TEWWG -End, Steinbeck

Well, this definitely was not what I was expecting, yet looking back at the book these last couple chapters have numerous things that were foreshadowed for.  To just name a few the fact that she kills Tea Cake with a gun and that he turns into a wild dog.  The imagery in these chapters are are just as inspiring as the rest of the chapters.  One part that really stuck out at me was after Janie’s trial she is declared innocent, “The sun was almost down and Janie had seen the sun rise on her troubled love and then she had shot Tea Cake and had been in jail and had been tried for her life and now she was free” (Hurston p. 179).  I feel as if the sun is an image of her identity—her spirit.  She mentions her freedom each time she is no longer with a man.  Hurston ends the book with “She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net” (p. 184).  I am not sure what I make of this last reference, perhaps we will discuss it further in class.

            I thought it was interesting how this book is more about gender problems and yet race is sprinkled throughout—especially at the end.  Tea Cake makes racist comments towards some Indians that were leaving the area because of the hurricane.  He thinks that they are not smart enough and are socially lower than blacks.  The trial was interesting from a racial viewpoint and the comment about white men and black women being able to “get away” with more. 

            All in all I think it was a good book, but I think I would like to read it again.  I think it might be beneficial to read it once more—I feel like the book had so much going on I couldn’t pick everything up.

            I especially enjoyed the poems by Steinbeck.  Nothing against the earlier poets but I feel like these were easier to understand and had better imagery.  They were personal histories and stories that could be understood and empathized with.

TEWWG Chapters 11-16

Well, I can remember the beginning of the book began with Janie coming back from the place that she is going to in these chapters so this must be where the story ends.  I really liked the part about how Tea Cake taught Janie how to shoot a gun and she actually becomes better at it than him.  I could be totally wrong but I feel a sort of foreshadowing in this part.  He talks about how she has to learn how to shoot a gun even if it’s to kill someone who deserves it—seems like she might someday possibly. 

I cannot believe that Janie just forgives Tea Cake after he leaves her for a day and a night when he was only getting fish.  He was out spending her money and having fun without even consulting her.  Now, maybe I’m just being a girl but I would be angry.  She seemed a little upset at first when he finally told her but then she just brushed it off—seriously?  I would be worried sick and here he is just out spending her money.  Well, after this incident he so far seems like a better man for her, up until the incident with the younger girl that flirts with him.  She had every right to be jealous.  I was kind of sad when there wasn’t even a fight—Janie just runs home.  I’d be mad if some woman started making moves my husband.

More beautiful imagery in these chapters but there was one that stood out to me on pg. 122.  “So her sould crawled out from its hiding place” (Hurston).  I love the imagery of her being trapped with the other men not being allowed to show her true identity and freedom.  With Tea Cake she is allowed to show openly her feelings and her true self.

Their Eyes were Watching God--Chapters 6-11

I am going to be honest and say that the last few chapters that we were assigned kind of bored me.  The chapters about Janie and Joe and how he simply puts her down and orders her around like a pack mule—seems like he is her master and she is the slave that listens.  Nanny had told Janie about the white man giving the burden to the black man and then the black man hands it to the black woman—seems like the first one was cut out of this picture.  The romanticized Joe is gone and now he is a bitter old man that wants his way and has placed himself upon a pedestal.  Whenever she tries to confront him about it he just makes her feel bad.  He becomes physically abusive to her as well.  It seems like she lets people walk all over her until that one day when she actually gets the nerve to stand up for herself.  But then of course he cannot take what he dishes out and becomes sick and eventually dies.  To be honest—Good Riddance!

She finally gains a little independence and allows herself some freedom from the opposite sex to be her own person.  However, like a typical story another man walks by her and she becomes love struck once more and begins to fall for him.  If this story is like any other typical story it does not take a genius to figure out what’s going to happen.  Especially, from the beginning clues that are in the first chapter—seems like a cycle to me.  I am not saying that I don’t like the novel it has just been very predictable so far but I won’t judge it until the end!

