves are people too and to be given a price and know that someone is worth more than the other is truly heartbreaking to some if not most people. These people do not need to be brought down anymore than they need to be. Fredrick Douglas claimed that these slaves, these people were not independent after they have had a long life of being beaten by some snobby rich, white man who believes that he is above all and does not need to be punished or whatever. He is the one that supposedly rules over everyone, but news flash for him, most businesses are a team effort and if most areas are torn down, the whole operation will collapse.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

The Quadroon and the Little Black Kids

NAKAYLA DUGAS

C00206845

The Quadroons by Lydia Maria Child is definitely one of my favorite pieces that I’ve read outside of the assigned works. This is basically a short story about this quadroon (a woman of one-fourth African descent), Rosalie, who falls in love with a white man named Edward. Their love is pure and good, and they get “married”, or as married as a black woman and a white man could be during this time, and they have a beautiful daughter named Xarifa. Xarifa was brought up in a home full of love, her mother and father spoiled her greatly, however, the color of her skin was still an issue to the outside world. This breaks her Rosalie’s heart because as much as she loves her daughter, she knows that ultimately, she cannot protect her from the social structure that so greatly disfavors them. The family lived happily together for about a decade before things began to fall apart.

In his twenty-eighth year, Edward begins to remove himself slowly from the family he so loves. His ambition overshadows his better judgement, and he begins seeing another woman named Charlotte. Tearful goodbyes are exchanged when Rosalie hears that Edward is to be married to Charlotte within a weeks’ time. Edward goes on to marry Charlotte, and Rosalie dies a year after their marriage of a broken heart. Xarifa continued to be cared for by her father after her mother’s death, but Rosalie’s death took its toll on Edward. A few years later, Edward dies after having drunkenly fallen off his horse on his way to visit his daughter. Xarifa is then cared for by Charlotte, and falls in love with her music instructor, George. However, Xarifa was the granddaughter of a slave, and this was enough reason for them to throw her back into slavery. She was sold and treated kindly, but still wished to escape. One night she planned to run away with George having sent him a letter detailing the plan. George, however, is killed and she is never freed. She ultimately goes crazy and dies.

This story is an incredibly interesting read because the fiction is tightly intertwined with truth. During this time, anybody of African descent could be subject to slavery, even those who were previously freed. The lightness of their skin did nothing to truly protect them from the inevitable. As light as Xarifa was, she was still seen as a black girl, and because of that she was seen as a target. The fact that Xarifa grew up in a warm, loving household is what does the most damage to her when she is forced into slavery. There was never a time in her life before then that she had not felt loved. Her mother and father loved her, Charlotte surely loved her and so did George, and one by one all those sources of love were stolen from her. It’s easy to connect slavery with the loss of her family as well. Had her mother be a white woman, her father most likely would have stayed. Her mother would not have had to endure the pain of watching her daughter grow into a beautiful young woman to only have her skin color taken into account and cursed for it. Her mother wouldn’t have died from sadness. Her father wouldn’t have drank himself to death. She would’ve been free to love George, and start a life with him. Without her blackness, she would’ve been allowed to be happy.

Now I need you to take all of this in, and put it into the perspective of a little black girl reading this, grappling with the things I’ve just said. It’s very hard to love yourself when the outside world tells you that you shouldn’t. The uphill battle that is faced by black women and men alike is a great burden, and I’m proud of the progression we have made as a whole. We are breaking out of the assertion that blackness is a curse, but rather that it is a blessing. Black is a mark of strength, not inferiority, and this is one of the pieces that hurt my heart, but made me realize that progress has been made.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

12 Years A Slave & Slave Narratives

NAKAYLA DUGAS

C00206845

While looking over the pieces that I had chosen to cover for my syllabus, I knew that I wanted to add something that would give my figurative students a visual representation of what it was like to be a slave during this time. I felt that the movie 12 Years a Slave was the only one to do that justice. Movies of this caliber are intended to make the audience feel something, and that, by definition, is truly what art is. You’re supposed to watch this movie and take away from it, not only the historical aspect of it, but to be able to think of how far we have come from it.

