Video Reflection

While watching the videos assigned over the weekend, I found it sad to see how far racists go just to discriminate an entire group of people just because they have a different skin color. It's even worse to see how these issues are still relevant in today's society, shown by the video on the supermarket. The term "white privilege" came up in "A Trip to the Grocery Store", and it is still shocking to me that there is still more and more components to racism after all the analysis we've done in class. White privilege is straightforward enough, it is advantages that white people have that non-whites don't have, there's even an entire Wikipedia page on it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege It's hard to believe that this term is still being used today, many media sources, such as Huffington Post and CNN, have used the term in headlines in the past year. This really makes the evils of racism stand out as it influences something as trifle as buying items at the supermarket. Joy also mentioned during the video that her sister in-law has blue eyes and was very white. This reminded me of the Mary Jane candies in The Bluest Eye, where Mary Jane is essentially the beauty standard, being white and having blue eyes, and how Joy subconsciously describes her sister as such, emphasizing the word "white". As more time passes after analyzing the Bluest Eye, the evils that Morrison was describing are becoming more and more apparent.

DBAR Reflection Kinda

Looking back at The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, I found it quite interesting how when Fitzgerald initially tried to publish the short story, it was rejected by several magazines because the story contained very unsubtle criticisms about American capitalism.  I thought it was kinda funny to think of these big magazine companies acting like those angry people on social media responding to hate comments and just rejecting any form of criticism that comes their way. Even though Fitzgerald's criticisms are not necessarily constructive, they still highlight some of the problems that come with American capitalism - greed and exploitation, namely - regardless of how blunt Fitzgerald presented them. For example, Broddick is so encapsulated by greed that he holds aviators hostage, just so he ensures that no one will ever know about the diamond mountain. From Broddick's straightforward and rather dismissing tone - for example, "We've covered that. Cruelty doesn't exist where self-preservation is involved. You've been soldiers: you know that." (DBAR p.95) - we know that Broddick is so caught up in greed that he thinks this decision is justified and totally not inhumane at all! Litote! (I think) Also, Broddick is shown to be exploiting slaves and the diamonds throughout his lifetime. Similarly to the magazine companies, Broddick coolly dismisses all the haters - "How absurd.", "I don't want you here.", "You see... The man... was shot by some of my agents in fourteen different places" (DBAR p.98-100) - as do the magazine companies - "lol u ain't gettin published boy" (My 5-year old imagination).

Gatsby - Favorite Passage

"About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey car crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and
comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight." (Fitzgerald p.26)

I found that the first paragraph of the second chapter (shown above) of The Great Gatsby was the most beautiful passage in the book. Fitzgerald, throughout the book, is reinforcing the idea that the American Dream is simply a hoax and that nothing good comes out of it. This passage essentially explains the premise of the entire book in a short, but meaningful, passage. The first two sentences contains strong metaphorical weight, even more so now having read the entire book and analyzed the recurring themes. As we discussed in class, West Egg represents new money. New York is the iconic place in America where dreams are made, therefore representing the impossible American Dream. People specifically from West Egg are trying to reach the unattainable American Dream, which lies in New York. To go to New York, they must take a railroad, which is joined by the motor road for a quarter mile. The motor road  represents the new drug of speed - as it "hastily" meets with the railroad - and how its influence leads to the corruption of those trying to achieve the American Dream. Following the introduction of cars, represented by the motor road running alongside the railroad, the tracks lead to the despair and helplessness found in the valley of ashes. After a "quarter mile", the tracks begin to "shrink away from a certain desolate area of land", symbolizing that driving on this track, even for a short distance, will only lead one to the valley of ashes. Then, the rest of the passage describes the despair and poverty that the lower class people face (discussed in class).

