Southern Gothic--Carson McCullers

From Thomas Paine to Ernest Hemingway, our class has by now studied American literary giants from just about every time period. I would have to say, however, that the one author that truly stole my heart--Southern Gothic Carson McCullers--was someone I learned about outside of class: I read two of her novels, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding, in preparation for our spring semester research paper. (Just the fact that I voluntarily read an additional 300+ page novel for this project should say something...)

One of the reasons that I enjoyed reading McCullers was that I found her writing easy to understand verbally, but still complex and engaging. With the impossibly long sentence structures of Hawthorne, I found myself repeatedly reading one paragraph just to retain key ideas. With McCullers's more lyrical and minimalistic style, I reread simply because I wanted to.

McCullers embodies the typical Southern Gothic writer in her depiction of grotesque and flawed characters in dysfunctional small town settings. She recreates the feeling of human isolation with poignancy, and her character studies are sketched with accuracy and insight. (At the top, I included a picture of Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks, which visually displays the loneliness of Americans that McCullers also portrayed.)

In a way, McCullers's writings fit right in with the modernists: she shares their disillusionment and fundamental, well, pessimism. However, surreal settings and bizarre plot events make her works unique, even among those of other Southern Gothic authors. Despite a narrow range of subjects, McCullers's work is deeply moving. Its only "flaw" is a complete lack of redemption and renewal for her characters: each of them seems to lead a permanently nightmarish existence that they can't escape for more than a few seconds at a time.

American Dream

Whether the American dream is still alive and well today has come under debate. Despite this generation's tendency toward pessimism, however, I still believe in the resilience of the American dream.

It seems that, over the years, American ideals have been shaped and changed by historical and economic circumstance. As F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested in The Great Gatsby, the bootlegging and overall decadence of the Jazz Age was one manifestation of the American dream's corruption, but its corruption does not necessarily signify its death.

Today, the phrase "American dream" usually evokes the image of a middle-class family, a picket-fenced house in the suburbs, and a financially secure future. However, it is something far more all-encompassing and inspiring: it is the hope that each of us can improve our lives. This hope is always evolving, but it is rooted in our belief that freedom and equal opportunities are fundamental to American society. It is because of its optimistic outlook that the American dream has remained alive and highly relevant to the contemporary era.

The calm after the storm

When it comes right down to it, five pages is a lot of intimidating blank space. The thought of filling those five pages with thoughts worthy of being read by an AP Lang teacher didn't exactly fill me with undying enthusiasm. In fact, the entire process was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster: from passivity (reading the novel) to anxiety (finding sources) to confusion (forming a thesis) to more confusion (outlining) to frustration (writing the paper) to brief relief (procrastinating) to almost-fury (revising and editing).

Finally finishing the paper--about four hours before it was due,no less--came with a sense of accomplishment. It was probably the largest project I had ever undertaken single-handedly. However, I definitely would not say that it went as smoothly as I would have wanted.

A brief inventory:

The Good: My first research paper in college will hopefully not be such a disaster because I now know that watching YouTube videos for two hours will not induce a paper to write itself. (Yes, I was disappointed to learn this as well.)

The Bad: I'm convinced that Livebinders has some kind of grudge against me because it's seriously not normal for files to "accidentally" delete themselves as often as my sources did.

The Ugly: I averaged just below 4.5 hours of sleep for pretty much that entire week. Enough said.

All I have to say is that I'm thankful for intermediate deadlines because past Jiaxiu always overestimates future Jiaxiu and, well, bad things (i.e. neglecting every class to complete certain papers) happen.

Valentine's Day

I walked into an APUSH review session this morning and was immediately greeted with, "Heyyyy. Happy Valentine's Day!" My reaction: "Oh, is that today?"

I guess, in some way, it had registered in my head that today was the 14th of February and that said date is indeed Valentine's Day. But somewhere in between those two thoughts, there was a minor disconnect.

I can't recall Valentine's Day being particularly special at school last year, but I feel that the various significant others of our school really pulled out all the stops this time around. From the oversized teddy bears to the generous boxes of chocolate, I could tell that people really... embraced the occasion.

On the scale from bitter-about-not-having-a-boyfriend to extremely-enthusiastic-and-in-love, I would say that I fall somewhere between apathetic and accepting-of-free-brownies-and-such. I won't rant about how Valentine's Day is just another day in which stores can exploit our society's consumerism and blah blah blah. (I will say, though, that watching boyfriends panic because they forgot to buy flowers for their girlfriend is pretty hilarious.)

No More Fishing

"no, YOU'RE SO PRETTY:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSinrR1SHVA&feature=related

I decided to take a stroll down memory lane for this blog post and rewatched an old video (linked above) by an Australian YouTube celebrity/comedienne named Natalie Tran, better known as "communitychannel."

In her video, Natalie, often affectionately called "Nat," addresses an annoyance that all of us (I would say women in particular) encounter regularly -- people fishing for compliments. As in most of her other videos, she satirizes real life situations by acting them out, usually using herself as the only actress.