The story of Solomon Northup is an actual account of how the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act turned much of the United States against free blacks, and slaves that were trying to obtain their freedom in the Northern states. Solomon Northup was a free man from New York who worked as a brilliant violinist. A happy little black family of four are highlighted in the beginning scenes of the movie. We see Solomon kissing his little kids and wife goodbye as they take off in a carriage. Later on, we see a friend introducing Northup to two white men who convince him that they have a well-paying gig for him out of town in an upcoming circus act. Upon their arrival to Washington DC, Northup is drugged and sold into slavery down south. Northup is given a new identity as a runaway Georgian slave named Platt, and so begins his 12 years in slavery.

Over the course of those 12 years, Northup endures much adversity. During his stay with his first master, Ford, Solomon is nearly lynched to death by the slave handler for standing up for himself. Once Ford realizes that Solomon isn’t safe, he sells him to Epps. Epps was notoriously known for his cruelty. During Solomon's stay on the Epps plantation, he sees many horrible things. When contemplating running away, he happens upon the lynching of two black men. He witnesses the mental and emotional destruction of his friend Patsey as she is raped by her master and unjustly punished by her mistress. Solomon even tries to confide in a white laborer named Armsby to take a letter North for him, only be betrayed, and almost not survive to tell the tale. Thankfully, Solomon happens upon Mr. Bass, a laborer from the North who ultimately helps him return back to his life as a freeman in New York. The movie ends with Solomon and his family being reunited after 12 years, and Solomon, at last, getting to meet his first grandson.

I enjoyed the movie because it made me upset. Although, I believe there were times that the movie did play it safe, there were definitely some things that stuck with me more than others. Just taking a look at the whipping scene were Patsey is stripped naked against the whipping post is enough to physically make you gag in disgust and sadness. These slaves had to endure horrible treatment. They were taken for granted, taken advantage of, and manipulated. This was the norm for a slave during this time. It hurts me that I’ve come from ancestors that had to endure such pain and strife, but I take pride in the fact that I am a product of such strength.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Race Will Always Be A Factor

NAKAYLA DUGAS

C00206845

During the final week of this semester, I’ve done lots of reading and searching for the right pieces to tie my syllabus together. The literary works that I’ve read and studied have broadened my perspective of the way blackness is viewed in America, and how early American literature plays into the shaping of that. It’s very important to note that the past directly impacts the present as well as the future. The social circumstances that we are faced with in this present day and age stem from the reinforcement or opposition to the social order that was established centuries ago. Early American literature highlights a time where freedom and justice were highly valued, but not all Americans were entitled to it. Those of color faced incredible injustices.

The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, was built upon the backs of black and red bodies. Those Native Americans were killed unjustly, taken from their lands, tricked and manipulated by early settlers. Those Africans were stolen from their land, brought into the Americas to work for no wages, mistreated and abused by their captures. Paying closer attention to the injustices faced by African Americans, their forced relocation marked the beginning of a very long journey for freedom and equality. Slavery was the driving force of much of the Americas, especially the South, and because of this an entire group of people were subject to unspeakable cruelties just because of the color of their skin. There were several arguments posed by white Americans to justify the enslavement of the African people, and much of them had a religious origin. White Americans claimed that Africans were the descendants of Cain, and that they were born cursed. They claimed that the Africans were heathens, and desperately required saving. Another argument was posed by Thomas Jefferson himself. Jefferson not only asserted that blacks were inferior to whites, but he also posed the argument that the African people were “built” for slavery. In his “Notes on the State of Virginia”, Jefferson stated that the Africans were incapable of deep emotion and thought, and that they lacked the imagination required to truly produce great art. He also stated that the African people were more tolerant of the heat and required little sleep – these ideas seemingly justified the slave labor that occurred in the South.  Notions like this helped white masters and mistresses sleep soundly at night as black bodies hung from the cypress trees in their backyards.

