Schaub and The Road

In his essay "Secular Scripture and Cormac McCarthy's The Road," Thomas H. Schaub discusses the importance of spirituality and belief from the inside-- that which drives the characters of the novel. The author alludes to an idea from Kierkegaard's "The Absolute Paradox," in which he states, "the individual is always inside his thought and his reasoning, always attempting to reach by thought that which thought cannot think"(Schaub 153). In stating this, Schaub is emphasizing the concept of the man and the boy's journey being in solitude, in that they are experiencing this test of faith by themselves. For the man and the boy have nothing that keeps them going other than their own will to survive and their belief in a higher power. He is trying to focus on the importance of keeping the spiritual aspect of their journey in their hearts and how this is ultimately what drives the father to fight imminent death for his son, and for the son to agree to move on with another family at the end of the novel.

According to the author, the "father's foundation, from the beginning of the novel, is the son...the father's strategy is to construct meaning from the inside"(158). It is the father's duty to keep the boy alive and to lead him to the coast where there is a chance that the boy will find something greater, find more "good guys" like him, and have the possibility of defeating this gruesome post-apocalyptic world. It is in this desire to "construct meaning from the inside" that the father develops the phrase "carrying the fire" to motivate his son to keep on fighting for survival. It is exactly how Schaub asserts in his essay: "he[the father] tries to pass his values on to his son, in part through the language of "fire" he uses to justify their lives" (160). At the end of the novel, when the father is dying and he tells the son to keep on living and to keep fighting for his life, the boy asks, "Is it real? The fire?" and the father answers, "Yes it is"(McCarthy 278). The boy then questions further, "Where is it? I don't know where it is" to which the father responds, "Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it"(McCarthy 279). This establishment of "carrying the fire" is what allows for the boy to move on past his father's death. The father constructs this concept from his own thoughts and own beliefs, and passes it on to his son so that he too can be faithful in times when life is hard. The boy truly does believe that he is "carrying the fire" because the father instills that value in him during their time together. It is this belief on the inside that drives the boy to no longer want to die along with his father. It is evident that the father's repeated assertion that they are "carrying the fire" "is a strategy rather than a belief, a recourse to religious language and forms in the absence of any foundation for them in the world"(161).

Not only does the phrase "carrying the fire" have meaning in that the father created it so that the boy could believe in something on their journey, but the author of the novel also uses it symbolically to symbolize goodness. The boy embodies this goodness in every aspect of his journey. Often referring to himself and to his father as "the good guys," the boy is ignorant of the dangers and reality of the world that he lives in. It is his ignorance that makes him good however, because he does not falter under the evil and maliciousness of the common will to survive in this world. He wants to help others in all situations: such as the boy and the dog that he sees for only a split second, the old man Ely, and he does not even want to harm the man who attempted at stealing all that the boy and his father had to live on. It is this complete and total goodness that keeps the boy from stopping his journey after his father dies, for he believes that there is goodness in all human beings and that is why he joins the other man and his family. The boy is carrying the fire, furthermore carrying all human capacity to be good, and ultimately his unwavering belief in this fire is what allows for him to continue his journey in this desolate land.

Lucky by Alice Sebold

I have always wanted to read a novel by Alice Sebold because I have heard so much about her award winning novel The Lovely Bones. Because I know so much about her work, I decided to read another type of book by her over my break this winter. I chose to read her memoir, Lucky. I was surprised when I found the novel standing next to The Lovely Bones on my bookshelf. Almost instantly, I read the back cover of the memoir and found out that it was about a certain aspect of her life that changed the way she lived forever. It was a story about how Alice Sebold was brutally raped and beaten in a park near her college campus her freshman year. I was inclined more-so to read this novel over The Lovely Bones because I had never read anything like it before. It interested me, and of course I felt sympathy for Alice in reading what the book was going to be about. I decided that I needed to find out what really happened.

The story starts out with quick insight as to why Alice named the memoir Lucky. Alice writes, "In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky"(Sebold 3). In these first few lines of the novel I was immediately hooked. I knew that I was about to embark on a journey throughout the pain and the hardships of Alice Sebold, and honestly, I was somewhat scared. I myself, and I assume most readers, do not like to experience suffering, and to read this memoir was to get a glimpse at the suffering of one individual. It is hard to write about a memoir without sounding like you are just summarizing, however, I will do my best to establish a small relationship between the reader of this response and the author of this memoir.