Gatsby Stuff

In the beginning of Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby, Nick describes the inhabitants of the East and West Egg. I think Nick's description of the people further develops the differences in social classes, "old money" and "new money". There is a significantly larger amount of people described living in West Egg compared to East Egg. In West Egg, people "[come] to gamble", are "connected with the movies in one way or another", considered "Dukes", get in fights, get "so drunk" that right hands get run over, and the list goes on (Fitzgerald 62). These people represent new money as they live the more lavish lifestyles and are portrayed as having such. They have the luxury to get drunk and basically do whatever they please. On the other hand, some people in East Egg look like goats, and some people's hairs are becoming white "for no good reason at all" (Fitzgerald 62). These people represent old money as they are quite literally becoming older now, shown by the white hairs. The distinction between the two classes is important because Fitzgerald is trying to emphasize the rivalry between the upper and upper-upper class. This theme recurs throughout the chapters we've read so far and is bound to come back in the later chapters. For example, in Chapter 1, Nick talks about his dad's advice where his dad says to not criticize others because of the "advantages" Nick has, describing the specific class differences between the lower and upper classes. Because this advice is even relevant, it implies that many others criticize others for their class differences.

The Bluest Eye Reflection

After finishing The Bluest Eye, I'm not sure how to feel. Mortified? Intrigued? All the evils described in the book have opened my eyes to the cruel racism that we are living in today. Even though it's putrid and revolting, there's still something peculiarly compelling about the inner workings of racism and the functions of society. Whilst reading through the particularly intense scenes in Spring (specifically Cholly), I could not put the book down, even though on the inside I was on the verge of throwing up. I believe whats truly compelling about these horrors is the behind the scenes of them, which Morrison has written for every character, except for Maureen Peal. Behind the shocking Pecola rape scene, I felt the tiniest bit of sympathy towards Cholly, how even though he commits this extremely evil and disturbing act of sexual assault, we find out that he does not understand the horrors of his actions, he didn't know "whether her grip was from a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free, or some other emotion". As much as I want to blame Cholly for his actions, it makes much more sense now to not necessarily blame him, but the racists that made Cholly - among many others - for the broken life and mindset that he's been forced into. What's more interesting is how this evil still is prevalent in the world we live in and how the evils are becoming more and more revealed, yet the intricate workings of racism are still far from being discovered by society.

Kehinde Wiley

In class, we talked about baroque and rococo paintings, specifically those of Kehinde Wiley. Kehinde Wiley's known for his portraits of brown skinned people, specifically ones that parody those of white people. He simply replaces the white people in the paintings with brown skinned people, adding on some decorative patterns in the background. I never would have thought that this seemingly small replacement of skin color would be so shocking. Not even just me, multiple others in my class were also taken aback by the fact there was a black person in place of a white one. All the years of subtle racial stereotypes have slowly integrated in to our society's mindset, so that a small change in color appears so unnatural. He is also well known for his portraits where he just has a brown skinned person, male or female, in a heroic stance. While these works of art do not necessarily imitate a portrait with white people in them, they still are shocking as we subconsciously picture the hero to be a white male. Going beyond just a brown skinned male in power, he also has women in positions of power as well. It is kinda sad to see that these portraits have such a big wow factor, as I feel we should be beyond these trifle characteristics. These portraits go to show how strongly our society has these stereotypes embedded in their daily lives, that a simple change in skin color or gender could be so shocking.

Dandelions and Black People

So far in The Bluest Eye, we've noticed that beauty is not a physical object that one can attain. Beauty is something very abstract, yet we try and give it a set of standards to cope with the fact that we can not define it. Like the Holocaust, how can we describe the indescribable without drastically taking away from what it stands for. Beauty can not be allowed to follow a set of standards because of the way beauty is perceived differently by everyone. For example, Dandelions are used as a parallel for black people, many people have a prejudice towards them, but without much reasoning. Pecola finds beauty in the dandelions, asking, "Why ... do people call them weeds? [I] think they [are] pretty", but after her encounter with a racist store owner, she feels ashamed of her race and then promptly calls the dandelions ugly and that dandelions are simply just weeds (Morrison 47). At first, Pecola thinks that she is just like the others, beautiful in her own way, but after her racist encounter with a shopkeeper she begins to feel this "inexplicable shame ebb" (Morrison 50). There's no logical reason for the shopkeeper to discriminate against Pecola, but he does so with an illogical, yet passionate hatred. His only "reasoning" for this discrimination is because everyone else is discriminating as well. Likewise to the dandelions, Pecola first saw beauty in them, but she then gave into the societal standards of what plants are considered "ugly" and "weeds".