African people were not seen as the equals of their white counterparts. They were seen as subhuman, an entity that existed only for the benefit of whites rather than a group of people that thought and felt just as they did. The slave narrative that we read for class shed light on the injustices that African slaves faced, and helped to give us a first-person account of the life of an African American woman during the time of the Fugitive Slave Act. It’s important to note that gender places its own burden on women, but as an African American woman these burdens can very well be debilitating. In her slave narrative, Jacobs endures a great deal of pain. The great lengths she had to go through to obtain freedom for her and her children is astounding, and it’s an injustice to not cover narratives such as these.

As important as these narratives are, it would be an injustice to us as students to not question these pieces further. Much of the slaves during this time were rightfully afraid to speak out once they gained freedom. Taking into account that slaves were not allowed to read or write, it would not be expected for a slave to write in a way that we would consider eloquent in this present day. With this being said, it’s obvious much of the editing of these narratives were done by white abolitionists. It is important to note that these abolitionists’ ultimate goal was to end slavery, now whether this motive affected their ability to remain objective is not completely known. Whether these accounts were accurately documented cannot be completely known, but there is most definitely some truth to these narratives. The important things are usually the things that aren’t said. Slavery distorted the minds of these slaves. Slavery made them wish for the untimely death of their newborns, for their own deaths, for the strength the end their own lives. It’s important to look at these things and to think about these things because they underlie the society that we are expected to function in daily.

Realize that race is always going to be a factor, and that it always has. For people of color, the battle is still being fought because we have yet to achieve the freedom and equality of our white counterparts even now, and this fight is far from over.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

A look into Ben Franklins love life.

Can you believe that Ben Franklin was married only once? Well its true he was married to Deborah Read. The two knew each other from a very young age. Franklin was a horny 17-year-old and Deborah was a 15-year-old girl when franklin proposed. Franklin could not get approval from her father because he was dead and her mother said that they could not married. She did not want them to get married because franklin was not that wealthy at the time. Well as Ben tried to marry Read she got tired of waiting around for a poor man and wound up marrying a man named John Rodgers. Rodgers turned out to be a liar and a thief, so that marriage did not last. However, since Read had already been married, certain laws prohibited her from marrying again. Read and Franklin found each other again, but since she could not marry, they wound up establishing a common-law marriage. A common-law marriage is called a marriage generally because of cohabitation or some other special circumstance; but, they never had a marriage ceremony performed. Therefore, technically, Franklin was never "married" in the traditional sense of the word. Yet he and Read lived as a married couple. When their common-law marriage was established on September 1, 1730, Franklin already had an illegitimate son named William. The Franklin/Read family took William in as one of their own. Franklin had only recently announced that William was in fact his son. Throughout Franklin and Read's 44-year common law marriage, they had two children together. Their first child was named Francis Folger Franklin and was born in October of 1732. Unfortunately, he passed away only four years later from smallpox. Sarah Franklin, their next child, was born in 1743. She lived a relatively normal life and grew up, got married, and had her own children. In the late 1760s and early 1770s, Deborah became quite ill and started to suffer from strokes. She eventually died of a fatal stroke in 1774 at the age of 66 years. At the time of Deborah's passing, Benjamin was on an extended trip to England. Ben franklin is known for multiple affairs back in the day. William his son is said to be his affair son. Being married out of wedlock and producing a child is not prohibited in this century. Therefore, he was brined with the illegitimate son. There is no further evidence of any more affairs of ben franklin but once a cheater always a cheater. This patterned then followed into his family history. William the son of franklin then has an illegitimate son, then his son had an illegitimate son. I guess like father like son works well for this situation. This then comes back to my last blog post. The wealthy will do what they want and we can’t do anything to stop them. They will just keep having affairs and the taking in their sons from the affair.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Wealthiest Advantage

