Blindness

Wyndam Lewis presents an extremely odd short story in The Death of the Ankou, where Death seemingly dies. This odd interaction was prefaced by Ankou becoming blind. Honestly, this story was extremely confusing to me. I feel it was making a comment on how death is an event that is not able to be fully identified, yet my knowledge of the story prevents me from confidently making this statement. Why would Death die? This seems contrary to all previous knowledge of death. While the story is confusing by nature, it accurately presents the modernism movement accurately. It has a very interesting point of view as well as starts in an interesting manner. Instead of starting mid dialouge, the story start in mid train of thought. This gives the story a very personal feel, allowing the reader to get details of the story through the narrators limited train of thought. The story also deals with a very experimental theme. Usually in stories involving death, death kills the protagonist in a unexpected way. This is a trait that is know to be utilized in modernist stories. By using the experimental writing style, as well as an experimental topic, Wyndam Lewis presents a story that is a great example of a Modernism work.

“Araby”- Ashley Heyser

I found “Araby” by Joyce to be one of the most depressing short stories we have read in this class thus far. Reading a story about a child who begins to discover that this world isn’t always the best is just so sad to me. Although I remember the crushes I used to have in middle school, I never saw the world as sad as this boy did when it didn’t work out.

As depressing as this story is, I did really enjoy how Joyce messed with the point of view. The point of view in this story is an adult telling a story about his first crush from the perspective of his “younger self”. I think by using this type of point of view, Joyce helped in making this story more sad because you are seeing the pain and the hurt through the eyes of a little, innocent boy who just had a crush and wanted to do something about it.

In hindsight, this book is sad, but while reading it, I was hoping the whole time that it was a story about a boys crush who gets her something and she loves it. But that is definitely not the case. I didn’t realize this until the last line where the narrator says “my eyes burned with anguish and anger”. Although it is an older version of the boy yelling us this, it’s still sad that a middle-school-aged child could feel that much hurt and anger.

“An Outpost of Progress” -Ashley Heyser

I really enjoyed reading “An Outpost of Progress” by Conrad. Although it seems like an “easy” read, there is so much symbolism and minor details and themes that Conrad includes in his story that I didn’t completely realize until it was discussed in class. One of my favorite discussions of this story was on the idea of human nature where we discussed if whether humans are naturally good and being away from nature causes them to be “evil”, or if humans are naturally evil and civilization is what makes humans to become “good”. Personally, I believe that humans are naturally good people and that civilization or being close to nature has nothing to do with their real intentions. Yes, people screw up and don’t always make the best decisions, but I believe that put in a situation to do good or evil, no matter what their upbringing may be, they will mostly always choose to do the right thing, or what seems right to them. No one has intentions to be purely “evil”, they rationalize it in their head to be good, even if to others it does not seem that way.

Another discussion I enjoyed was the spirituality in Conrad. I found this very interesting that Conrad capitalized Evil Spirit, as if it were a person rather than a description. Conrad uses a lot of religious symbolism in this story as well. One thing that really stuck out to me was how one of the Eurpoeans ended up hanging themselves on a cross.

“A Report to an Academy”

“A Report to an Academy” by Franz Kafka was a very interesting read. In the story an ape is taken from his world and saw the only way of surviving where he was going was to take on human qualities. That is just an example as how smart this ape is. He even starts out the story with an obviously intelligent line. We see this ape take on human characteristics that we associate with negative behavior such as drinking the pain away. I don’t know if this is completely wrong but I think this story was written to show stereotypes and racism. We see an ape that is very smart and sees things some people can’t but is still not treated fairly. He cannot break away from his mold no matter what he does he returns to the pen at night with the other apes. Sometimes I think he questions why humans do what they do. He wonders why they are living this life when they can be free like he was. Reading about the ape at the beginning of the story thinking of different ways to escape was depressing because each one would fail. Sometimes we do hear the ape talk about his situation in a good way. I also thought it was very interesting when the ape thought with its belly to become human like. Why something so far from brain would make you want to be like a human. Is it trying to show how dumb humans are just some ape like qualities.

Week 7?

An Outpost of Progress-Conrad

I know it has been awhile since we discussed this short story, but I did not get a chance to write about it last week. “An Outpost of Progress” is a very masculine story with a lot of tension between multiple male characters. In class we talked about protagonists and antagonists. I would agree that Kayerts and Carlier begin as the protagonists, but there is still an element of competition over who is the more powerful character. Makola is the antagonist because he is sneaky and goes behind Kayerts and Carlier’s back. As they team up against Makola, together they have equal power, but once he is fired tension is brewed between the two protagonists. Kayerts claims to be the boss of Carlier, but Carlier had the power to fire Makola. There is very little mention of women in “An Outpost of Progress,” because the men are away from home. If there had been more women in the story I think that that element would have helped the men keep a level head. They became enemies of each other, after they had been close friends. This story implies that when men are secluded without a common antagonist to oppose they become enemies of one another. Kayerts and Carlier fought each other to the death. When Kayerts killed himself it represents the idea that neither man could be the one person with all the power. They shared the power and when one was killed, the other no longer held power. Kayerts is seen as sticking his tongue out at his boss, the Director, which is symbolic that he did not respect who he worked for.

