Maps to Anywhere Post #2

In Live Wire, a tone is set that permeates throughout the rest of the text. There seems to be some confliction between nature and artificial, past and future, and there are themes of ignorance, life, and death. In Live Wire, the electrical wire is likened to things more natural: arteries and blood. This demonstrates the initial confliction between artificial and natural, and the theme of death. The “live wire” isn’t really alive it’s said to be “almost alive”, yet the bystanders see that the noises from the wire are “coming from a common origin.” I believe that this is a misunderstanding on the part of the bystanders; it’s ignorance. It is ignorance that life can come from the artificial and it is ignorance of where we, human life, originate: nature. The wire is also lashing out at the children representing the potential death, the consequences, of this ignorance. These themes continually appear in most of the stories leading up to “House of the Future”. Another example of this ignorance is in the short sections entitled “Sudden Extinction” and “The Ark”. Both stories show a disregard for nature and our origins. In “Sudden Extinction” dinosaurs are regarded in an incredibly demeaning manner, such as their small brains and odd looking exteriors. This is then followed by a description of humans, particularly humans that are obsessed with physical fitness ad nauseam. This focus on the “brawn” of humans is hypocritical of humans judging the lack of “brain” in the dinosaurs. It is also of note that an apocalyptic scene is briefly described regarding how the dinosaurs became extinct. This ignorance on the part of humans is evidence of how disregarding primal origins, to the extent that we are blind to the inevitable future, will lead to humans being in a similar sudden extinction scenario, as we are just like the dinosaurs due to having “a common origin.” The Ark furthers this theme of ignorance for our origins and death in the form of humans maltreating animals, a symbol of nature. Overall, these short stories are well organized in their building up to “The House of the Future”. In “The House of the Future”, the narrator is averse to nature as “nature is the force to which [his] brother was forsaken.”He believes that the artificial will prevail over human nature; this is why he is so interested in this future home. He believes a utopia will come about, “humankind molded like plastic till virtue and peace and pleasure prevailed.” This vision of utopia is in stark contrast to the apocalyptic scenarios that were described in the previous stories. However, it is clear that this vision will not come to fruition. Just like in Live Wire, the artificial is misunderstood to be life: “The big airy skeletons of your skyscrapers are so sturdy, and your skins of glass so clear, there seems to be no building there and finally the light of the sky can burn through.” This sentence helps to solidify a main theme of this text, to not ignore the past and to mistake it for the future. 

Maps to Anywhere Response #1

Typically one of the most important parts of any text is the begging. It can set the tone, setting, theme, etc, for the rest of the work. In the first chapter of Maps to Anywhere, entitled “Beacons Burning Down”, there seems to a several unrelated stories at a glance. However, upon further investigation it is clear that all of the stories have a common theme of discovering the truth. In the passage about the miracle chicken it is shown for the father to be an attorney, one who helps to decide what is considered to be truth.  In the first passage and the final, the mother of Bernard seems unable to remember certain things and events, even her own son’s name. For this reason, in the last segment of the first chapter “Chapter after Chapter”, Bernard has difficulty with writing the book for his mother as it would be too far off from the truth. In addition, Cooper seems to mock religion with the segment entitled “Herald”, where he describes religious followers in a slightly comical and unserious manner, which demonstrates his disdain for depending on faith for truth. Consequently it makes sense why the name of the chapter is called “Beacons Burning Down”, as the beacons of light illuminate the hidden truth found within the texts. This is an appropriate preface for the rest of the story as the following chapters can be viewed as Cooper grappling with struggles in life or exploring them in order to better understand himself and those around him. It is also interesting that the significance behind the title of the first chapter isn’t explicitly revealed until the second to last paragraph of that chapter. This was likely intentional to show that understanding doesn’t come immediately, as it is necessary to fully explore what is before you thoroughly until a judgment on truth can be made.

In the chapter, “The Wind did It”, Bernard and his father seem to be e odds. The father seems to have made some poor decisions in life and doesn’t seem properly educated like his son. Evidence of this could be their manners of speech—the father speaks ineloquently where Bernard does not—and Bernard seems to be more knowledgeable in general (he is an educator so that is expected), for example Bernard’s knowledge of Scribner’s Dictionary of Medical Terms is contrasted by the prehistoric medical information the father has garnered from his possible obsession with the Mayans. At the end of the chapter it becomes clear that Bernard and his father are very similar. Bernard apparently forgot to close the door shut at his father’s home before they went on the flight, which is contrary to his seeming mindfulness he exhibited at the beginning of the chapter. This door is a figurative representation of how his he and his father are quite alike. This is further supported by the segment of the chapter entitled “Pain and Pleasure”, which are seeming opposites, but in reality are quite similar. In respect to the title of the chapter, it is referencing what may have opened the door, the wind. The wind is passive and unsuspecting, just like the knowledge that Bernard received when certain doors were opened for him.

Essay Packet#1 Response

In Sunday, the narrator makes a satirical comment on the civil rights movement through the eyes of a young girl. The young girl’s life is described as plentiful. Her family lavishes in the tradition of delicious and bountiful meals. This description is at odds with her misperceived notion of the civil rights movement. She describes her family’s status as fruitful, but her family and she have unequal human rights to whites. The girl’s aunt also has a backwards conception of the racial status quo. She believes that the whites are inferior, that they need the help of the blacks in order to better themselves.

