close reading four

This post, brought into existence by the recent tragedy at the elementary school in Newtown, interested me. It's not the first time this idea has been put forth (it happens after each of our disturbingly common mass shootings) but it's the most recent and this post's author can be identified with.

After every mass shooting in America, a discussion inevitably sparks up about gun control. The issue of mental health has been completely ignored for years, and the author of "Thinking the Unthinkable" is sick of it. Her post uses a personal anecdote supported by statistics and events nationwide to question why we as a nation are ignoring mental health, and she heavily uses syntax and control over the presentation of details to garner emotional investment from the reader.

The post starts off by juxtaposing Adam Lanza's crime with her problem: her son missed the bus. A reader would be inclined to read on, either wondering why that is relevant or wondering how dare she compare her trivial problem to the mass murder of children. The effect is continued when she describes the conversation at length: "his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises." The reader gets impatient. She then tells the reader how her son called her a "stupid bitch" and how weakly she responded. The reader at this point is thinking not only is she a bad person for comparing her issue to the mass murder of children, but she's a bad parent for letting her kid behave like this. Eventually, she gets to the point: her son is mentally ill. This detail converts a reader's anger into deep sympathy and understanding. She then finishes her anecdote of how she took her screaming violent child to the hospital, and supplies statistics on mental health to the now-solemn reader. She also tells us more about Michael, how he loves learning and his snuggle animal collection, to generate more sympathy, pushing to make the reader understand that mentally ill people are people too.

Her syntax is crafted to give the above effects maximum potency. For example, followed immediately after her comparison of her son missing the bus to Adam Lanza is a pause, in which the reader has time to think how ridiculous she is. The long, thorough description before getting to the point of the story serves to exasperate the reader, fueling their distaste for the author. When she tells the reader her son is mentally ill, she does so with three concise sentences. These blunt sentences slam the reader with that information in a short time, dispelling their anger and causing their heart to sink immediately. The last sentence, "But he terrifies me," makes the reader want to continue reading. The same techniques are repeated throughout the piece, with the three last sentences serving as a harrowing conclusion so the reader will internalize the piece.

prompt four

1982. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience with a scene or scenes of violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid plot summary.

author's note: two critiques off the top of my head: use "torture" less and do less plot summary.

Violence is abundant in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, but a few particular scenes have a more prominent influence on the overall meaning than the others: the violence Alex experiences after being released from prison. His beating at the hands of his old victims as well as by the duo of his now-deputized friend and enemy serve to show how savage and vindictive humankind is.

After being turned away from home by his parents and discovering he can no longer listen to his beloved classical music, Alex takes an intoxicated trip to the library to read about suicide. The vulnerable Alex is accosted by an old man, Jack, that he and his droogs beat before Alex went to prison. Jack and his elderly cohorts mercilessly beat Alex despite his passivity. Alex had been punished already by the system and had apparently learned his lesson, but the vengeful Jack continues the beating until the police step in.

Alex's release was no surprise; his situation was widely publicized as a triumph of modern psychology and a sign of a bright crime-free future thanks to the torturous aversion therapy to which Alex was subjected to eliminate his criminal urges. So when an old enemy and an old friend, now police officers, apprehend Alex for attacking the library patrons, they know full well that he was really the victim. Bearing old grudges, they take him to a secluded area and continue the beating that they were sent to stop.

Alex had already been punished for his transgressions, but still continued to suffer outside of prison. The people he had wronged insist on exacting their own revenge, despite the torture Alex had already endured. And even the system that was meant to protect him, the very same one that tortured him under the pretense of saving him, brutalized him secretly. Burgess used this violence to show how spiteful and revenge-crazed humankind can be.

death of a salesman

setting: An old house in Brooklyn surrounded by dead grass and apartment buildings. The ground isn't fertile and nothing grows, like a dystopian Garden of Eden. The importance of the Big Apple as the setting is summed up in the saying, "if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere" from the theme of Scorsese's New York, New York (I prefer Sinatra to Liza Minnelli, shoot me). It's the city of dreams and opportunity and represents all of America and all that jazz.

plot: It's springtime and Biff returns home once again, taking a break from the riveting life of a drifter. We learn that he and his father, Willy, do not get along well when Willy is yelling about how Biff isn't making anything of his life. Biff and his brother Happy are in their old room reminiscing about their childhoods and their sexcapades, which shows us that their family used to be much happier. Willy's only friend Charley is introduced when he comes over to check on Willy during one of his freakouts. He guises his concern very well so as not to hurt Willy's pride, and they play cards. This is where Willy's brother and sort-of confidant Ben is introduced when Willy hallucinates that Ben is in the room and begins talking with him. Happy and Biff learn some of the causes and the severity of Willy's instability: he is not succeeding at his firm and he plans to kill himself. Biff vows to stay home to work in business to make his father happy, and departs the next morning trying to secure a business deal. Biff, Happy and Willy all meet at a restaurant that evening. Biff's business endeavors failed and Willy was fired from his job. Willy starts hallucinating, and here we see that Biff and Willy are at ends because Biff found Willy with another woman, giving her Linda's stockings. Biff and Happy leave the hallucinating Willy at the restaurant. Later that night, Biff confronts Willy about his suicide plans and begs him to forget his dreams for Biff's success before anything happens. He cries on Willy. Willy is ecstatic that Biff doesn't hate him but totally missed the point of the conversation and he kills himself to get insurance money for Biff and Happy to go into business. Ramble ramble ramble.

characters:
Willy Loman: 63yo salesman with nothing to show for it. His denial of his shortcomings and wrongdoings drive him insane (and ultimately to suicide) and destroy his relationship with his son. He values external validation and encourages his kids to steal and flunk math, as long as they're well-liked. He cheated on his wife, though I can't decide if it was a power play in the business world or if it was due to his obsession with being liked. This affair is what causes Biff to destroy his life.

