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. 

Short Story Fiction Packet Response #2

             A very interesting choice the writer made in the short story "Colonel", was the unemotional and monotonous tone created. The syntax found within "Colonel" is very terse and lacks a certain flow between every sentence. The writing comes across as very choppy. Every sentence is a bland statement describing some feature of the house or conversation that the narrator is involved in. This causes the short story to come across as very robotic and unemotional, as the syntax gives the impression that the narrator is very removed from the events going on. The syntax however changes during the last few sentences of the short story. The sentences are elongated. This causes the impact created by the Colonel's outburst to be much more impactful as in comparison, the rest of the short story is dull. 

I thought that the irony present in the short story “Wallet” was worth noting. The old man attempted to go to the department store in order to frustrate and interrupt the agenda of a criminal, yet the manner his plan is described makes him appear to be committing some crime of sorts. He has a getaway driver and the verb “case” has connotations of crime. He flees the scene when his deception is made known, although his intentions were altruistic. This irony adds a lighter tone to the short story, which is apparent in the way that the boy and old man reacted at the end: in a fit of laughter.

Lastly, I found the use of color to describe the woman in “But what was her name?” to be peculiar. The woman at the start is described as being the color blue when she was born, which is likely the cause of a cyanotic illness also causes heart issues. She is then described as having red feet when she is older, which is likely representative of her life as a stay-at-home wife filled with hard manual work. The ending is very peculiar. She is described as being white at birth when on her presumed death bed, as it says that her “past has taken hold of her—the heart’s last sleight”, which is referencing the heart issues that she has had since she was a child. She is speaking to her “father” at the end, which is assumed to be The Holy Father, God. Her death is considered a new birth into heaven. The color white is often associated with purity and holiness, so that is likely why the color white was described as her birth color at the end of the story. Overall, it is very interesting how the author used color’s to represent points in the woman’s life.  

Fiction stories packet response

I think that the perspective of the narrator in Survivors was shockingly insincere. I understand that a major part of the poem was to describe the prejudice and unfairness that same sex couples are put through, even at death, which makes the prejudice so much more powerful as you’d expect the family of the narrator’s lover to look past the nature of his homosexuality and sympathize with him, but they don’t. However, the narrator himself becomes so preoccupied with these coming attacks of prejudice he is portrayed as being blaringly selfish. He not once describes his grievances from his lover’s possible death. He is only concerned with what will happen to him, not the fate of his lover. The face value intention of the short story seems very counterproductive towards what you’d think the poem would be trying t to present: a pro-homosexual narrative.

               In Misdemeanors I think it is quite interesting the way that the Old Man is portrayed. He is a criminal, which typically is cause to look at a person with disdain. However, I feel slight pity for the Old Man. He wants to be regarded as a “tough ex-con”, but he is no more than a penny pinching old man. The manner in which his heist is described is pitiful: pockets sagging with pennies, wearing socks like gloves, and a passed out getaway driver. The fact that he was one sent away from being considered a felon is also significant. If the conditions of his crime were different, if he weren’t so pitiful, maybe I’d view him in another manner, but I do not. You could say I am one cent away from regarding him in a darker light, but right now he appears to me just as a sad and silly old man.

Morning News confused me a bit. I assume that the narrator was diagnosed with a terminal illness of some kind. The short story seems to be in opposition to religion? He directly mocks God at the end by him remarking that he and his wife buy the largest TV in the whole “God damn store”. He also seems to not have much fear of death, as he remarks, “Where is fear?”, whereas the puritan is fearful of damnation. It seems that a message to be interpreted could be the simple lifestyle that accompanies one who does not believe in a religion, particularly Abrahamic religions.  While everyone else wants to go make the last moments of their life fulfilling, as they are more so consumed with the end, the narrator and his wife simply go out and buy a nice flat screen television. 