The Aunt serves as the determiner of the girl’s world view. She has sugar coated the girls world view so that she doesn’t have to confront the grim reality of racial inequality. This short story is all the more impactful due to the perspective it is presented from.  It is from the distorted worldview of a child, whose world view undermines and insults what the civil right movement stood for. The story is all the more powerful as it utilizes the false innocence of a little girl in order to demoralize the ideology of the civil rights movement.

In Mute Dancers: How to Watch a Hummingbird, the narrator describes hummingbirds with very different descriptors that one would infer from the title’s description of hummingbirds, “mute dancers”. Hummingbirds are described as energized, powerful, and even violent creatures. They are resilient, able to survive an attack by a cat with little injury. They are courageous enough to take on humans and animals much larger than them such as cats. The narrator completely turns the typical conception of hummingbirds on its head.

The text repeats twice that “a lot of hummingbirds die in their sleep” due to sleeping. Instead of dying due to physical exhaustion, they die due to sleeping. Hummingbirds are described as “sleeping giants” in a sense. They are a small and inconspicuous at a glance, but due to the narrator’s descriptions of them relative to their size, their immense energy for such a small stature and their voracity, they appear to be much “larger” in a specific context than they really are.

                                                                                                                                                                      

Fiction Packet #3 Response

In Falling Girls, the scene begins with a young girl on a sky scraper and the sun is setting. She jumps off and initially it seems the story is about suicide, but it becomes clear that the fall is metaphorical and not literal. The possible comparison to the girls jumping off buildings and committing suicide is likely a supplement to demonstrate the gravity of this situation, the situation being how women are bound to certain social constructions, which is the cause of their rapid and figurative demise.  Initially, I thought that the theme of the story was about the wasting away of youth due to a generation of youth’s obsession with excitement, represented by the girl’s journey towards the parties below and the adrenaline accompanied by jumping from a skyscraper. But, it struck me as slightly odd that the narrator was male, meaning that the protagonist was likely not modeled after himself; the short story also makes some specific comments towards woman, such as that women are more powerful than men. I attempted to find out when the story was written for a historical context, but I was unable, however the author lived from 1906-1972, which leads me to assume that the novel was written from 1930 to 1970, meaning that gender equality had not been widely established at this point. It is also relevant that the person that reached out to help the woman was a male. The male here could be interpreted as Buzatti reaching out to help the girl from her destructive fall through the means of writing this short story as a critique. The male was able to help as men, more so than woman at the time were less dependent upon social constructs, namely class level and appearance. It is all of the women who are competing against each other to get to the finish line, the party below, their destruction. The protagonist is falling much slower to the other girls who are falling for they are of a high social stature; they are more readily consumed by the societal construct of appearance. Those girls may make it to the party on the ground, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of the girls falling are trapped by social constraints. The protagonist wants to be like the girls falling fast, but she can’t and she’ll never get there due to being unable to ascend the socio-economic ladder. The girl is clearly pursuing a destructive end. She begins the story young, at the peak of her life. The events going on the terraces and balconies below are also at their peak level of excitement. As the sun sets its shape is described to change to that of a red mushroom, representative of a nuclear bomb going off which shows the destructive end of the girl’s pursuit. She will tire herself out trying to climb the ladder, but to no avail. Her descent characterized by her failure to fall quickly, her failure to live the life she wants will ultimately ruin her life (represented by her rapid aging). 

The Black Automaton Repsonse

In Douglas Kearney’s text, the Black Automaton, there is a clear relevance of the title to the poems within. In analysis of the title, it would seem that the title is referring to the manner in which African Americans prior to the civil rights movement were viewed as: automatons. They weren’t viewed as real people, just meat machines walking the streets alongside you. In the poem Radio, this worldview comes crashing down when the world is exposed to African American use of the radio. This is evident in the very first line of the poem:

“the first black you met was on the radio.

this is true even if you lived with blacks.”

With the use of the radio, blacks became more than mere automatons. And they became a real threat to a white dominated society, hence the comparisons between blood and the radio, which would catalyze race riots and increased civil rights movements.

The word radio also doesn’t have to be taken literally, as it could mean mass communication among blacks as a whole. “the first blacks to realize they were blacks became radios”. This line could be interpreted as that African Americans didn’t understand their status of being oppressed and how they could move beyond it until they organized together as a whole, with mass communication and so forth. This is why there is the word “blacks” in standard font and the word “blacks” in italics; it is representative of their chance from automaton to a “real person”, and they became real people when the rest of society acknowledged their presence by way of mass communications and mass movements.

This poem could also be representative of how jazz was able to influence the civil rights movement. The lines of that poem that read, “singing something that could never be English” and “the snow filling its voice” have musical connotations. It would make sense that the first instance for African Americans to gain a foothold on the radio scene would be through jazz music, which was popular at the time.

“the first black to speak the word radio

knew it meant the same as blood.”

