Monday, October 29, 2007

Fledgling (afterthought)

Also, I forgot to mention that my dictionary's definition of "fledgling" is : "a young bird just fledged: an immature or inexperienced person." And the definition of "fledged" is: "to develop the feathers necessary for flying or independent activity" (Merriam-Webster). The title ties into Renee's situation of discovering who she is and where she is from, or developing the history she needs in order to have an identity, much like a bird developing its wings.

Fledgling

So far, I've been very disappointed by this book. The books we have been reading for this class have all been exceptionally well-written, and in my opinion, this one is not. The dialogue is so forced and unbelievable, it makes me feel like I'm in grade school again. Aside from my opinion of its flaws, I have found some themes in this story. One theme I have found is the story's dwelling on the feeling of isolation and forgotten identity. The young girl vampire seems to have lost her family and her whole sense of who she is. She's trying to remember where she came from. I can see this tying to racial issues of African Americans trying to find their own identity in our society, and also trying to identify their roots. Renee claims that "the experimenters" made her black so that she could withstand the sunlight better than those of her kind who are pale (37). I thought this idea of the experimenters was very interesting. They could possibly symbolize "god" or this could be a statement that people with brown skin are superior to those with white skin. I'm hoping to hear more about these experimenters.
Renee and Wright are trying hard to figure out where she came from, and more about her kind. They do all kinds of research, but can't seem to find anything useful. Renee says, "Whoever and whatever I was, no one seemed to be writing about my kind. Perhaps my kind did not want to be written about" (39). I thought this was a very important passage. To me, this was a connection to the opression of African Americans and the supression of the African American voice in our society. Maybe it's not that her "kind" didn't want to be written about, but they were ignored altogether. Renee seems to feel fine with her differences, yet she is aware that her differences have caused something bad to happen in her past.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Intuitionist 2

In the last half of "The Intuitionist," much was added to the allegory of this book. I saw a very religious side to it, too, aside from race. I saw Fulton's notebook as being a metaphor for the Bible; everyone reads it a different way and gets a different message from it. It's messages can be taken out of context. Maybe the black box was something that never really existed but was a false hope for the people to have faith in. This sounds rather pessimistic, but people will probably always have some defect, they are not perfect. Also, the elevator inspectors thought that Lila Mae was important since her name was written in the notebook, but we saw that Fulton was just writing her name in the margin almost unknowingly; he didn't really mean anything by it. So, the notebooks seemed to symbolize the Bible or any religious writings to me. I also thought of the elevators as people in general, rather than slaves, towards the end of the book. I thought the idealistic black box would be "the perfect elevator," or, a person who didn't factor race/gender/any differences into the way they viewed people. The perfect person would look beyond the "skin of things."

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Intuitionist

Colson Whitehead's "The Intuitionist" is an allegorical novel. I think he is using the Intuitionist elevator inspection industry as a metaphor for the African American race, but it is too early to tell. There are a few hints. One example is the description of the area "the Department has allowed the colored men" (18). Lila Mae sees one of Chancre's campaign posters on the wall and it has been graffitied by the "colored men." Whitehead writes, "No one notices them but they're there, near invisible, and count for something" (18). I took this as a metaphor for the African American race and the idea that their voice in the nation has been and still is ignored or invisible.
I also saw an argument against the literary "canon" which we have discussed in class. On page 21, Whitehead is describing Chuck's desire for being an elevator professor. He says, "His students should be acquainted with the entire body of elevator knowledge, not just the canon" (21). This was very interesting word choice and made me think Whitehead meant that people need to be more familiar with all literary voices, including African Americans, instead of just reading the so-called American "canons." I think he means to say that the canons are not really true American canons if they don't include the history, voice, and opinions of all Americans of every race. Whitehead uses the ideas of Empiricism and Intuitionism in elevator inspections as a metaphor for this.
We talked a little bit about how confusing the time frame for this book is. I think it could be taking place in the future even though it seems like the past. A passage that makes me think this is, "Because there must be patterns, experience is recursive, and if the pattern has not announced itself yet, it will, eloquent and emphatic in a mild-mannered sort of way" (28). I think this means basically that history repeats itself. If this is an idea in Whitehead's book, then it could be taking place in a future where history is repeating itself and elevators are once again something to wonder at.
The main theme I see so far in this book is isolation, especially the isolation Lila Mae feels. She feels as if she is invisible. When the two men come to her apartment and search it for evidence, she feels completely violated. "She doesn't feel as if she lives here anymore...She doesn't live here" (40). This is a huge hint of isolation and a feeling of dislocation. Also the subject of the white characters being Irish brings in another factor of that feeling of dislocation. These will be the main ties to the allegory, I think.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