In modern times, we all want to be rich. The rich can do anything from getting away with murder to buying wives. But have you ever wondered what they did a long time ago? In the 18th century owning land was the main form of wealth. Political power was only exclusive to the wealthy. The influence was also only in the hands of the rich. At the top of the totem pole were the nobility. Below them were the class of rich landowners. Rich land owners are known as the gentry and they built extravagant country houses or plantations. Only a small amount of people lived in wealth in the 18th century. The rich could furnish their homes in exclusive furniture made from the finest materials. The pass time for the big pocketed varied from horse racing and card games. The jockey club was formed and the derby was formed then. Gambling was also a good pastime. Theaters weren’t built back then for public entertainment so the rich had them built in their homes to see pictures made for them exclusively. But following this theatre were in and plays started traveling from town to towns. So, for this the wealthy built assembly halls for all the plays to be performed. You could also play cards in the assembly hall and attend balls. Pleasure gardens followed this era. Lots of exotic flowers and trees were shipped to the richest of them all to put on display in their homes and gardens. The rich also visited spas. They believed that bathing and drinking spa water could cure illnesses. Seaside also became popular. Again, they beloved in bathing and drinking the water helped you prosper. Reading was also a pastime for the rich. Books then were extremely expensive so the wealthy would always have libraries full. In the 19th century rich people had less power and influence. The middle class was way more important at the time. With the working men and kid labor. The rich were usually landowners and they either owned factories, farms, or both. Life of the rich was made a little bit easier because this is when the gas light came out and they were expensive. The gas light was also used to heat water so the hot bath came and became popular. Also, this is when telephones came into the picture. The spread to railroads made traveling faster for the wealthy and for everyone but they had it more comfortable than most. At the end of the century the first cars appeared and steam ships made traveling the world easier for the wealthy. In the 19th century the wealthy were not granted health. However, the rich were much less likely than the poor to suffer from diseases like cholera. The invention of anesthetics made operations and childbirth much less painful. Rich Victorian people still had many servants to do all the hard and unpleasant work. Rich families usually employed a butler, a footman, a cook and several maids as well as gardeners. Girls from upper class families were taught by a governess. Boys were often sent to public schools like Eaton. The traditional pastimes of the rich continued. However, several new sports and games were invented during the 19th century. Although a form of tennis was played since the Middle Ages lawn tennis was invented. The rich will always have it easy. Doesn’t this make you wonder how wealthy our founding fathers were and how they were able to be so “down to earth” to say what we wanted to be said. American is the land of the brave and home of the free. If the government is always the wealthy then isn’t that what the problem is? There is no one that we can directly relate to. This is how it is in any situation. The wealthy get it better than anyone else. For example, if there was a poor man running for governor and a rich man for governor who are you likely to vote for? The rich one of course because that is what the mindset is. I know it is impossible for anyone to vote for a middle-class member but now I know what the problem is. It’s the money and how the more you have the higher up you are. It’s like if you were to stack up all your one hundred dollar bills and stand on it that’s how high p you are I our society. It doesn’t make much sense.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Why is Wall Street called Wall Street?

