I'm sure you can already see the connection and the reasoning behind my choice for this particular story. The story itself has me more conflicted than any of the rest. Who is the true fanatic in this situation? I find myself torn between both sides, but before we get ahead of ourselves, I'd like to discuss fanaticism and the way this term is used. As we all know, Donald Trump and his white nationalist cronies are attempting to claim that anti-fascists are not only infiltrating and deceiving protesters, but are fanatical terrorists attempting to destroy this country. Anyone with a brain understands that antifa is not an organization and does not exist in the way that they try to portray it, but that it's literally just a believing that we're all obligated to fight against fascism. It's the intention of this fascist government to try to discredit the very concept of anti-fascism to kill off any opposition they might have.
In this story, we follow Parvez, a man that immigrated to England with his son. While he quickly adapted to their new life in their new culture, his son started to turn towards a more fundamental view of Islam and believed it was wrong for their family to essentially lose their way. His son was initially even more acclimated than him, but he noticed a sudden shift in his son's behavior and became concerned. He even jumps straight to drugs, but he soon learns that his son believes that he has become "too implicated in Western civilization" and has turned back towards fundamental religious beliefs. His father is very opposed to the old ways and feels he might be losing his son. After a heated exchange. Parvez strikes Ali who doesn't even fight back, only asking "So who's the fanatic now?" This story has me a bit conflicted, because I do generally see fundamental religion of any type as a bit negative for a person, but it's also an ethnocentric way to see the world. His father is so convinced that his son is wrong for living life the way he chooses without hurting another person that he turns on his son, almost seeing him as an enemy. It's this negativity that ultimately turns him into the fanatic, because he has dehumanized his son to such a point that he has taken away the very things he claimed his life choices would take away: his freedom.
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Another extremely late entry from me, things in my life have been a mess and I'll be glad when this semester is over. I decided to do Punishment because it was a rather strange entry. It doesn't so much relate to the current climate of the world like the last few readings, but it did trick me a bit. My first reading, I thought this was intended to be a rather flowery and metaphorical ode to a sunken ship from the author, but that didn't seem to quite fit the theme of this past week, or this class in general. Of course, the most literal interpretation is that of a dead body, and I saw that, but, well, metaphors. "
So this poem details a body that he has found naked and hanging in a bog for the crime of adultery. Of course, such horrific misogyny is still an issue to today with women being beaten and murdered because of men SUSPECTING infidelity, but when I said it didn't quite relate to today, I mean regarding the black lives matter movement. The narrator attempts to relieve the horrors she must've experienced and he feels awful for it all, seeing her as a victim of a tragically unfair fate. However, he admits that he would've done nothing to save her from her fate. This poem speaks volumes about the way domestic abuse is handled even to this day. I think many of us like to pretend we feel sympathy for the horrors women face, but what do we do to stop it? What would we do if we were confronted with a situation where a man is abusing a woman? I have to admit that when I was a younger man, around 20, my cousin and his then girlfriend, now wife, were arguing and when I and another friend walked in, they got us involved and she claimed that he hit. Our response wasn't to try to break it up or to even just talk him into leaving, we chose to "not get involved". Thankfully, it didn't end up being the case, but had it been, I did the most cowardly and worthless thing possible. I like to believe that I would never be so neglectful because I've changed quite a bit as a person, but I also know that actions speak far louder than works, and I don't know what to think. I wasn't quite sure I was ready for a novel touching on racism at the moment, but I suppose with what's going on in the world, it is appropriate. The past week or so since the protests began have had me in such a miserable state. This was written 121 years ago and the system of the United States is still primarily based on white supremacy and oppression. We're still killing people simply because of the color of their skin. Let's not even get started on gentrification and so on and so forth. I'm a white man, so like Joseph Conrad, I can't speak for marginalized people, but I can do my best to be an ally.
This story is unfortunately based on Joseph's very real experiences in Africa, seeing the devastation that white greed caused and the suffering it wrought on the people. The descriptions of the squalor, the torture, the forced labor, it's very difficult because very little has changed. Marlowe, the main character is disturbed by what he sees, rightly so. I do understand that Kurtz represents the promise of a better life, the lie that all capitalists tell their slaves, the way he becomes a God, but it does play into the whole stereotype of primitive Africans that will believe any white man is a God because he's somehow superior in someway. I guess it's more of a product of the time, but I was not a fan of that aspect. I also took quite a blow to my suprise-o-meter when we discover that Kurtz orchestrated the attack on the steamboat in an attempt to convince them to all head back. Pretty similar to what the police are doing, both kneeling short before after after attacking peaceful protesters to appear civil while also instigating and directly starting the instances of looting and violence to make the protesters look dangerous and unhinged. Let's not even get started with Kurtz's final message being to “Exterminate all the brutes!” A little close to Trump's message about shooting looters. I wasn't ready for this piece, but God if it isn't just as relevant today. Well, once again, it's some 100 year old "modernist" readings that break my brain. I'm starting to wonder if it was me. At this point, if I'm being honest, I just gave up and chose this one because I expect a story about Ulysses from the Odyssey, boy was I shocked to discover the story of Mr. Leopold Bloom living in Dublin, Ireland. Not even is it just that, it's all about one day. Far, FAR from the exciting adventure I was hoping for. That's not to say it was a bad realization by any means, even if I feel as though my brain might fall out from all of this analysis.