One thing that really interested me was Alice's family dynamic. Her mom, a recovering alcoholic, her father, a studious and reserved man, and her older sister, who spent most of her time in her room alone, left Alice feeling lonely and unhappy during her childhood years. Her mom had had issues while Alice was growing up, and she took responsibility of taking care of her when no one else would. When she was younger she witnessed her mother battling the disease of alcoholism, and when she got older, her mom's sobriety resulted in anxiety at all times. Her mother couldn't be all that Alice craved for in her childhood, and a lot of the time she was left hanging. And yet, there was always a relationship between her and her mother that was different than those with her father and her sister. It was almost as if she would do anything to protect her mother. It astounded me that she urged that no one should tell her mother that she had been raped immediately following the incident. She writes, "I told the police not to call my mother: Unaware of my appearance, I believed I could hide the rape from her and from my family. My mother had panic attacks in heavy traffic; I was certain my rape would destroy her"(19). Even in the weakness of having just been raped, Alice shows such strength in trying to protect her mother from the inevitable. Despite the fact that Alice is physically, mentally, and emotionally hurting at this point, she still wants to put her mother before herself. I think that this is the truest type of selflessness.

Alice shows an increasingly large amount of strength throughout her experience in being raped. It is inspiring to read about someone who could move on from such a thing and not be afraid to convict the man who raped her. Throughout this memoir, Alice tells of her journey in trying to find and convict the man who raped her in the park that night. The novel recaps every aspect of every police visit, of every trial, and of every moment where Alice felt undermined by those who questioned her. One of the scenes that really intrigued me was when Alice had to identify her rapist in a lineup at the police station. The way she described the one way mirror was so realistic, and it immediately wiped clean my perception of such an experience. She writes, "The room itself frightened me. I was unable to take my eyes from the one-way mirror. On television shows there was always an expanse of floor on the other side of the one-way mirror, and then a platform with a a door off to the side where the suspects stepped into the room, filed up two or three stairs, and took their places. There was a reassuring distance between the victims and the suspects. But the rooms I'd seen on cop shows were nothing like this one. The mirror took up a whole wall. On the other side of the wall was a space little wider than a man's shoulders, so that when they entered and turned, the front of their bodies would be almost flush against the mirror. I would share the same square foot of floor with the suspects; my rapist would be standing right in front of me"(136). In this description of that room, I as a reader was frightened. I felt as if I was standing right next to Alice, trying to decipher through the blurred faces in the one way mirror. I felt her nervousness and I felt her pain. Alice Sebold had an amazing way of doing that throughout all of her memoir, making it seem like you were standing right with her, wherever she was.

She was lucky, though. She found the man that seemed to ruin her life for a certain period of time, and she won her case. Despite the many perils and hardships that Alice did experience, she won that trial. He was sentenced to 8 1/2-25 years in jail on six of the seven charges that she accused him of. There was no way Alice could forget what had happened to her, but she took pride in the fact that she could put this man in jail. She may have been afraid that night, and for some time after, but she was not afraid to fight for her rights.

At the end of the novel, Alice writes, "I remember agreeing with my mother that I had gone through a death-and-rebirth phenomenon in the span of one year. Rape to trial. Now the land was new and I could make of it anything I wished"(204). I loved reading this because it proved Alice's strength; it proved that she was able to get past such a debilitating experience in her life. I felt like she had succeeded by the end of her memoir. And I felt lucky that I had the experience of reading and learning from Alice's experience of getting raped.

Central Passage Chapters 5&6

"'It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.' 'I thought you inherited your money.' 'I did, old sport,' he said automatically, 'but I lost most of it in a big panic---the panic of the war.' I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered 'That's my affair,' before he realized that it wasn't an appropriate reply"(Fitzgerald 95).

This passage is one of the most central of the fifth and sixth chapters of this novel because it is the first time that the readers get a blatant example of Gatsby's inconsistency. In Nick and Gatsby's conversation, Gatsby is obviously detached from what he and Nick are discussing. His obvious detachment from the conversation mirrors his dishonesty about his past as well as his present life.

Throughout this novel so far Gatsby's past has been discussed only briefly and is often talked about only ambiguously. For example, when Nick first asks Jordan about Gatsby's past, she responds, "Well, --he told me once he was an Oxford man...however, I don't believe it"(53). The fact that Jordan does not believe something that Gatsby told her himself leads the reader to question whether Jordan is the one who's speculation of falseness is wrong, or whether Gatsby has been lying about who he is. It is interesting however that in both instances, Fitzgerald separates the explanation of Gatsby's past with a dash. It is evident that Fitzgerald is trying to illuminate the falseness of the knowledge that the reader has of Gatsby at this point.