As the drama of the civil fraud against scandals continues to unfold, all eyes are focused on Wall Street. Wall Street is an actual street located in lower Manhattan in New York City. The street is the king of the city’s financial district. The name of the street originates from a wall that was built in the 17th century by the Dutch, who were living in New Amsterdam. There are varying accounts about how the Dutch-named "de Walstraat”. The red people from Manhattan Island crossed to the mainland, where a treaty was made with the Dutch, and the place was therefore called the Pipe of Peace, in their language, Hoboken. But soon after that the Dutch governor, Kieft, sent his men out there one night and massacred the entire population. Few of them escaped, but they spread the story of what had been done, and this did much to antagonize all the remaining tribes against all the white settlers. Shortly after, Nieuw Amsterdam erected a double palisade for defense against its now enraged red neighbors and this remained for some time the northern limit of the Dutch city. The space between the former walls is now called Wall Street, and its spirit is still that of a bulwark against the people. The wall was 12 feet high to protect the Dutch from stacks from native tribes and just to keep danger out. The area near the wall became known as Wall Street because of it prime location. It ran through the width of Manhattan between in the East River and the Hudson river. There was a road developed into the busiest trading area in the entire city. In the early 17oos the wall was dismantled by the British government but the name remained. The financial district got a huge start in May of 1792. New York has its very first stock exchange and signed the Buttonwood Agreement. The agreement was signed because under a buttonwood tree that early traded and speculators had gathered to trade. And that’s where the modern-day New York Stock exchange was born. In the first few decades, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly business predominated. There are old stories of people's houses being surrounded by the clamor of business and trade and the owners complaining that they can't get anything done, according to a few early business men. The opening of the Erie Canal in the early 19th century meant a huge boom in business for New York City, since it was the only major eastern seaport which had direct access by inland waterways to ports on the Great Lakes. Wall Street became the "money capital of America”. Wall street is now booming. It has Five start movies filled with tons of celebrities. Its funny how a wall can name a street and how literal it really is. The financial district in New York City is the financial district because of Wall Street.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

sherman alexie and fancydancing

george clarke c00252636

I first heard of Sherman Alexie when I saw a sign in the student union at Tacoma Community College in Washington State advertising a talk he was going to give. I didn’t attend the talk, but I remember because my Anthropology professor (I was taking dual-credit classes at the time) read us selections of his poetry in class that day. I never really thought about Alexie again until earlier this year when I watched “The Business of Fancydancing,” a film he wrote and directed about an acclaimed Spokane poet and his relationships with his family and friends who lived on the Reservation. Alexie prefaced the film with a quote: “Sherman Alexie is full of shit.” It’s the kind of derogation that comes from being confronted with something too stark to process immediately, so it’s dismissed as nonsense. I recommend this film highly: it’s production is very low-fi and the dialogue is sometimes stilted or unnecessarily expository, but taken as a art-piece it is moving and strikingly sad. The film, as I said before, follows Seymour Polatkin, a Native poet as he navigates life in the “white world” and tries to reconcile it with his life on the reservation. A lot of people took issue with Seymour’s character, citing his arrogance as the most aggravating factor, but I honestly found him sympathetic in the way he was constantly battling his frustrations at the confines and enforced cultural definitions of the Reservation. Seymour’s relationships with Mouse, Aristotle, and Agnes are complex and fascinating, but I was most interested in his relationship with the Reservation as a whole and the world at large: in a world that holds many prisons, he says, the Reservation is the worst of them. In many ways, Seymour—a gay poet—is seen as a traitor to his heritage—a heritage which is the absolute Good in his society, because it was the only thing that white colonists could not truly steal (however hard they tried through the appropriations of style and feathered-dress). William Faulkner once said that he never knew what he thought about something until he read what he wrote on it; Seymour says that nothing is real until he writes about it. Seymour’s smile is a weapon to both disarm his listeners and to offset his words—which are often abrasively conceited or insensitive—and provides a parallel to the conflict between reality and subjectivity (this absolutely contributed to the overall dislike of his character). This uncertainty and conflict in thought is something that can be seen throughout Seymour’s character: he speaks honestly, but it’s only honest because he doesn’t know if it is false. He is resented by his fellow Spokanes in the way he uses the Reservation to bring himself fame, apparently at the expense of the Reservation’s wellbeing (“What’s it like when you talk and white people pay attention?”), which is odd because his poetry depicts the Reservation life in a way so far from glamour: touching on the rampant drug addiction and alcoholism and cultural resentment that breeds in the poverty-stricken grounds. The Spokanes see Seymour as essentially whoring out his heritage to become a novelty-item for white Americans to look at and assure themselves that the Natives are, after all, doing fine. Language and diction plays a huge role in The Business of Fancydancing: colloquial and formal syntax is used to establish character traits, as well as set mood tones. The studied pronunciation of the Spokane characters in moments of gravity gives an added weight to their words by stressing the deep historical grievances that inform their lives. Seymour’s poetic flourishes and often-pretentious philosophical musings are juxtaposed against the squint-eyed, drawled profanities of Mouse and the earnest virtue of Agnes. The transitions between Mouse’s camcorder footage and the actual cinematography of the film underlined the emphasis on personal perspective in The Business of Fancydancing. Each character is, in their own eyes, a victim: a victim of white colonialism; a victim of tradition; a victim of fame. The black-box scenes serve as a kind of parallel to the story: establishing a meta-narrative that stresses the cultural heritage of the Spokane and a chilling representation of the way that the cultural identity of Native Americans is isolated and shunned (yet still fetishized) by the majority of the majority (read: white people). The closing scenes (with Aristotle dancing in Seymour’s the rear-view mirror and Seymour’s subsequent stripping of his Native dress) demonstrates the incompatibility between the two ideas of America: the pure land of the Natives and the colonized contradiction that espouses freedom yet imprisons indigenous people on “reservations” that enforce poverty and addiction.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