To be honest, this reading kind of gave me a taste of what it must be like to read some of my own rambling blogs. I'm the type of writer that sits down and flows without stopping to reread until the flow is cut off at the end. This flow makes total sense when you're the one experiencing, but for someone trying to experience it through what you're writing, it can be an absolute roller coaster experience. Reading more about it (I won't lie, I went to Shmoop to help me understand it) the name makes more sense, with the novel itself being structured after the Odyssey rather than directly referencing it. This is certainly a story that's about the "adventure" itself rather than the content. I mean, it's just a normal everyday person. However, the section we were assigned is about Penelope. Perhaps the whole novel makes more sense in full context, but based on some of what I've read, I doubt it. This chapter is simply Molly thinking, as we've all done, while lying in bed unable to sleep. Molly suspects her husband has been cheating on her while also thinking of her own affairs and her own fantasies. I'm not sure how to feeling about this reading, because part of me sees it as a very obviously male-written character. Molly is portrayed as fickle and untrustworthy, in a way. She has been seeking outside company because he husband hasn't been able to be there for her. She thinks about all the men she has slept with and ultimately realizes that she only loves her husband, now that he's ready to have sex with her? I don't see her as all that empowering, but perhaps I've misunderstood one of the hardest stories to read of all time. PERHAPS! In case it wasn't obvious, I’m extremely late with this week’s entries, so late in fact that it’s actually the next week. Things have been crazy, and the future of this country took more precedence than my own academic future, at least in my opinion. Wow, part of me regrets my poem choice this week, because what a challenging read. I chose The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. I’m not going to pretend I’m some kind of poetry expert, or even a fan of poetry, but even I am familiar with T.S. Eliot. Some of the difficulty in reading this poem was certainly intentional. Pretentious or not, this is one hell of a work.
This poem swaps between different speakers with no prompt, forcing you to reread over and over again. I feel almost gaslit, am I this stupid and incapable of following along, or am I being messed with? I might’ve been a bit too stupid, had it not been for the title giving the premise away. This is blatantly a poem about the so-called dumbing down of society. People have been talking about it for centuries, and we talk about it today. “These kids today with their CELLPHONES!” 100 years ago, it was “These kids today with their NEWSPAPERS.” The pretentious nature of the poem makes sense when you realize that he’s the kind of elitist that worries that people don’t do things the civilized way that he prefers. Kids with their alcohol, their lack of religion, hah! Culture is dead, how will we ever survive! Of course, I don’t celebrate ignorance or sloth, but I find such elitism so tiresome. Everyone wants to gate keep everything and everyone is worried that kids these days are going to be the downfall of art and education because they like things that are different. T.S. Eliot was the kind of person to talk about the decline of western civilization because kids are listening to heavy metal and rap rather than country-western or classical music. I’m sure these blogs weren’t intended for us to just rag on classic legends of poetry, and I do recognize the skill, I just find such elitism exhausting. Does that make me an elitist? I had my own Jeckyl and Hyde moment when starting this blog. I was all ready to complete this assignment on time, but my exponentially worsening anxiety and ADHD is becoming more and more...debilitating, and becoming my Hyde, popping out and taking over my life in the worst moments. If that analogy is a bit silly, let's take it a step further: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a story that could fit many different themes, all of which Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind when writing this masterpiece. Class, religion, gender, oppression, and so on, but the simplest, and most important theme is that of the duality of man. After all, it's not subtext, it's text. It's literally the entire purpose of the potion.
