Sensory Figures in Selected Poems February 27, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Plath, Sexton
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One of the most prevalent types of figure in both “Blackberrying” and “Starry Night” was sensory description. “Starry Night” was prefaced with a Vincent van Gogh quote, clearly linking the poem to the painting of the same name. This connection made it obvious why all of Sexton’s sensory description was visual imagery, because the poem was in many ways a textual representation of the visual abstraction of the painting and the author’s reaction to it. In contrast, “Blackberrying” relates an actual event, and as a result Plath employs language of all five senses to fully express her experience through the medium of the written word.
Natural Metaphors February 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Unconventional Discourse.Tags: Response
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When I read David’s vignette, I found it very similar in tone to several of the submissions in the class, including my own. The obvious connections between the image of a foreboding natural phenomenon and the condition of living under the shadow of the opposing forces of the Cold War make those forms of figurative expression particularly powerful. In this case, the choice of a hurricane is especially appropriate, because the specific threat that it represents on the geographic level mirrors the particular geopolitical implications of the Cuban Missile Crisis; also, the mounting “red darkness” of a hurricane is a natural link to the Soviet threat, as is the fact that a hurricane forms far from shore but approaches in an unpredictable but inexorable way to threaten the coast. The repeated representation of the Cold War experiences of individuals on both sides of the Iron Curtain as natural disasters is indicative of a broader pattern within the literary tradition of figurative expression: namely, that the most frightening threat is not a horrifying monster that is actively seeking to harm you, but the primeval forces of nature that can engulf and destroy you in their utterly inhuman and totally impersonal savagery. That is, lions and tigers and bears are certainly scary, but how much more terrifying is the prospect of being caught in a raging storm, consumed in a blazing inferno, lost in an impenetrable jungle, or swallowed in an endless sea?
Firebreak February 20, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Unconventional Discourse.Tags: Creative
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On this morning, no different from any other, a man climbed wearily out of bed as the gray predawn sky was just beginning to lighten behind the bedroom curtains. The morning ritual of shaving and dressing was completed with a mechanical efficiency born of constant practice; viewed through the filmy haze that had marked the treetops across the river for some time, the nascent sunrise proclaiming another day was regarded with the same enthusiasm as the baseball scores in the paper over breakfast. Shrugging off the last vestiges of the fuzziness of sleep and slipping out the door, the man could see the long, strange shadows typical of that hour stretching out before him under a clear dawn sky, the morning star fading on the horizon. He backed out of his garage and turned onto the road for the long commute north into the city. As the muted light of the morning sun streamed through his passenger window, he watched idly as the the scene to his left turned from rural landscape to suburban development and finally to urban sprawl, his view unbroken across the highway lanes devoid of oncoming traffic. Shaking his head ruefully at the sight of those open lanes leading back the way he came, he picked his way through the morning rush of traffic to find his way to his office building.
Nine clockwork hours later, the man found himself in a viscous stream flowing south, surrounded by the same consultants and managers and executives that shared the trip with him on every day. He found a satisfaction in watching the view from his right window revert slowly to undeveloped landscape as he made his habitual escape. As he left behind the rows of cookie-cutter houses and the company of his fellow workers, the evening sun hung low enough that the crystal sky softened its radiance to a warm, inviting glow. The orb finally slipped behind the horizon, taking with it the last lingering worries of the workday; the road wound on beneath the twilight sky, the deep blue-purple overhead streaked with color from a glow on both sides of the road. On this evening, no different than any other, an unsettling feeling crept into the void left by the distractions of the day.
As the road swung into the clear area along the riverbank for the final leg of the drive, his gaze was inexorably drawn to his left. Across the river, his view unimpeded by the morning light of his earlier trip, he watched the fire rage across the gently rolling hills, the spectrum of red and yellow playing against the pall of smoke that persisted above the flames. Remembering the front page story he had so perfunctorily passed over, he considered the reports that the long-burning blaze was firmly under control. It was assured that the fire departments had prevented the fire from progressing further for some time now, that the river provided a natural firebreak for containment of the conflagration and that the amount of resources being poured into the area would soon allow them to extinguish it altogether. As always, bolstered by the knowledge that the authorities had everything well in hand, he forced his eyes back to the road. Like every other night that he had seen the flames, the man found himself wondering if one of the leaping sparks that danced in the wind might find a fertile home across the water.