“Fernhurst”-Stein

I throughly enjoyed reading “Fernhurst.” This story might be my favorite reading of the course thus far. I think what makes it better, in my opinion, is that I can relate in a way. Not because I have experienced the events that take place in the story, but that I am in college and know what it is like to wonder about the lives of my professors. Another way I associate myself with this story is that I believe men and women should be equal and I hope my future husband is a southern gentleman who is chivalrous. I obviously would not like him to act like Redfern does in “Fernhurst.” I find it ironic that his quality of being chivalrous is how he rose and eventually what led to his downfall. Mrs. Bruce fell for his Southern charm, trained chivalrous actions, and intelligence. She does not hide her emotions as well as Redfern does because it is more common that women are attracted to him.
Redfern “felt in his chivalrous way that all desire that he roused in her mind it was his duty to fulfill.” His reasoning on whether or not to pursue Mrs. Bruce was wrong and he tried to justify his decision. He convinced himself that it would be okay to follow through with Mrs. Bruce because he was doing the right thing by being chivalrous. This came to bite him in the butt when his wife found a letter he had written to Mrs. Bruce. He felt guilty and knew he was not acting as a gentleman should.

Araby

James Joyce constructs this classic coming of age tale from a new viewpoint, that of the mature adult looking back upon what he considers his foolish childhood crush.  Joyce’s poetic and figurative language can be seen almost immediately as he describes the neighborhood with the houses which “gazed upon one another with brown imperturbable faces.”  A Romantic outlook on what a Modernist would describe as an isolated, poor neighborhood in an older part of Dublin.  The narrator is the adult version of the protagonist, a young Catholic boy, likely about 12 years old; and he especially utilizes this poetic language when describing his crush, or at least his idealized image of this girl he barely knows and only exchanges a handful of words with.  His use of light gives an angelic symbol to the girl he idolizes, and his infatuation is far from subtle to the reader as he describes how he lay on the floor in the front of his house with the blinds shut almost all the way so he could stare at her without being seen… at least his adult self acknowledges that this is foolish, although I would deem it to be creepy.  As the plot progresses the young boy eventually gains entrance to the Araby, essentially a mobile flea market, and proceeds to find a gift to buy for his crush.  When perusing in a store, he is cold-shouldered by a rude English woman running the shop as she is much more involved in a petty conversation with two gentlemen than operating her business; likely this is Joyce adding social commentary on the social situation between the Irish and the English at this time.  Finally, in the last few lines, the poor boy reaches an epiphany, where he abruptly loses his childish innocence and realizes that the world is a cruel place, always working against him; a depressing yet impacting message.

“Araby”

“Araby” by James Joyce was not one of my favorite reads but I definitely appreciate it more than I did before class. When reading it off my computer screen I just read it to complete my assignment, I didn’t stop to actually hear his voice. I now notice the way his sentences flow and how he probably picked each word more for its structure than what it means. I began to not even think about what he was saying but more how he was saying it. I believe that Joyce didn’t write to tell a story, he wrote to change the way a story can be written. I also noticed how often he used the word dark. The passage we read in class had it in three sentences in a row. He was really trying to emphasize the state Ireland was in. The end of the story really made feel empathy for the boy. The boy did not just seem to give up on love completely but the whole world around him. He invested so much of his mental time thinking and excited to have interactions with this girl. When he thought he failed at his only attempt he turned more than depressed but full of anger. At the beginning of the stories it says the priest is dead. This is done mare than to show the bad living condition but religiously. I think it is saying that even their catholic faith has given up on them.

Week 7 ?

A Report to an Academy

In A Report to an Academy we see something that we have yet to see in any other story we’ve read. The narrator, a man, was once an ape? At first I thought it was no joke. This story was written very formally and poetic at the same time. Formal, because he was giving a speech to what appeared to be a room full of gentlemen. But poetic, because he seemed to be preaching an important message about freedom. Freedom was a popular theme in this story. When the narrator was an ape he was free to do whatever he wanted. Roam the wild life. When he was wounded and captured by humans his freedom was taken away. Well, his ape like freedom was taken away. When he survived the first period of his confinement in his tiny cage he learned that his ape freedom was gone and he would therefore have to embark on the freedom as a human being. What was ironic was that when he was an ape he had freedom he didn’t want it, but humans seem to spend their whole lives striving for freedom. As the story goes on we learn that he doesn’t regret the path that his life took and truth be told he doesn’t feel like he belongs in the human world or the ape world. Was this story meant to be a symbol for the fact that we has humans come into this world as free apes but society confines us and takes away our freedom as we grow but our goal is to maintain that freedom that was taken away from us?

Stillness and Personification in Araby

While I was reading Araby by James Joyce I noticed his continued use of personification. His ability to do this resonates throughout the whole story and in a majority of his works. What I noticed along side that, though, was how whenever something important occurs, the situation stops, or becomes paralyzed. Immediately one notes the instances in the story where the characters are stopped, or held back. Most notable are Mangan’s sister not being able to go to the Araby, the narrator’s school master’s hope that he was ‘not beginning to idle’, and lastly the narrator lingering before the stall in the Araby. There are all significant of the stopping of the characters, the lingering to think, and the paralysis of progression. What isn’t so obvious, however, is how Joyce incorporates the objects around the characters to either be moving on without them or stuck in the past. The only features of the present are the characters, and their momentary stops.

First one can analyze the stillness of the objects. For example in the first paragraph, the former tenant had died in the back room, the passed lived of others from the past, still lingering around but stuck in the past and never moving forward. The air in the house had been long enclosed, it was stale from not moving. Later on, while the boy stops and looks at the clock, he becomes irritated by it’s ticking, so he leaves it. But it obviously continues on right where he left it. These are just a few examples of the paralyzed objects.

The contrast Joyce uses here, however, is the movement of other things around the characters. These things are usually much faster and uncontrollable. First with the daylight that ended before the families had even eaten their meals. Another time later on when Mangan’s sister was twirling her silver bracelet round and round on her wrist, which the narrator noticed for a reason. And lastly, where I’d like to put emphasis, on the conversation between the men and the woman at the stall, who the boy interrupts. This is the important instance, because this is the first time anybody in the story attempts to go against the movement around them. It basically results in the epiphany achieved at the end of the story.