I like rhetoric. (For the life of me I didn't know how to incorporate this word in)

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, you could only ever in your wildest dreams have a body so out of proportion that you would fall flat on your face every time you tried to stand up. Well, Jesus Christ Hallelujah! Turn that dream into a reality with the new and improved plastic surgery *For only $9.95 + shipping and handling*! With the technology we have today, everyone can have a "thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist"! (Prager 354).
Exhibit A:

Barbie dolls are basically pink elephants. A human being wouldn't naturally have a Barbie-like figure, like how an elephant wouldn't naturally have pink colored skin, they both are extreme abnormalities. The only difference is that Barbies have been socially accepted (this acceptance is dying as we begin to realize Barbie's strong influence). It's quite interesting that despite Barbie dolls being extremely unnatural, we - at a glance - view them as nothing but ordinary, even natural-looking. In this regard, how do Barbie dolls look normal but pink elephants do not? Barbie dolls have become so popular around the world that we have subconsciously accepted them as the go-to for describing the ideal look for women, even though it's so clearly unrealistic.
Can we really blame Barbie dolls for influencing women across the world to strive to have large breasts and small waists? It seems like the problem lies in us, as a human race, because of the way we define what's hot and what's not. If we, as a society, found pink elephants attractive, wouldn't we strive to genetically engineer pink elephants to our heart's content?

I like rhetoric.

Race? Or Racism?

Is race a socially constructed concept? A social construct is defined as an idea or notion that appears to be natural to people who accept it but may or may not represent reality. Thus, it remains largely an invention of a given society. Race is defined as the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. Even if society has a different idea of race, race will always be the major divisions of humankind based on biological differences. In that sense, race is not a socially constructed idea, as it is not subject to change. Racism is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race. Racism goes beyond the hard-bordered physical distinction of human beings and tries to differentiate humans by their assumed mental characteristics. Physical characteristics, such as skin color, are not directly linked to mental characteristics, yet society tries to falsely link them together and therefore race becomes a socially constructed concept. An example of this can be seen here, from Maus (p. 50):

The German soldiers couldn't even recognize a German from a Jew, even though they had a "defined" system of distinguishing Jews from other people. The idea of racism is subjective to the core and is inefficient as a means of classifying people. Racism shouldn't be confused with the concise definition of race, which it commonly does in today's society. The assumptions we make about people purely based off their looks should be understood as they are, assumptions.

Maus Analysis

From the day we started reading Maus, I've been captivated by the way Spiegelman combines artwork and narration to describe the past. More than anything, I'm shocked at how much analysis can be done through a single page of a comic book. 

(Example from page 116 of Vol. 2)

Just from just the arrangement and content of the panels above, we can infer that the Vladek is torn apart figuratively and physically by the way the panels literally split him up into different pieces. Throughout the book, Vladek and Artie have shown to be distant, specifically by the smoke that appears to "create a rift between them." This separation is also evident here, as Artie is purposefully excluded from the big picture of Vladek, with text bubbles and a different panel taking Artie's place besides his father. From the words on this page, we know that Vladek's close family members have all passed away, except for his brother, Pinek. To show this, Spiegelman places the picture of the only surviving member in the hands of Vladek, with the photos of the deceased members on the ground. The pictures of the deceased members on the ground also appear to keep their distance away from Vladek, creating a circle around him, possibly to show that the memories of them keep circling around in Vladek's mind. Also, the recurring motif of a cage cell seems to be evident in Vladek's jacket. The jacket could represent a metaphorical "jail" that Vladek puts himself in every time he talks about his past to Artie.