The Beat Generation February 18, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Ginsberg, Kerouac
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While reading Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg for class today, I was struck by the extent of their rejection of traditional American social conventions. The movement that grew out of their ideas and patterned itself after their writing completely denied the sensibilities and the responsibilities of the generations prior to theirs, choosing instead to explore a counterculture of sex, drugs, and Eastern mysticism. To me, the connection between this movement and the radical counterculture of the Vietnam era seemed obvious; however, I was surprised to find out that Kerouac broke with Ginsberg and rejected the hippie movement as little more than an excuse for wildness and as destructive of American culture. This caused me to wonder what exactly Kerouac’s conception of American culture entailed, because from the reading it seemed like the only positive thing he has to say about American culture is that it tolerates his countercultural behavior.
Figurative Expression as an Alternative Discourse February 13, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Unconventional Discourse.Tags: Pynchon
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The two figures that stood out in Thomas Pynchon’s short story Entropy were the broken windows, which function as the physical representation within the text of the philosophical connection between the two distinct threads. Both of the characters that motivated the discussion of entropy within the two contrasting contexts of the party and the hothouse were involved in some way with the breaking of a window. Saul’s discussion with Meatball of entropy as the random noise within a signal is precipitated by an argument with his wife concerning communication and information theory, in the course of which a science textbook was thrown through a window. Callisto’s obsession with thermodynamic entropy and the impending heat-death of the universe, which has prompted he and Aubade to sequester themselves within a hermetically sealed hothouse, eventually leads her to break the window and embrace the intrinsic flux of the surrounding world. In each instance, the physical act of the broken window is the fulfillment of each interpretation of entropy. The book thrown through the window in mid-argument represents a breakdown in communication precipitated by a misunderstanding that is exemplary of the information theory form of entropy (the book being a thermodynamics text is a small nod to the superficiality of the connection between the two types of entropy). Aubade’s decision to break the window and allow the implacable forces of thermodynamics to enter the previously closed environment is a realization of the inevitability of the changes implicit in a thermodynamic representation of the world and the trends within it. Although isolation can give the illusion of stability, at every level change is unavoidable: flux is an integral component of existence. In both cases, the broken window represents the acceptance of entropy as a fundamental condition of reality: on the one hand, a limitation of communication that cannot be overcome; on the other, a state of change that cannot be circumvented.
This acceptance of certain fundamental conditions as constraints for existence and action is reminiscent of the progression of the Cold War in Europe, as described by Robert McMahon. In The Cold War, he explores the reasons behind the fact that the Cold War’s only militarized conflicts took place in the Third World. According to McMahon, the most fundamental reason was the mutual acceptance by both the East and West that any conflict in the central European theater would inevitably lead to a thermonuclear exchange, and that this outcome would not favor any involved. This consensus of mutually-assured destruction was the key balancing force for the duration of the four-decade conflict between the two superpowers. While many believe this to mean that the mere specter of nuclear retaliation would have prevented war from erupting and that the political machinations and military-industrial arms race on both sides following World War II was in hindsight unnecessary, McMahon demonstrates that the Soviet maneuvers in both the political and military arenas were intended to prevent the West from achieving enough of a strategic edge to launch the offensive that the inherently paranoid Soviets believed the capitalists must intend; the matching American responses were necessary to prevent the Soviet buildup from tipping the balance far enough for the communists to achieve their stated goal of forcibly subduing the West. As McMahon shows, the balance of power that prevented the Cold War from turning into a global thermonuclear war was a far more fragile and complex thing than is widely understood.
Figurative expression as an alternative discourse can be valuable in separating from and counteracting the more traditional forms of representing and communicating thoughts and ideas. Pynchon’s short story does this very well in the course of exploring the relationship between the information theory and thermodynamic concepts of entropy: rather than an academic paper detailing the similarities and differences in the theories and their applications, Pynchon crafts a narrative representation of the same concepts, demonstrating their application through the actions of the characters and linking the two different threads with the vehicle of the broken window. While this is a reasonable (and sometimes superior) method for conveying certain ideas, it must be noted that any attempt to replace direct communication with figurative expression is subject to the inherent risk of miscommunication within a form of discourse that relies on interpretation and the linkage of two different objects or concepts in the vehicle and the tenor.
Entropy February 13, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: Pynchon
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Thomas Pynchon’s short story Entropy was an interesting perspective on the trends of post-World War II American society. The juxtaposition of the chaotic party in Mulligan’s apartment with the discussion of entropy by Callisto functions as a lens through which to view the consumerist nature of the modern world. The relentless drive to acquire new things and keep up with social trends and fashions has led to an irreversible loss of individuality, replacing an ordered system of unique parts with a random jumble of identical and interchangeable subunits. Corresponding to the inevitable “heat-death” of the universe, this trend is seen as a regrettable but ultimately unavoidable consequence of the modernization of society. A key component of this modernization is communication, which is captured in the picture: a composite representing the number of cell phones discarded in the United States each day.