important texts

george clarke C00252636

Someone in class said something about the difficult language of a lot of early American works, which I agreed with. Early American lit seems a little cold and impersonal (stemming from the Puritan roots, I suppose) but in moments of emotion it still feels “off”, as religiosity and naturalistic metaphor bog down the overall message and make it seem impossibly saccharine.

It’s kinda difficult, in a course where the reading of each text informed the reading of both the next and the previous to such a degree, to pick the “most important” text, so instead I want touch on the ones that I found most compelling and/or important.

“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman

Transcendentalism is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The hopeless, starry-eyed idealism is sometimes overpowering, but I really like its emphasis on the purity and goodness of nature and the the focus on the power of man to transcend, through the beauty of art, the manacles of humanity. In the face of the horrors of the world, transcendentalism seems to skate over spilled blood and champion a kind of humanistic unity that is—however unintentionally— exclusive to a secure and established demographic (you know, like the upper-middle-class white population). I imagine it was hard to be a transcendentalist when you were struggling to put food in front of your family.

Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is important because it taps into the veins of the idealistic image of America and captures the throbbing LIFE of it: ego and individualism (“I celebrate myself”), unabashed, celebrated sexuality (“Undrape! you are not guilty to me”), conflict and pain (“The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom”), and free-thinking (“creeds and schools in abeyance”). Yet, it never seems saccharine or contrived because Whitman’s enthusiasm and celebration of everything that pertains to the human experience. “Song of Myself” is a wild-eyed dash down streets populated by EVERYTHING and he’s trying to take it all in. He sees both joy and horror and shouts it out for you get drunk on.

“Resistance to Civil Government” by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau’s essay on the duty of individual to stand up to government, and to not let their consciences be dulled or overruled by government is important because it stresses that government is not always right (actually, on a scale, his opinion would be closer to “government is always wrong”). His statements on the absurdity of accepting a governing system wherein the majority rules simply by the virtue of their being the majority are still, if not even more so, relevant today: “a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.” Thoreau takes no prisoners in this essay, saying that the issues of slavery and the war in Mexico were not only the fault of pro-slavery southern states, but also of northern entities like Massachusetts who are more interested in “commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.” He equivocates voting with wishing, and champions civil disobedience as the most quick and sure way to achieve societal justice in the face of a governing body that is most often concerned with its own preservation than with justice. “Resistance to Civil Government” is incisive, relevant, and very important.