Bird Analysis

Birds have been a recurring symbol for the different attributes of human life in a majority of the pieces of literature we have read about in our years in public education. Kingston uses the motif of birds in "White Tigers", a chapter in "The Warrior Woman", to describe aspects of human life - specifically bravery, dreams, death, and innocence. Bravery is displayed when seven year old Kingston is describing her climb of the mountain. The bird follows her during the climb, where "the brambles tear off [her] shoes and the rocks cut [her] feet and fingers", yet she still remains courageous and perseveres through the hardships, with the bird as her companion throughout the journey (Kingston 20). As the bird flies alongside of Kingston during the climb, the bird can also be interpreted as Kingston's dreams of becoming a bird to literally rise above the obstacles the mountain poses to achieve greatness. Going back to reality, Kingston describes her Fourth Uncle's death, where he is killed by Communists for attempting to catch doves to feed his family. The uncle can represent innocence, as "he's too damned shy is raise his voice" against the Communists, who end up killing him in cold blood (Kingston 51). As seen in other works, such as "To Kill a Mockingbird", the mockingbird shares a very similar symbolic meaning. The mockingbird is considered to be an innocent figure, and to kill a mockingbird is to commit an unforgivable sin. Connecting the two, the Fourth Uncle can represented as a mockingbird.

Uncivilized Disobedience?

In the recent months, Black Lives Matter has become a more pressing movement, but is it still a civil protest or is the friction becoming a catalyst for machine's combustion?

While Thoreau may agree with the basic premise of the movement, he most likely would not be entirely on board with how this movement is solving the issue of racism, as the issue is being solved relatively slowly. The protest group (primarily consisting of black people- who would've guessed?) has been attempting to spread the truth about racism in order to end it, similar to the ongoing "Say No to Drugs" movement. The issue of racism (or any harmful issue) is purely like a machine, as Thoreau states, as the only way to stop the machine is to damage it from the inside, either taking out parts or having the friction of the machine slowly erode itself away. Thoreau would rather see an honest white man (or any other stereotypical racist man for that matter) stand up and strongly advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement (this would be like taking out a gear in the machine of racism, the seemingly "perpetual" mechanism immediately stops working), instead of seeing the victims of the issue attempting to escape from the grasps of injustice. Similar to the topic of abolishing slavery, Thoreau states that if "one Honest man, in the State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold staves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked upon the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America" (Thoreau 1023).

The Prophet

Self Fulfilling Prophecy - Positive or negative expectations about circumstances, events, or people that may affect a persons behavior toward them in a manner that he or she (unknowingly) creates situations in which those expectations are fulfilled.

As mentioned in class, the Declaration of Independence is seen to be a flawed set of rules that which everyone blames for the current racism and other controversies going on in the world right now. Ideally, the DoI is the perfect standard where everyone gets along and follows these rules, but as of right now, we're not quite there yet. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" (Jefferson) - these three words are America's prophecy, but like a kid trying to become a professional basketball player, you can't just suddenly become a pro at anything without any practice or buildup. Right now, America as a whole is turning towards a self-defeating prophecy, as we keep blaming the DoI as the source of our problems. As a nation, we can't expect to jump to the end goal that the DoI suggests, and when we try to, it only ends in consequences. To fix the issues that are occurring in today's society, we need to tear down some of the foundations that have been placed that are negatively affecting other people, such as war, and build up slowly together as a nation, rather than just continuing to march forward to the wrong path and quickly blaming the DoI for every time we make a mistake as a country.

Getting in Tune

Transitioning into AP English requires a change in key. In anything you do, constant adjustment is needed to become proficient at whatever you wish to do or become. School is a great example of this, with each individual class being like a guitar string. Having every string in tune is crucial to the overall piece, if one string is off, the whole song is ruined. Similar to grades, if you fail one class, your GPA is now drastically lower, tarnishing your school record. As time goes on, strings naturally begin to loosen up and become flat, much like how grades in a class begin to drop if you don't keep up with the required workload. Certain strings are more difficult to tune, requiring continuous adjustment throughout its lifetime (or in this case enough adjustment to get a 93 in english), and vice versa. 

This week, we went over the significance of memorials and the intricate designs that go into them. Even though I couldn't contribute much to the discussion, I learned a lot about the elaborate, yet subtle, designs that go into the art of memorial making. Specifically speaking, I thought that "the incorporation of memorials into the center of town life gives the dead their own place at that center" was an interesting way of symbolizing the connection between life and death in a subtle way (Booth 36). I'm beginning to appreciate the tiny details that go into the design of each memorial, or any form of art for that matter, and has made me begin to enjoy the finer things in life.