Their Eyes were Watching God---Chapters 1-5

The first five chapter of Their Eyes were Watching God was a little difficult to get into the story during the first few pages.  After the first chapter I began to find in easier to read but I also found the writing strange and different.  The novels that I usually read are linear and this book is non-linear so far.  The book bounces around from Nanny’s story, to present day, and to Janie’s past.  While there is character development, the development seems different from what I am used to.  I do think the book is, so far, compelling and hooks the reader into the narrative.  It took a few pages to get into the style of the dialogue that the characters are talking in.  The dialogue reminded me of Huckleberry Finn because it’s that southern dialogue.  I will admit that it took me a few pages to figure out the main character was black.  I did not figure it out until the main character mentions her skin color in one of her early childhood stories. 

So far in only the first five chapters I can already see the tension of the old south and the new south.  The grandma is trying to marry off her granddaughter so that she will have a stable home, not for love.  Janie does not want to marry because she would rather look up at the pear tree.  The book mentions slavery and how towns are being made with only blacks.  Joe takes this opportunity and further establishes a town.  However, now the tension of black folk bossing around other blacks seems to make tensions rise.  It’s no longer a problem of skin color, but rather of wealth and who has the power.

Hemmingway, Eliot, Faulkner

            Ernest Hemmingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” reminded me of “To Build a Fire” in a sense that they were both trying to survive the outdoor elements.  They also both have unresolved endings which I think are interesting. 

I also thought that Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was strange especially after talking about it in class.  When I first read the poem I thought it was odd how the writer’s attitude towards his lover and himself changes.  At first he seemed to have confidence and then it begins to fade.  He talks about cheap hotels, which I thought was especially funny, and in the end drowning.  The whole idea of irony really paints a complete picture of the love song.  Like we talked about in class the title itself is ironic and seems more like a business type title rather than someone writing a love letter.  Half way through his love song he simply gives up on his love because he believes that he is insufficient and insignificant.  It seems that Eliot used modernism and irony both within his poem.  The whole question of “you and I” seems to raise a question like we talked about in class.  He sees himself as two potential visions: one that he will get his love and the other that he will never get his love.  He is not sure of who he is and there is an uncertainty of communication.

Faulkner’s “Rose for Emily” is interesting because it is non-linear and jumps around with the story.  The tension between old south and new south seems to be centered around Ms. Emily and the town.  Through taxes, smells, and other problems the question of values and tradition seem to butt heads against new culture of the town and more importantly of the south.  The town was becoming modernized and Ms. Emily holds on to what was and what she knew.

Modernism, Frost, Wallace

Modernism brings new ideas, innovations, and literature.  It's out with the old grand myths and grand narratives and into the new and modern culture.  Literature uses fragments and stories can have no resolution and are discordant.  WWI comes and eventually leads into the Great Depression which then leads into WWII and women's rights.  Urbanization is booming along with the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance.  Urbanization brings industrialization and technology such as the automobile and airplanes. 

“Good fences make good neighbors,” is one of the most famous lines from Robert Frost’s Mending Wall.  The poem mentions challenging tradition.  The neighbor is simply “going through the motions” and like an archaic ignorant fool.  The man is sneaky and has an obvious lack of intelligent thought since he is attempting to use a fence to separate their trees.  The author believes that there was a time when people needed them but the man was simply doing it out of tradition and not using his brain.  Frost’s other poem The Road not Taken confused me a little, even after our discussion in class.  I understand that the man was trying to be independent and was reminiscing on the past but also looking to the future.  The paths are the same that he is looking down and that there is not one that is better.  The rest is a little confusing with the whole “nostalgia” and “nostalgia importance.”

Wallace Steven’s poem Sunday Morning especially intrigued me because the first time that I read it I found it interesting that Stevens decided to use both pagan and Christianity in his poem.  The woman’s whole take on paradise is very interesting especially for this time period with modernism.  It was always thought of as the ultimate reward after death—now Stevens challenges this with the idea that beauty is around people while they are alive and death brings that beauty to an end so we must enjoy it while we are alive and not waste it.  The grand myth of Christianity is challenged.