All Aunt Hagar's Children 3

I would have to say that I found a lot more to discuss with the second half of this book. Especially in the last two chapters, the issue of diaspora and the importance of family past is brought more into the picture. I think "All Aunt Hagar's Children" definitely symbolizes the African American population. Hagar was Abraham's concubine in the Bible, who was eventually banished and forgotten about. I saw this as a symbol for the African American population because they were brought to America, forced to work, and eventually forgotten after slavery was abolished. I also think this is the meaning of the title because terms like "all God's children" are used throughout the book. For example, at the end of "Blinsided," Roxanne is imagining a universe where "...Pluto was open all the time to all of God's children. Yes, open even to the least of them" (321). I understood this to mean that the African Americans, Roxanne's race, are the "least of them."
In the chapter "Bad Neighbors," the story takes place in a neighborhood that seems to be made up of affluent African Americans. A more unfortunate family comes along and rents a house and the neighbors become angry and intimidated. This family seems to anger them because they ruin the image of successful African Americans that the neighbors are trying to uphold. Sharon, however, seems to want a simpler life. She secretly falls in love with Derek of this less fortunate family. She marries the man her parents approve of, but Derek is still there with her. In her inner monologue, she changes her words to sound like the lazy southern way Derek says his. So in a way, she tries to get back to her southern roots. She also "got into bed the way she came into the world" (373). For me, this symbolized going back to her roots. One of my favorite lines of the book was the last line of this chapter: "Almost imperceptibly, the rightmost red number on the fine German clock went from two to three" (373). I loved how Jones slyly suggests the love affair between Sharon and Derek, whether physical or just imaginary, by slipping in those numbers. Sharon and her husband's relationship now have this third person involved.
Now, I think the most loaded chapter as far as symbolism goes, was "Tapestry." The word tapestry describes the book's weaving together of many stories to form one tapestry of African American life. Also, Anne creates this tapestry which holds a lot of symbolism in the making of it. She creates this brown bunny, then she decides which way his path in the snow will go; she decides his new home for him, just as the American colonists decided the Africans' new home for them. She creates a hawk, because, "...the work would not be complete without a diving hawk, a bird of prey more dominant than anything else in the sunless sky...its talons exposed..." (385). She later removes the bunny, and the hawk stays in the tapestry triumphant. I think this symbolizes how the African American past, the story of so many opressed peoples, has been forgotten through the generations. This is a thought of Anne's as she is on the bus to Washington. Also, she says, "None of her descendants were ever to become tapestry women" (389). This means her descendants would forget where they came from as well. Anne decides that she wants to return to her roots in Mississippi, but she knows this will never truly happen. At the end of the chapter, the African American train passengers all around her start talking in thier sleep. They are whispering as if from another time, as if they are slaves. I think here, Jones meant to say that the African American past is still out there but it is as small as a whisper during sleep. African Americans are forgetting the rich histories they have, and this is upsetting since it is how they came so far from where they were.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Aunt Hagar's Children 2

I've noticed a common occurence in all of the chapters; they all seem to have pregnant women in them. I'm not sure at all what the meaning behind this is, but I've noticed it a lot. In the first chapter Ruth isn't pregnant but Aubrey tries to get her pregnant and she does have an infant. There might be a meaning of new life, as in the new life they all made for themselves in Washington, D.C. as opposed to an ancestry of slaves in the south. The chapters have still been ending at the climax of the story and we never find out what happens. This is especially confusing in , "A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru." In this chapter, Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia seem to have shared the memories of all the "miracles" of death that happened around them. They know each other's minds. I think that at the end of the story, Arlene is seeing into Eulogia's experience of the bus ride with the newlyweds. Also, she could have been seeing "the afterlife" because they are driving through a town called Buena Serra, or "Sweet Goodbyes," and it seems to fit in pretty well with her husband thinking that he's about to die. Also, Arlene seems to know when people are going to die, and she turns to her husband and "shows him what the path ahead would be like" (161). This makes me think she is leading him happily and readily into death. I think they are somewhat old at this point and might be ready for it. A thought that came to me after reading this chapter, is that Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia seem to be kind of "grim reapers." People around them just all seem to drop dead. Apart from this, they have a psychic kind on connection and can see into each other's memories, and see where they are all coming from. They seem to share telepathic powers; they can see something in their minds that they did not experience themselves. An interesting website about telapathy is http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/t/telepathy.html . I think it's very ironic how Arlene is a very intelligent scientist, yet she has this ability that can't be explained by science.