All of us have good and evil inside of us, no matter who we are, we are capable of terrible things, we're capable of great things, and each of these are further complicated by the subjective nature of morality. What is good? What is evil? I've already discussed the Church of Satan twice this week, I won't use it as a reference again, but we all confront this split within us every single day: be it something as small as "should I eat the last piece of pizza" to "why shouldn't I steal this candy bar" to "what if I robbed an Orange Julius," we always have conflict within ourselves. Our more primal, pleasure driven side will say to eat that delicious piece of pizza and forget the consequences while our more rational side will tell us that we need to watch our diet, summer's right around the corner. That's where Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde come into play. While certain actions Mr. Hyde take as story goes on show his more monstrous side, he's not supposed to be evil. He's just that side of ourselves that we try to suppress all too often. Mr. Hyde tries to separate himself so that he can became more of a purely good person, but obviously the experiment goes wrong. Jekyll represents repression while Hyde represents the more primal side of us gone wild with no restrictions. We have to find a balance between our Jekyll and Hyde to be fully human, we can't suppress ourselves or we risk becoming pent up, we have to indulge every now and then, but we have to be careful and do so sparingly, otherwise we can become just as destructive and monstrous as Hyde. If you're reading this, relax a little, let yourself indulge in things that make you happy, just don't go overboard. We all deserve a little pleasure. I knew almost immediately which work I wanted to blog about, and that was "Hymn To Proserpine". I grew up in a very religious area with lots of traditionalist Christian family members. I started to question the beliefs I was taught to follow by the age of 9 and accepted myself to be an atheist by the time I was 12. Since then, I've felt my own resentment towards Christianity as a whole and the bigotry/violence that it can create, and for a while, I was drawn to the Church of Satan. The Church of Satan isn't some force of evil, it's nothing more than a philosophy to inspire people to reject traditional Christian values in favor of indulging yourself in what makes you happy and fulfilled, treating yourself as a God. I eventually lost interest because I wasn't particularly interested in being a part of a religious based community of any kind, I just don't want to waste any more time on the subjects of spirituality and religion in my own personal life. That's why I felt so drawn to this poem that speaks of a longing to abandon the new faith being forced on people in favor of a past belief.
However, the comparisons between the new gods and the old is a bit...strange to say the least. The new gods are described to be beautiful and terrifying, while the new god is meant to be pitied and offers forgiveness rather than wrath. The poem describes a man during the age when the beliefs of the Roman Gods were being thrown away in favor of Christianity, but the biggest reason for his lament is that not only did a lot of people die during this transition, but the Christian belief involves a disregard for our lives in the name of an afterlife. The speaker seems to be calling out for Proserpine not to come back and smite the new God, but to bring him with her. In a way, it's as though he is asking for death. Of course, Algernon Charles Swinburne is not the subject of the poem, but his rejection and anger of Christianity represents the struggle during his life between scientific advancement and old, outdated Christian superstitions that were holding back progress during the 19th century. Swinburne is representing a sort of darkness the religion cast upon the world that transcended time, forcing the world to worry about an afterlife and death rather than the live we currently live and any progress in this world. I have to start out by admitting that my reason for being drawn to the story I chose might be a bit nonsensical. I chose the Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti frankly because I really like goblins, so much so that the first game of Dungeons and Dragons that I ever played was a goblin quest that I joined this past New Years. Goblins are basically tiny little land pirates that are too weak to get up to anything too horrendous, they're instruments of chaos and that's just wonderful. However, my heart broke when I discovered that this poem was less focused on the goblins themselves and more the two sisters that ate goblin fruit. Total rookie mistake.
Laura and Lizzie are relaxing near a brook during a warm summer's day when they hear the sound of goblin merchants draw near. The poem gets a little repetitive at this point, much like a child's poem or song, not in a negative way, but to reinforce a message. The message that we are given? Don't eat a goblin's fruit because you have no clue where it might've grown, don't even look at the goblins, just avoid them altogether. Sounds a bit like a trip to the mall, wouldn't you say? But rather than goblin fruit, it's just smelly perfume and cheaply made phone cases. Laura ends up eating the fruit as though she can't stop. The next day, she dreams of eating more while her sister warns her of a friend that died from eating goblin fruit. The clues start to pile up and it's made clear that Laura is hopelessly addicted to the fruit, and as she begins to fade, Lizzie goes to find her some of the goblin fruit to restore her to full health. However, the goblins aren't interested in her money. The goblins metaphorically attempt to rape her in one of the most graphic scenes in the poem Lashing their tails They trod and hustled her, Elbow’d and jostled her, Claw’d with their nails, Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, Tore her gown and soil’d her stocking, Twitch’d her hair out by the roots, Stamp’d upon her tender feet, Held her hands and squeez’d their fruits Against her mouth to make her eat. She only manages to escape and bring the fruit back to her sister, but her sister can't eat it. Laura has a rather violent episode, but she eventually recovers. Clearly, this is a story representing drug addiction, tempting fruit being sold by strange and untrustworthy characters that causes obsession and eventual illness when forced to abstain. |