When Jordan talks of Gatsby, her statement is separated by a dash in that she says "well,--he told me once.."(53). The fact that her statement is separated by the dash shows the reader that Jordan's statement is in fact speculated to be false, and the fact that she herself does not believe what Gatsby said reassures this claim. In the passage above, Gatsby says, " 'I did, old sport,' he said automatically, 'but I lost most of it in a big panic---the panic of the war' "(95). When Gatsby himself is talking about his past with Nick, his statement is separated by a dash. This separation so evidently shows that Gatsby is unsure of what he is saying. Perhaps he is unsure of what story he told who, and how he should go about recovering the mistakes that he had made in telling Nick something that didn't match the story he was previously told.

This statement is vital in understanding Gatsby because it illuminates Gatsby's inconsistency in the story he tells about his past. He is deliberately changing the story that he tells and this is the first instance that Nick catches him in one of his lies. Despite the fact that Nick does not inquire further information about Gatsby's mistake, it nonetheless proves that Gatsby is an untruthful character.

The Great Gatsby Chapters 1&2

"His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was int he middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no faced or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice"(Fitzgerald 29-30).

I personally think that this passage is one of the most important out of the first two chapters because it really gives the reader an understanding of the true society in which this book takes place. In the first chapter, the reader learns that the narrator is living in a high class society in Long Island and is pressured by living in "West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two"(9). From this point on, the book is centered on the proceedings of such a society and I feel that this passage reveals the complexity of this life.

When the narrator first goes to visit Tom and his wife Daisy, he refers to them as "two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all"(11). It is evident from him saying such a thing that relationships in this society at this time were distorted. He is going to visit two "old friends" who he claims to have not really ever known at all. This is the first time that the concept of relationships has been somewhat distorted in this novel.

In this passage, a further understanding of the distortion between relationships in this society is revealed. Chapter two begins with Tom saying, "I want you to meet my girl"(28), a girl that is not his wife Daisy. The fact that he refers to her as "my girl" shows that there is some sort of hidden relationship between the two. And so Tom and Nick go to see this girl. Once they get to the woman's house, she is described to the readers as full of "vitality"(30). It is said in this passage that "she smiled slowly and walked through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice"(29). It is evident that Tom and this woman, Myrtile, have a relationship that is not one of friends. When she first sees Tom she ignores her husband and then licks her lips while looking Tom straight in the eye. At this point in the novel we as readers learn the true type of society that Nick lives in; a society full of secrets and lies. Both Tom and Myrtile are defying the relationship that they have pledged to have with their spouses, and Nick is witnessing this without thinking anything of it. This distortion of the concept of relationships and how Nick does not question Tom or Myrtile's decision in cheating on their spouses leads me to question the morality of the society as well as the narrator of the novel himself.

Question about "American Literature 1820-1865"

Referencing the third paragraph of the section "The Small World of the American Writer" and the section of "The New Americanness of American Literature," what does the offer suggest the significance of tradition is and how does this relate to our understanding of "The American Literary Tradition"? You can perhaps discuss its parallel with T.S. Eliot's idea of tradition in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Also, what does the author believe to be "American" about American writing, how do these ideals contrast those of English literature and how does this affect our understanding of "The American Literary Tradition"?

Reflection on Housekeeping Class Discussion

Today during class we discussed many things regarding the novel Housekeeping. One thing that really struck my attention was how Connor discussed the foundation of the Ruth's home and how the Grandfather built that house for his family. It is interesting how the end of the book somewhat surrounds around the fact that Ruth and Sylvie burn the house down. In burning the house down, Robinson makes it so that Ruth and Sylvie defy all the conventional aspects of their life before finally leaving the town of Fingerbone.

In the first few lines of the novel, Robinson writes, "Through all these generations of elders we lived in one house, my grandmother's house, built for her by her husband, Edmund Foster...It was he who put us down in this unlikely place"(Robinson 3). Ruth's grandfather, Edmund, builds this house for his wife, in hope that his family will have the foundations of a respectable life to live in. However, it is clear by the end of the novel that Ruth and Sylvie, and even Lucille, all leave this home for a life that they believe to be better than their lives living in the home Edmund built for them.

