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".