Follow up Literacy Narrative

“So what do you want to do with that?”
This is the all too common response I receive every time I answer the what’s your major question. I would bet a Chick-Fil-A Ice dream cone (I know, I go all out) that teaching is all they think can be done with an English Major. I myself thought for quite some time that my future was in teaching, and it still may be, but now I feel there are a world of possibilities that can be looked into. The idea of helping to mold young English minds, and to try to instill in high school students the love of poetry (as impossible as that may sound) still appeals to me, but before I re-enter the realm of classrooms and white boards I would love to try my hand at writing. This past semester has been the first time that I have every really started to think more seriously about what careers I could choose and those that are writing based have been particularly attractive. Some other careers that I have been thinking about are publishing and editing, mainly publishing. I think it would be incredibly interesting to work in a publishing company and get to work with lots of up and coming authors

As for my own writing I have been very interested in poetry and feel that if I ever want to produce something that I actually like I would need to read much more of it. My reading lately has been geared more towards trying to find my own writing style. I still read all the same types of literature I would have before but as I am reading I keep asking myself how I could do something similar. Poets that I have greatly learned from this semester and appreciated are Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Haney and I am sure quite a few more. This was my first semester as an English major taking classes and I haven’t regretted it at all. I do have tendencies when I am faced with huge daunting papers but then I think about the possibility that I could be doing Chemistry Labs and then praise Jesus for the paper that I have the privilege of writing.

Geography III

From what I have read so far of Bishop is that she is trying to explore the relation between the conscious and subconscious in the way she writes. Her topics seem to be more on the level on a persons relation to themselves versus the world around them. How much they actually participate in the life that goes on right out side their own personal bubbles. Relating this to a book on Geography then makes sense. Not geography in the physical sense with islands and mountain ranges, but in the metaphysical sense where we try to deal and understand the landscape and contours of a persons consciousness and how we relate consciously to the world around us. When I read her poetry I feel she is one soul feeling out whether she can safely connect with the souls in her vicinity. Or she is just realizing that all of us are all connected and we are all one big land mass while at the same time individual islands. I know it may seem like I am taking the analogy of actual land a bit too far. I suppose it can seem a bit cheesy. But when she talks about actually understanding that how we connect in the first poem "In the Waiting Room" that is what it feels like to me. That she has realized that she is not the only country in the world. That there are other nations out there with other individuals and groups of people. She has gone out and discovered this, understood more about the world around and is not really sure how she feels about that. She is no longer the center of the universe. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, the world is not flat. And with this new knowledge she goes on cautiously to apply it to everything else she encounters.

The Women in these Men's lives...

At first women do not seem to have a very important role. They seem to be almost an after thought. Just the other part to these important men. But even though they don't seem to have significant roles they do hold a lot of leverage in their hands. Deals are made or broken because of them and husbands appear to not be able to make decisions without them. Their apparent need or association with control contrasts incredibly with the business men's lack of control. Men give the impression that they are very manly. Being a man is a very important characteristic that they are all trying to attain or believe they have. And one of the most dominant traits of being a man is control. They seem like in control kind of guys at first but as you go through the story time after time they are shown to have little to no control over the situations around them. At the beginning when Levene talks about having closed the deal and then had an un-lucky break because the deal went down because the guy was married (again result because of a woman). And when Levene and Roma feel like they are on top of the world because of the incredible closings they made that then end up failing because for Levene the Nyborgs are crazy, and for Roma, Lingk's wife doesn't agree with it. Then only way they feel they can get control back into their hands is by cheating. Playing the customer, bending the rules, stealing the GlenGarry leads...etc. It is the women who seek and find control by actually doing the right thing or just playing the men. Perhaps this is the purpose of the women. To just have characters who contrast completely with the men that Mamet is writing about. They helped to really point out their already exaggerated traits. Roma who thinks he is always in control loses to a wife who is never introduced. Levene loses to a crazy lady who never intends to make good of the contract she has signed, and also the daughter who is depending on him for medical bills, which he can't seem to pay unless he steals.

Lear's Maternal Instincts

The need to be loved that Lear shows is not something that would be expected from a King in a male dominated patriarchal society. Respect and admiration, but not necessarily love. That would seem to be more of the mother's forte. They would be the ones who need their children to love and cherish them. But Lear seems to need both. At the beginning when he wants his daughters to shower him in songs of deepest love and cherishing he is only pleased with the grotesque showings of affection. While Cordelia gives a most respectable and honorable answer that would be good enough for any other king. She shows her loyalty and appreciation for him with out going overboard on describing her love. This does not please Lear, and I believe Kahn is very right in saying that this is because he is making up for the lack of a mother figure. The mother-like characteristics seem to be predominate. He does balance it out with the need to be respected and the need for his wish for his soldiers to be with him honored. As he realizes what Goneril and Regan truly think about him he begins to understand what is important. Not the overblown description of that love that they gave, but the simple and honest love and respect that Cordelia voiced.
Even though he does show these feminine emotions he has them closely intertwined with his masculine mindset. He wants to be loved, but can't weep or breakdown as Kahn says. It is only till the end when he is with Cordelia that realizes what an old fool he has been the entire time, and he allows himself to feel and exhibit these sad sentiments. You really see the transformation that Lear goes through, throughout the play. He begins with "childish" requests of "how much do you love me" and ends with realizing that there is much more to peoples relations then how they answer that question. It seems at first that as the play goes on that Lear is getting older and more senile, but I believe it shows him maturing. He understands fully now and is not so naive. He doesn't need the fool any longer to point out his folly, he is wise to the ways of the world, and realizes how truly foolish he had been before. His relation to the motherly characteristics are also much more straightforward, and not as muddled. He now recognizes true love and respect and shows emotion the way he deems fit.