Linda Loman: Willy's wife. She loves Willy more than she loves her sons, despite his lack of respect for her, and would do anything she can to keep him stable. She acts as his codependent, sheltering him from the truth and allowing him to live a lie, furthering his descent into insanity.

Charley: Willy's only friend. He helps Willy out in times of need by lending him money and checking on his sanity. He offers Willy a well-paid job, which Willy refuses. He also picks up on Willy's hints of suicidal thoughts, and tells him "Nobody's worth nothing dead." His actions do not enable Willy's self-destruction, however. He confronts Willy when he's being irrational, telling him to grow up and calling him out for his pride.

Biff Loman: Drifter and criminal. He hates his father intensely for disrespecting and cheating on Linda, but seems to forgive him more-or-less when he learns of Willy's suicide attempts. Biff's time in the West allowed him to unlearn all the bad things Willy taught him. He sees that Willy had the wrong dream: chasing success, instead of doing what he loved.

Hap Loman: Womanizer. Everybody in the family ignores him, but everybody outside of the family seems to pay attention to him; he sleeps with executives' wives and girlfriends and whatnot. Conversely, Willy is the center of attention in his own household but ignored in the business world. He wants to succeed in New York to validate Willy's dream and to stick it to the snobby executives that he works under that he can outbox and outrun and outperform.

Bernard: Charley's son. He's a sort of foil for the Lomans: he shows that hard work leads to success and external validation isn't necessary. He always tried to get Biff to behave and work hard in school. Biff didn't and failed at life, while Bernard went on to become a successful lawyer. He doesn't need external validation: he doesn't even mention that he's seeing a case at the Supreme Court when talking to Willy. As Charley says, "He don't have to, he's gonna do it."

style:
It's a play, so that takes care of point of view and imagery. It's got a bunch of symbols so I'll just name a few. The stockings represent success, because of that stuff about silk being really expensive. They also represent infidelity; Willy gave his ladyfriend some socks, and Willy always gets ornery when Linda is mending socks. He's trying to hide his shame and repress his infidelity. Biff's age, 34, is symbolic, because Jesus died at 33. Too late to be reborn or whatever. The seeds and the failed garden serve to show that reality sucks. The Garden of Eden isn't real, and Willy is unable to nurture anything in it. His inability to raise a garden is like his inability to properly raise his sons, etc etc. Miller's tone throughout the piece is both angry and piteous. There's a lot of yelling and fury and anger and a harbor grudge and all that sort of thing. At the same time, everyone feels bad for Willy because his life has been a total failure (or at least, he doesn't see how he succeeded).

theme: uhh there are a bunch of these. One theme is honesty. Throughout the work, the Loman family tells lie after lie. Biff says, "We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house," to which Happy appropriately responds, "We always told the truth!" Biff steals a lot, Happy sleeps with wives and girlfriends, Willy had his affair, and more abstractly, Willy lies to himself. He's in denial about his lack of business success and about his affair. He convinces himself that Biff gave up his life to spite him and refuses to acknowledge that he messed up.

and another quote, for good measure:
"When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle. When I was twenty one I walked out, and by God, I was rich!" This quote from Ben shows that the American Dream, as interpreted by Willy, does not include working hard in its formula for success. Ben simply walked into the jungle, and simply walked out rich. Having to work for your wealth devalues it, in a sense.

course material four

these are always tricky for me because I don't really remember things with respect to time. Everything is just kind of stored as an event cloud in my brain. oh well.

I liked reading Death of a Salesman, and I was surprised at how closely the movie adaptation followed the script of the play. Unless there were huge differences that were just way too subtle or "out there" for us to get, of course. I liked the play for its criticism of things and systems and the powers that be, I guess, and because I seem to be a little too interested in the idea of sanity. It's fun to try to prove that the events of a story don't actually happen. For Brit Lit I wrote a proposal for a production of Macbeth in which he is tripping the whole time because of Banquo's line "Were such things here as we do speak about? \ Or have we eaten on the insane root \ That takes the reason prisoner?" in Act 1 Scene III. We read those 4 long things in response to DOS, but they weren't quite as mind-blowing as what we read on The American Dream, which was a bummer.
We're reading Hamlet now, and I like some of the quotes ("Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice") but I stumble with current-day English so the Elizabethan stuff really puts a bullet in my kneecaps sometimes (all the time, who am I kidding?). I like the explanations of the tricky passages that we get from Ms. Holmes, as well as the historical context. It makes the play easier to digest.
Uhhh I hate the prompt essays we write here. They always turn out abysmally. Go check, it's funny. I like the close readings since I usually just write about an article I read a few days prior that I liked, and even if the essay turns out only marginally better than the open prompts,  I still have a chance to reprocess and internalize the article. I already mentioned what I think of these course responses up at the tippy top there. I'm eating Christmas-colored candy corn (QUADRUPLE ALLITERATION) that tastes like wax.