Belief and Reason in the New World Order February 6, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Unconventional Discourse.Tags: O'Connor
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Flannery O’Connor’s short story Good Country People is fairly typical of her work, and is indicative of the changing values of the time in which she wrote. The story was published in 1955, a time of great change in terms of the geopolitical and socioeconomic characteristics of the world, the nation, and specifically the South, the subject of most of O’Connor’s work. The two World Wars over the four prior decades had effectively ended the European domination of the globe and the colonial imperialism that had long been at the center of international affairs. The destruction of the old world order was accompanied by the rise of a new system, rooted in the rational ideals of the Enlightenment and embodied in the United States, the emerging superpower that took up the banner of freedom and liberty against the oppressive war machine of the Soviet Union. Driven in part by the Cold War and in part by the social changes occurring in American culture, the people of the new order had to examine the tensions resulting from the intersection of belief and reason within their modes of thinking.
In the South, O’Connor’s particular focus, the traditional point of view was ostensibly grounded in Christianity, but was in fact founded on the secular old-world sensibilities regarding propriety and class distinctions. This perspective is made clear in the character of Mrs. Hopewell, who forces everything and everyone around her into the worldview that her traditional upbringing has instilled in her. She is deeply disappointed in what she sees as her daughter’s willful refusal to grow out of her intellectual phase and settle down to the life of a proper Southern matron; she also clings to her preconceived notions of class when relating to her tenants, seeing the transients as trash but insisting that the Freemans are good country people (and as such, clearly and comfortably beneath her in the established social hierarchy). Her need to conform the world around her to the static ideal of her traditional views is shown to be incompatible with the inexorable changes taking place in that world, as it was put so well by Heraclitus. In fact, she trusts her traditional worldview to protect her from any change that might threaten to upset her carefully ordered ideals, a fallacy which is exposed and exploited by Manley Pointer.
Pointer also serves as the catalyst for exposing the flaws of another perspective, that of Joy Hopewell. She believes that she has escaped the trap of her mother’s irrational worldview, which she sees as representative of religion, by pursuing an education and learning to discard everything but reason alone. Her mother’s discovery of the Nietzsche text, which horrifies her although she does not recognize the source, clearly outlines Joy’s own worldview. It is in this light that she changes her name to Hulga, attempting to break free of the system in which her mother had attempted to place her. Her entire perspective is centered on an extremely nihilistic view of life, and she is devoted in her belief that Nothing is central to life and that reason has nothing to say about Nothing. To Hulga, the meaning of life is irrelevant and nonexistent. Ironically, it was precisely this idea that was the genesis of the socialist beliefs that drove the entire Second World to pursue the utter destruction of the freedom and liberty so cherished by those of the new world order. The inherent flaw in this reasoning is again exposed by Manley Pointer, who turns Hulga’s attempts to corrupt his pious alter ego back on themselves, showing her the emptiness and despair of her own beliefs.
By illustrating the fundamental flaws of both Mrs. Hopewell’s denial of change in favor of tradition and her daughter’s denial of belief in favor reason, O’Connor shows that neither blindly trusting in pseudo-religious values to ward off change nor forgoing religious belief altogether is a viable option. Instead, O’Connor shows that faith is a necessary concept, one that enables us to adapt to the dynamic world around us without compromising our understanding of the fundamental principles that govern existence.
Flannery O’Connor February 6, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Research.Tags: O'Connor
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When I saw that I was going to have an interview and miss class the day we discussed Flannery O’Connor, I was immediately disappointed because she is one of my favorite authors. I have read most of her short stories, either for lit or religion classes, and the thing that has always struck me as most unique about her writing is how she uses her narrative and characters to reappropriate traditional ideas, particularly those concerning Christianity, and express her own views which often contradict the mainstream perspective. In both of the stories we read, The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People, the tension in the text stems from the disconnect between perceptions which are rooted in traditional Southern, ostensibly Christian values, and the motivations and actions of the characters that exploit the holes in these beliefs for their own advantage. O’Connor is not saying that these antagonistic characters are representative of actual Christian morality and behavior, but that the lens through which the traditional characters view the world and those around them is ultimately flawed due to their own misunderstanding of Christianity. In her stories, O’Connor makes the case that Christianity is not the passive set of rules that guides the upright behavior of “good country people”, but instead a vibrantly dynamic faith that allows a person to experience the world as it truly is and not as their misguided beliefs have led them to think.