City of Eclogue Post

What stuck out to me initially in some of the poems was the use of, occasionally unexpected, vulgar language. There are numerous instances of this. Such as on page 56, “our fucking jobs”, or page 15, “and fucked you woke.” The use of slang, particularly vulgar slang, helps gives the reader what perspective the author is coming from, a more personal one. The poems become a sort of diary for the author to vent through, giving much of the book a lot of emotional weight. Although much of the writing isn’t exactly colloquial, it isn’t formal or prose in any form, as there is little punctuation which gives the writing a more personal touch.

A common style used throughout most of the book is gaps between words or the organization of poems into unique stanzas. Both of these techniques can cause the reader to pause, which can add significance to the following phrase after the gap or individuate each of the stanzas so as to give more importance to the entire passage, as often a passage that is an unbroken wall of text can have trouble delivering meaning as well; more meaning is absorbed compartmentally than as a whole. A good example of the gaps is the poem “Beauty’s Standing” beginning on page 41.

Often the gaps in “Beauty’s Standing” can be substituted for dashes, commas, or semicolons etc, but the gaps give the impression that the poem is be read out loud, each pauses is the author giving emphasis, i.e., “re: the water              the heat       is out of control      the land toxic.” Commas or the word “and” could have been substituted but the separation pronounces each much more effectively. The lack of following proper grammatical rules also furthers the impression that this is a personalized account. This perspective needs to be effectively maintained if a genuine  and personal perspective of civil rights issues, city corruption, social issues and environmental issues is the goal.

Day 1 Poetry Packet Anslysis

It was very interesting to see the similarities across the author's different poems, in regards to his style and theme. Overall there is a definite trend of geology used as descriptors throughout the poems. Words such as erosion and sediment give a much stronger connotations than other possible word choice. The earth is grand and and ancient. It can be intimidating and is physically of large scale. So the choice of diction that this author uses makes a lot of the poems seem very momentous and impactful to the reader. It also seems that contrasting tones is a common method for this writer. Despite all of the stronger word choices associated with geology that the writer uses, it is contrasted by softer words, such as "speckled" or "powdered". 

As shown in the very first poem on the first page, there is clear contrasting between cold, like phrases such as "cold deep", and warmer temperatures. This theme coupled with the geological diction can give the impression that conflictions found o cwithin within the poems, if present, are conflictions of large proportions. In addition to geology, the natural forces in general are used to create a more impactful message to the reader. In the poem "Lens", the author utilizes weather, specifically rain clouds, as a simile in order to demonstrate the degree to which the character described in the poem was evocative of feelings of promises never delivered. 

One of the interesting methods used to present a poem was used by Jeffrey Angles. He formed the poem like an upside down triangle. The pace of the poem seems to quicken  with every line. Angles changes the temporarilty of the poem, increasing it as the poem progresses in order to create more tension and to build up the poem before it reaches it's end. I've never seen a method like this used before and it's effects are quite apparent. If the poem weren't structured this way the end would likely carry very different interpretations. Without the structure the ending would seem duller, as it describes a bird catching a cicada in it's beak and describes mountain breeze. This way the eventful tone created within the first few lines by the agitated and fleeing man is carried on throughout the rest of the poem.

Self-Introduction

Hello! My name is Cameron Mitchell and I am a freshman this year at EMU. My current major, Special Education, doesn't require much in terms of literary practice, but I wouldn't discount myself as an enthusiast of literature. I also am a large fan of western philosophy, so I am attracted to novels such as The Stranger by Albert Camus, which has underlying existentialist/absurdist themes. Dystopian novels such as A Brave New World, A Handmaiden's Tale, and 1984 are also of interest to me. As for background on myself, I spent my very early childhood in Overijse, Belgium, although I was born in California. I then moved to Clarkston, Michigan and have spent most of my life there. I am very happy with my current residence in Ypsilanti and I am eager to continue my education here. All of my classes so far seem quite interesting, so I quite excited for this creative writing class and all that it brings.