“The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America” by June Jordan

Jordan’s “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America” presents the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, the first published black poet in America in a fascinating text that examines Wheatley’s particular position as slave and poet and what that means for both her poetry and for society. The recurring “was it a nice day? Does it matter?” is chilling and comments on the the banal terms we use to remember events: weather, circumstances; all of which is irrelevant in the face of the horror of the dehumanization and enslavement of of a fellow being. “It was not natural. And she was the first” is another recurring line Jordan says in reference to both the institution of slavery (in the face of those who posited that enslavement was a natural human practice and was no more problematic than putting a plow on a horse) and to Wheatley’s transcendence of status quo. “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America”  is important because examines the place of black poets, writers and artists in the eyes of white population: as Jordan writes, black artists are “frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant’ because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom.”

“Captivity” by Sherman Alexie

History is written by the victors, and the first line of Sherman Alexie’s “Captivity” reminds us of this: “When I tell you this story, remember it may change.” It speaks to the transient nature of truth as it is portrayed by majorities. His references to Mary Rowlandson’s captivity intertwine with his reflections on Native identity and provide a fascinating discourse on race and place. Worth mentioning, too, is his repetition of variations on “fancydancer,” a term for non-religious Native dances that were started in the 1920’s and 1930’s to circumvent the United State’s ban of religious Native dances. This itself is a commentary on marginalization of minorities and the inherent hypocrisy of the United States. Alexie built his 2002 film “The Business of Fancydancing” around this concept of the isolation of Natives with its low-fi production and heavily symbolic black-box sequences straddling a kind of radical realism and a surreal examination of cultural meta-identity. “Captivity” is captivating, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking,

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American women to publish a book of poems. She was kidnapped at the age of seven years old from her home in African and was sent to an unfamiliar place known as America. In American Wheatley was put into the care of the Wheatley family whom taught her Greek and Latin. This all occurred during the 1700’s where women and African Americans were uneducated and not respected at all. People were very surprised that a black slave could read and write in different languages. She was later sent to court because people could not believe that she was educated enough to write such good poetry. Wheatley could read and write by the age of fourteen years old. Her story is inspiring because she beats all the stereotypes women and slaves were labeled under at the time. Unlike many African Americans she was granted the privilege of an education. She discusses thing such as Christianity, Salvation, and history but puts everything into play by tying in together poetry and metaphors to catch the readers’ attention. She uses witty metaphors to catch the attention of her readers. For example, she states that all negroes can be ‘refin’d and join the angelic train’ meaning that you can ride the path to heaven if you are saved by God. She shows off her clever skills of writing by putting effort into words. She focuses a lot of her writings on her religion. Her religion has a lot of influence on her writings. In her most famous poem ‘On Being brought from Africa to America’ she says: ‘'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their colour is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.’

She did not just reflect what she read from books. She put her ideas and thoughts into her writings which is why her work so inspiring. Wheatley was even honored by George Washington for her excellent work of art. After being freed from slavery after her masters death. Wheatley lived a hard life she suffered two loss of her babies. Along with her husband being sent to prison in order to pay off for debt. Soon after Wheatley and her third baby died and were buried together. The works of her second poem series were never published due to financial issues. Though, Phillis Wheatley is dead her legacy still lives on. She is honored through many rewards and even has a hall in Boston named after her. Her work of art and true compassion towards poetry played a huge part in the eighteenth-century in terms of black lives.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