This line suggests that jazz music was simply a method for blacks to incite a reaction in the oppressed populous. The line, “claimed radio meant love, to better lure you” suggests that Jazz music was a deceptive method to assert African American equality and the civil rights movement. The "blacks" were said "not to speak English: even if they did radios cannot speak", which further distances the African American race from this racist narrator, as they do not speak the same language, and continues the theme of the deceptive nature of blacks: their music was incomprehensible to people like the narrator and was used a method to covertly inform and inspire blacks as a whole. Jazz music would appear to symbolize “love” and other emotions, but in reality was a method to inspire the rest of the African American race to act upon their oppressors. 

"Juice" Response

Possible philosophical theme of “Juice”: Staying in the same place and going on forever have the same end: you never end up anywhere.

When I began reading Juice the second thing that puzzled me, with the title being the first, was the quote at the beginning referencing how time has lost its temporality in modern literature and that nothing gets done anymore. After reading the novel in its entirety I find that this quote is a good comment on the philosophical nature of the novel in regards to time. In the first story of the novel, “Proportion Surviving”, the narrator is stuck in the past. Nothing is getting done in their life. They are inert in the passage of time and subsequently the events that they could be acting on. They have the opportunity to venture over the mountain and possibly find life, but they choose to stay where they are at. They are also fixated on the time it has been since the exodus of the people, emphasizing there fixation on past time. In the last story of the novel, “Sleep”, something similar but also opposite occurs. The narrator does seem fixated on time, but not on the past, the future. The narrator comments on how quickly time has passed and comments looks constantly toward the future. However, just like the first narrative, it does not seem like much is getting done by the narrator. The passage is very disjointed. Ideas in the paragraphs abruptly change, following no apparent structure or logic. This limits the story’s coherence and the reliability of the narrator, as the narrator seems very disconnected from the passage of time. They seem to be going through the motions of life, but not experiencing it.  The two stories in between the first and the final show a progression of time. In the first story time is stuck in the present and is fixated in the past. In the second story, the narrator is fixated on the past, although events in the narrator’s life still seem to occur at a relatively normal pace, in the third story the train metaphor suggests that the narrator is passing life by, though the passage of time is still discernible, and finally the fourth story shows a very disjointed passage of time with a focus on the future. The philosophical result I garnered from this analysis and one that can be applied to literature, is that time doesn’t influence the perception of the course of events. Time stood still in the first story of “Juice”, yet there was not much progression in terms of plot advancement, and when time was speeding by in the last story it was going so fast that comprehension of the story’s plot was difficult, making it appear that no progress in the story was being made.

Fiction Packet Response (The longer stories)

I thought that the intern was incredibly ironic, and the manner in which the elements of irony are discovered makes the conclusion of the short story all the more impactful and shocking. The intern comes across as a very sane and intelligence scholar. These scholarly characteristics come across in the way that the short story is written and through the voice of the scholar. The entire short story is divided by headings relating to the content of each individual passage. It is very easy to understand, organized, every detail is written down, and is in a logical progression. The narrator himself speaks, mostly, coherently and with a sophisticated vocabulary representative of his initially supposed education within psychology.

However, this presentation of the narrator collapses on itself as the ends of the short story comes near. The narrator becomes paranoid if whether he is actually being observed as well and that he is an experiment conducted by either Doctor Rauch or Kagen. He evaluates himself that he is physically and mentally sound, although it is clear at the end that his psyche is far from a state of complete sanity: he is disheveled, surviving on a strict diet of chowder, hasn’t left his room for an extended period of time, and is severely lacking sleep. It becomes clear that there was no experiment. He was observing himself and that this delusion he is in is a form of self-induced therapy. This makes sense why Rauch’s and Kagen’s brother had no physical description given, as they were actually the Intern. The intern begins to lose himself as story comes to a close. His sentences become fragmented as he runs out of paper which is necessary for his self-induced therapy to be conducted. The realization is not made towards the end until all of the evidence builds up which eventually leads one to assume that the Intern is really a schizophrenic or has some sort of psychological disorder. This realization comes with a strong sense of irony, as he is initially made out to be a practicing psychology student observing individuals with psychological disorders, but it is he himself who is suffering from said disorders.

The most interesting part of the second short story “Point and Line” was the analogy made about the girl undergoing therapy sessions and Schrödinger’s cat.  Both the cat and the girl are described as being stuck in a box: the cat is in the airtight chamber and the girl in the therapist’s office. At the end of the therapy session results will be made by the therapist; it is mentioned that results will arise from the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment. Also, both the girl and Schrodinger’s cat seem to have two possible states of existence. The girl refers to herself in third person as the “girl”, so there is the actually narrator and the inner dialogue of the girl. The cat can be considered dead or alive. The analogy finally made sense to me when I truly processed the outer dialogue that breaks the margins of the text, consisting of the actually conversation between the narrator and the therapist. The actual dialogue has very little substance, not much at all is actually said between the two, whereas the rest of the text, within the margins, is very thorough and detailed. You could say that this dialogue is “alive” and the conversation between the therapist and the narrator in reality is “dead”, just like Schrodinger’s cat, which can be dead and alive at the same time.