The sketch begins with two girls (both portrayed by Nat), one (girl A, let's say) wearing a nice dress and dangling earrings and the other (girl B) dressed in a casual t-shirt. Girl A, in the typical and irritating fashion, whines, "Oh, you look so pretty tonight. I feel so ugly." (Yeah, I know. "Are you serious?") Now, in real life, the situation would've probably played out in reverse. However, Natalie satirizes compliment-seeking by exaggerating the situation and adding this element of irony, which is only magnified by the fact that the two characters are played by the same person.

Of course, girl B then feels obligated to respond with a stiff "oh, no, you look so pretty," thus commencing a string of sickeningly sweet "no, youuuu're pretty"s and half-hearted "no, don't be silly... you're much prettier"s. At this point, I was already laughing aloud. The entire scene definitely seemed familiar.

I feel that part of Nat's comedic appeal is that she lets us identify with the situation by letting us hear the thoughts of the protagonist (so to speak), whose thoughts she says aloud in a voice-over. After all, who among us has not been the victim of an aggressive yet tactless fisher?

On a even deeper level, more importantly, I felt myself examining my own behavior. I'm ashamed to admit that I've been guilty of fishing quite a bit as well. Now, if someone had tried to say that to me in complete seriousness, I might've gotten a bit offended. However, Nat didn't have to directly state this moral to anyone. She got the audience (or me, at least) to consider our own actions simply by suggesting their ridiculousness. Although Nat didn't use too many formal rhetorical devices, I feel that her video is highly persuasive as a satire simply because of that fact; never directly advising her viewers to watch what they say (and get some self-esteem, while they're at it), Nat still got her message across, loud and clear.

If you buy a child a piece of candy...

Someone once told me, "If you let someone borrow something, make sure that you'll be okay with it if he/she never returns it." Of course, I, being the amazingly skilled decision-maker that I am, chose not to think too much of this advice at the time. And as all stories that begin with a moral go, I learned my lesson the hard way.

It was on a slightly cloudy Monday afternoon. I was volunteering at the middle school when a group of three little boys came up and asked me if they could each have a piece of candy. Now, let me say first of all that I am usually very much immune to wheedling and the like, and second of all that the candy I had was supposed to be sold for no less than a dollar a piece, mister.

But can you blame me for cracking under the weight of the expectation in those children's eyes? When one of them beseechingly said, "I didn't have lunch today," I sighed and reluctantly allowed each of them one piece of candy, thus eliciting seemingly earnest promises to pay me back just as soon as possible. The kids then proceeded to inhale the chocolate bars in the span of fifteen seconds and then bounce around in a state of sugar-induced enthusiasm for the next hour.

As you can guess from the quote that began this post, I didn't get the money back the next time I saw them. In fact, I still don't have the money back today, almost two weeks later. Heck, I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably never get the money back.

In the end, I lost three dollars and some faith in the honesty of children, but I've decided to consider that the price of the lesson learned. What lesson, you ask? Why, simply this:

"If you give a mouse a cookie, you can write a fun and whimsical book about it. If you buy a child a piece of candy, not so much."

Chuckling with Huckleberry Finn

In general, mandatory reading assignments aren't my favorite thing. I find that being forced to read a book--much like being force-fed some kind of new food--makes the thought of the experience a bit less... appetizing.

That being said, however, I actually enjoyed Huck Finn more than most of the other required reading that I've had to do over the years. Once I began to pick up on the subtle jabs that Twain made toward literary cliches and social conventions of his time period, the novel become much more enjoyable to read.

Some memorable lines from the novel:
-"By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed." (p. 5): That's just a little bit ironic. I suppose Christianity and slave ownership went hand-in-hand at the time. Makes perfect sense, of course. No contradictions at all there.
-"'Well,' says Buck, 'a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another...'" (p. 127): Gotta love the classic feuding families. The guy's reasoning is spot-on, too. Killing people for a reason you don't quite remember? Normal.
-"To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin/ That makes calamity of so long life;/ For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane" (p. 160): So I'm reading along, thinking it's a perfectly valid passage from Hamlet when--low and behold--Birnam Wood and Dunsi--wait. Isn't that from Macbeth? Cue the chuckling.
-"'And there ain't no other way, that ever I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock.'" (p. 283): Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a diehard Man in the Iron Mask fan on our hands. He has clearly done his research. And how hilarious he is.

Those lines are humorous for a reason that's hard to put into words, but their effect is a bit more obvious: laughing at society is just a less shocking way of accepting criticism of it, after all. Twain's humor gets to the heart of the matter, and everything is magnified through Huck's unique voice and dialect. With a few well-placed lines, Twain conveys the illogical and cruel nature of slavery and racism, the ease with which we're duped by others, and the laughable unoriginality of some of the stuff we read and then praise. Don't people say something about books that make people think being the good ones? Yeah. Well. That.