Throughout the novel, Ruth and Lucille both undergo a transition that defines them as female individuals. When Sylvie is introduced in the novel, Ruth becomes attached to the lifestyle that Sylvie lives; that of a drifter. Lucille, on the other hand, feels as if she is trapped inside the constraints of the house and decides that she needs to "leave this place!"(132). It is evident that she does not like the lifestyle that Sylvie and Ruth have come accustomed to in that household. Despite the fact that the house belongs to her Grandmother, she declares, "That's Sylvie's house now"(123) with obvious hostility and anger. In stating this, Lucille is evidently angry at Sylvie for forcing Lucille to live an unstable lifestyle in that house. This is likely one of the reasons that Lucille leaves this house and goes to live with her home-ec teacher. Lucille then begins to live the life that she wants to, that of a "normal" woman in Fingerbone. Despite the fact that Lucille conforms to societal stereotypes of what a woman should be, she is clearly not trying to make something of herself that she is not. It was her decision to become that type of woman, and she had no doubts that the life she had chosen would not suit her, which I think contrasts deeply with that of Ruth's transition.

When Sylvie comes to take care of the girls, Ruth undoubtedly takes a liking to Sylvie's character. Perhaps she becomes so close to Sylvie because her relationship with Lucille gets destroyed when Sylvie comes to live with them, however, it is nonetheless clear that Ruth's character meshes well with that of Sylvie's. When Lucille decides she wants to become more of a stereotypical woman, she tries to persuade Ruth into following in her footsteps. However, Ruth believed differently: "It seemed to me then that Lucille would busy herself forever, nudging, pushing, coaxing, as if she could supply the will I lacked, to pull myself into some seemly shape and slip across the wide frontiers into that other world, where it seemed to me then I could never wish to go"(123). She openly appears to be pushing herself away from Lucille's character and more in the direction of Sylvie's.

At the end of the novel, her transition comes full circle when she burns down her house. In her attempt to burn the house down, Ruth says, "Now truly we were cast out to wander, and there was an end to housekeeping"(209). In saying this, Ruth allows the reader to dip into Ruth's thoughts about leaving. It seems to me that she had not accepted the fact that she would indeed have to leave Fingerbone until she burned down the house, until she burned down the foundation of the life that her Grandfather had made for her. In this same scene Sylvie says, "It's not the worst thing, Ruthie, drifting. You'll see, you'll see"(210). The only reason for Sylvie ever to say something like that, something that would reassure Ruth that what she was doing was the right thing, would be if it was obvious that Ruth was not entirely confident in her choice to become a drifter. I think this is extremely important because it shows that it was not entirely Ruth's ambition to become that type of woman. In the end, however, she does choose to cross the bridge with Sylvie. I think that she does this because she is dependent on Sylvie for guidance and support because if it was otherwise, I do not think that she would have chosen to leave Fingerbone and escape into another life.

Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven"

Edgar Alan Poe uses rhetorical devices in writing "The Raven" such that he can create a poem that is enticing for the reader. In his essay "The philosophy of Comoposition," Poe discusses his use of such devices to enhance his poem.
Firstly, he touches upon his use of the device he reters to as "refrain." In other words, the use of a word in repetition. In determing which word to use as' his refrain, Poe establishes that he wants a long "o" as the "most producible vowel" and an "r" acting as "the most producible vowel"(Poe 5). He eventually stumbles upon the word nevermore, which inevitably made its way into his poem. In the binning of the poem, before the raven was introduced as a character, Poe uses the words "nothing more" in repetition, ending the first seven stanzas with those words. Once the raven is introduced, however, Poe uses "nevermore" as the refrain for the following eleven stanzas.
Poe also uses a metaphor as a rhetorical device. The quote, "take thy break from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"(Poe 101) is the first example of a metaphor in the poem. The raven's beak is not literally piercing through the student's heart, however he feels pain in the fact he will never see Lenore again. This is the first instance that regards the raven as symbolic in any way. The last sentence of the last stanza makes it evident that the raven is indeed symbolic of sorrow and forever a memory of his sweet Lenore.
Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven" is based largely on pathos. Pathos refers to arguments of the heart. Poe raises the emotion of sorrow in his poem. The reader feels sympathy for the character of the poem because he has lost his love. The raven, being that he responds to all of the man's questions with "nevermore" provides as a device that fuels the man's sorrow. Because it is predetermined what exactly the raven is going to say in response to the man's pleas, Poe allows for the reader to feel more sympathy for the man. By using words such as "ghastly" and "grim" to describe the raven, Poe arises the feeling of melancholia in his writing. By describing the raven in this way, Poe symbolizes how the symbolic meaning of the raven, or that of his remembrance of Lenor, will forever be "ghastly" and "grim."