“In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.”

The book and the movie both refuted the idea that "politics and sentiment do not mix". It could even be a premise for the entire novel actually. For events after events were shown where their lives were so deeply and emotionally changed and at times uprooted because of some terrible tragedy caused by politics. It is a nice ideal that politics and sentiment do not mix; at times it is probably best that they don't. However, it is foolish to think that they don't, no matter how much you wish they didn't. As long as there are humans involved, so there will also be emotions. Now if it is more of a question of whether or not they do well together, then that is a little more complicated. Sentiment was the driving force behind the Iranians who wanted a drastic change in their government. For not only did they realize politically it was not suitable, but also they saw the affects it had on their family, which were 98% if not all of the time negative. I believe Marji and her mother and grandmother realize this. They probably wish it was not so for the affects were again negative, but it put in Marji the fire that made her speak out against it and be true to herself and her people, as her grandmother always told her to be.

Her family also becomes a safe haven for her to help her cope with the government and all that happens around her. With out them, she would be much more broken then she already had become. I suppose that if there was a way to separate all emotion from any political dealings then that would be the best, but then what kind of politician would you be? How do you decide what to fight for and what is truly right and wrong? It would simply be the best way to not get hurt, which is what her father might have been trying to protect her from. Keeping her from getting emotionally involved, he might have thought, would keep her further from danger. Marji knew the cost of becoming involved with her countries politics, involving herself in the revolutions and speaking out against what she knew to be wrong and so did her mother and grandmother. But ignoring it all would be to turn her back on her family and her country that were very much apart of her.


p.s. quote is by Winston Churchill. I thought it fit since in the book it seemed that by fighting their government and living with that regime the people seemed to be constantly hurt, seeing more than one of their relatives and friends die and having to relive it all. Feeling the emotional pain can certainly be worse than any physical injury. An death to some could even seem like a relief, an escape from their invisible wounds.

Reflections on The Moviegoer

Through out this book Binx is of course on his constant search to find answers. Answers that will take him out of the dull everdayness; a cure for the malaise. In the end he marries Kate and seems to finally find answers, but not, I believe to questions he had originally been asking. His marriage to Kate, at first, seemed to me like he was simply settling. However, i believe now that by marrying Kate he has found a certain fulfillment. And also going ahead in life and going to medical school. He has probably superficially stopped the search and may not be completely satisfied but says that he really has nothing much to say on the subject. He has simply decided to go on with life "plant a foot in the right place as the opportunity presents itself". Also maybe his answers to the freedom of the Malaise was to embrace it. He does seem to have true happiness with Kate, even if it is not the conventional kind of happiness it works for them. And even the end of the book reminds me of the ends of all those movies that he disliked. The hero marries and goes about his life going back into the everydayness. But what else could really be expected of a moviegoer who looks at life the same way he sees movies. And he doesn't seem too distraught over that fact either.

Now, as for the relationship between Aunt Emily and himself. Aunt Emily has always been a kind of mentor for Binx. He did always lookto her as someone he would like to please and always listened intently to all she had to say about life, and what she hoped for his life. And Binx, though at times incapable to be what he though she wanted him to be, really wanted to be able to become the person she saw him as. Aunt Emily though was slightly blinded to who he actually was, for she was constantly seeing his father and her brothers when she saw him, and I believe wanted very much for him to be just like them.
In the end Aunt Emily finally realises that the man she thought Binx was is not him at all and her image of him crumbles slightly. She asks him what he truly does care for and I think these questions are what make him finally come out of his depressing fixation on the malaise.

Race is an underlying theme that is not quite the focal point of the story, however, it is something that is never ignored and brought up every now and then. Binx is a philosophy but in physical form, he is also an example of all beliefs at the time this book was written. Race was quite an issue in the 60's. With the beginning of integration people had to completely change the way they had been brought up to think. Especially Binx, with his strong connection to the old south through his Aunt Emily. I believe you see how he slowly starts changing how he thinks as the book progresses. In the beginning it is quite evident that he has mostly negative thoughts towards African Americans and the comments made are certainly not positive. But then as you go through the book you see how his attitude towards it all changes. Finally ending with his description of the man going in and the coming out of the church. He says he was "more respectable than respectable". I think that Binx was finally coming upon his own decision about the whole matter. And he was moving on away from the old southern view.