gender

taner dupre

c00148333

A lot is made about how the gender of an author affects the way he or she writes. Now this much is true because our gender affects how we see things, how we react to things and how we express ourselves, because of the different hormones in our bodies. So subconsciously yes it has to affect the way we write because it is a huge part of us and affects every part of our life. The girliest girl will have a completely different reaction to something from the roughest dirtiest boy, not because they witnessed different things but because they experienced different things through there interest.  On the other hand though will the tom-boyish girl react as different when compared to the same boy, when they both witness the same thing? Probably not because they have probable had more common experiences because of more common interest. At the same time a boy who is not a rough and dirty and is a little more feminine will have a reaction that is a little closer to that of a girlie girl. I think that gender does affect the way we write, but not nearly as much as everyone else. When I write I do not think, “oh I am a guy I have to seem tough and view things like a guy” I just write based on what I have seen and done throughout my life. I think the main thing that affects someone’s writing is the life long interest that they have devoted time to and the things that they have experienced along the way. Now granted that sometimes a lot of these interests can be stereotyped into a guy thing or a girl thing, but that is not always the case.  Not everyone interest always because of our gender, a lot of it is based on what we were exposed to as a young child from our loved ones. I was always around sports as a kid; I was on my first team by four years old. This is a typical “guy thing” but I was never taken hunting or around anyone who hunted so I have no interest in it, which is another typical “guy thing.” So my writing is more based off of my interest and beliefs rather than my gender, as I think everyone else’s is also.  I think this is very evident in the gothic writers works. I do not think that Edger Allen Poe, wrote the dark and creepy way he did because he was a man, I think it had more to do with his early childhood. His biological mother and father died when he was two years old after his father had already abandoned them, and then he was split of his siblings, and lived with a man who thought of him as ungrateful. This alone is enough to make a man depressed and have repressed emotions that could make a person crazy. But there is still the fact that Poe failed at college because of a gambling addiction causing him to end all ties with his foster family, and then join the military, which can have its own negative side effects before getting kicked out of a military college two years latter. I think this is why his work is so dark and messed up. He has lived a life that has caused him to have depression and other issues. I don’t think it is because he was a man or that women couldn’t write in this same style. If she would have experienced the same things he did her writing would probable be very similar to that of his. I think the best way to test my ideas would be to take a set of works male and female from a couple different genres and have someone blindly read them. Tell them to read them not knowing who the authors was and if it was a man or women. Then afterwards try to get them to identify each one as man or women. This will only work though if you can find authors with similar experiences and interest. I think the results would be show that it is harder to tell gender after the reading. I think most of the time we view the reading a certain way because we know the gender of the author and not the author because of the reading.

[acabinofcritiques-blog]

Thomas Jefferson

Taner Dupre 

C00148333

In class recently we were almost bashing Thomas Jefferson for his remarks on a black female poet. We said that his inability to see the legitimacy for her work was a reflection of his own illiteracy. But what happens if we think in retrospect to what he was seeing. He was reading the works of a young black poet. That is basically the lowest on the totem pole during this point in time. White men were honestly the only people respected in a community and worldwide, white women weren’t even respected yet. Women were allowed to talk or have a say so in any political matters. Then she was also a black slave, in a time where slaves for treated like garbage. So she was literally a person that commanded no respect during the Thomas of Jefferson remarks. To him all he sees is someone who has no clue what they are doing trying to fake it. To him she is trying to undermine everything he knows, how he made he money. So how can we expect him to truly be able to comprehend and legitimize her work? She is a woman that he doesn’t even expect to be able to read and write much less make poetry. She would be the equivalent to me going and telling a doctor something about the human body that he doesn’t know. Even if I am right and everything I tell him is true will he believe me? Probably not, because he has went to school given a job of almost power, being able to determine if someone lives or dies. Why should he believe me he has no reason to respect what I tell him, even if I am right. To me the must have been how Jefferson viewed his situation, it was not that he thought she was just illiterate but to him, she had no leg to stand on. She was a nobody trying to tell him what he should know and feel when he is a very powerful man. What would have happened if Jefferson had acknowledged her as a real poet? Could you imagine the national backlash he would have received because we have to remember he was still a political figure? We bashed him for not seeing her a real poet without realizing the position he was in. The time period was completely different; the way of thinking was completely different. I am not saying that this mad him right in his judgment or that this made it acceptable for him to do so. I honestly just made a excuse and a counter argument to what was said in class, about it was a lack of intelligence of his end to be able to recognize her.