Cult

     Something that immediately struck me about Sorry to Bother You was how much WorryFree resembled a cult to me. And yet despite this and the ever increasing backlash against it, ads for it continued to be run on television and billboards stayed up, albeit often with a little touch of graffiti. Not only that but congresspeople are shown celebrating after it is revealed that WorryFree is turning people into horse people. I think the director, Boots Riley, definitely trying to make a point by doing this.
     But first I want to start with what about WorryFree seemed like a cult to me. First of all, their message is extremely suspicious. They claim that they will solve all of your problems if you just join them and sign a lifelong contract that prevents you from leaving. And if that doesn't sound like a cult I don't know what does. Second of all, it is undoubtedly exploiting people. This made me think of a flowchart I saw about whether something is a cult. One of the questions leading up to the answer, "definitely a cult!!", was do people get exploited. And if the answer was "yes but no stuff" then it was a cult. And this is what is happening in the case of WorryFree. Everybody who is signing up is being exploited for their labor and receiving almost nothing in return. Another sequence in that flowchart was the question "is it a cult" and one of the answers was "it's a movement". While nobody every calls WorryFree a movement, the creator, Steve Lift, calls it the future which is eerily similar. The final thing is about Steve Lift. He just looked like a cult leader to me. I don't know what it was but while watching the movie, the first time I saw him, the first thought that popped into my head was, "he looks like the leader of a cult". 
     That brings me to how despite the obvious signs that WorryFree is a cult, the ads continue to be run and people still continue to support it. I think the most revealing scene in that regard is when the congresspeople are shown celebrating with WorryFree when their stocks increase after it comes out they are turning their workers into equisapiens. My best guess is that Boots Riley is trying to criticize how people are willing to do anything for enough money. This also matches pretty well with how Cassius Green is willing to be a power caller despite how horrible it is simply because it pays enough. 

Unreliable Narrator

     Something that I've been thinking about a lot is how trustworthy of a narrator Gunnar Kaufman is.  The main reason I've been asking myself this question is that the narrative voice is Gunnar from the present when he is the messiah and renowned poet. This means that he isn't telling his story as it happens but what he remembers it as. As such it is vulnerable to him altering memories of the past of even interpreting his experience differently than he did at the time. We had a similar discussion about the Narrator in Invisible Man and how we weren't sure whether we could trust him for similar reasons.
     The other reason I have trouble trusting the narrator is it seems like he is embellishing the story to at least some degree. Take for example the scene when he is recounting how he told his story of his entire family tree when he was in elementary school. For one, I find it hard to believe he can remember what happened in elementary school clearly, because I, for one, know that I can hardly remember anything from them. But putting that aside it is still strange. For one he is surprisingly eloquent for his age. I'm pretty sure there was no one at my elementary school who could speak that well and I'm pretty sure I couldn't even now. The other thing about that story is when Gunnar is telling it he uses words most elementary schoolers would use. Just a few examples are quintessential, daguerreotype, and honeysuckle. One other example of something that seems embellished is his introduction to the sport of basketball. However, at the same time, Gunnar in the present has sold 126 million copies of a book of poetry so maybe his childhood isn't as embellished as it seems.

Confusion

     I'll admit the first thing I thought when I read the first page was, "What?" That confusion lasted until class and we had a chance to talk about what happened and clarified who the characters were. While the readings have started making more and more sense to me as we go on there are still some things that trip me up or have tripped me up. So I thought I'd write about what I found to be most confusing about Beloved.
     The part that was the most confusing was definitely the beginning. I think the main reason that it was so confusing is that the book expects the reader to instantly understand the rules of the world within the book. That would be okay if the rules were the same as the real world. But they're not. So you're entered into a world where it is accepted that ghosts are a real thing. Reading a ghost story that you don't know is a ghost story is confusing because you look for a logical explanation for things even if there isn't one. Combine that sense of not knowing what's going on with the confusing names Toni Morrison uses and that makes for a really confusing first chapter.
     After learning that ghosts were real within the context of the novel everything started to make more sense. However, there are still some things that confuse me while I'm reading. The two things that still get me every now and then are whose perspective the book is being told from and what time is the story taking place. The way Morrison writes it, the transition between both the points of view and between the past and the present is hard to notice. This has caused me to have to reread on multiple occasions because I wasn't sure who was talking or when what was going on was going on. A perfect example of this is when Sethe is heading to the place where Baby Suggs used to preach and it keeps switching back and forth between the past and the present. 

Authentic Voice

      While reading Their Eyes Were Watching God something that really stood out to me was the use of African-American vernacular throughout the novel. The characters used in when they were talking and the narrator even slipped into at times. I found this to be one of my favorite aspects of the book and felt as though it added another layer to the book as well.  However, to be honest, I also found it to be one of the most challenging things about the book. I would often have to reread sections of dialogue to make sure I understood what was being said. I would also sometimes read the words as they were written but try to connect them to the "proper words". I felt like that took away from the novel.
      As a result, I was thinking about ways to deal with that problem. The first thing that jumped into my head was an audiobook. I thought it would be awesome to actually hear the dialogue as opposed to just hearing it in your head. So I went and found an audiobook version of Their Eyes Were Watching God and listened to the part of the book where Janie is in the store listening to people on the porch. I must say that I really liked it. The dialogue just seemed so much more natural when I was just listening to it as opposed to reading it. The only problem I had with it was that all of the characters had a similar voice. Even though the reader was changing her voice a little it was just a little off and I thought that having each character have their own unique voice would be even better.
      That made me remember listening to a radio play a few years ago and how each character had their own voice actor. I think that that would be the best way to listen to Their Eyes Were Watching God. Imagine how awesome it would be for each character to have their own recognizable voice. Because of that, I think that a radio play would be one of the best mediums to experience the story through.

Invisible Man Movie

      After watching the movie about Ellison's life and seeing how they adapted some of the scenes from the book into a short movie scene. This raised the question in my mind of what would stand in the way of making a good Invisible Man movie. We have talked about how there isn't one yet and how difficult it would be but not why, so I thought I would try to write down all the reasons I think it would be extremely difficult to do a good job with an Invisible Man movie.
      The most obvious challenge would be dealing with the narrator's thoughts. Something that a book can do that a movie can't is deal with thoughts. This is something I've noticed when watching movies based off of books I like. None of the movies could accomplish the same sense of understanding a character as the book could. The only movie I can think of that did an okay job was The Martian, but that was accomplished because Mark Watney was alone on Mars. The same thing wouldn't work for Invisible Man. The one thing I can think of that seemed to successfully provided a character's thoughts  is The End of the F***ing World. It lets the watcher understand what the main character is thinking by having him narrate over video that doesn't necessarily match with what he is talking about. However, this also wouldn't work for Invisible Man because The End of the F***ing World is a comedy and the narration aspect is designed to add to that and Invisible Man is not a comedy by any means.
      The other big challenge in creating an Invisible Man movie would be dealing with the fact that the narrator is never described and we never learn his name. For one, not having a description means that it would be hard to pick an actor to play him because nobody looks like him. Giving him a face also takes away from the sense of mystery that surrounds him which would make the movie worse. The other problem is that the reader never learns the name of the narrator but there are several times when Ellison writes someone saying his name. For example, "The boy read my name off a card." While it would be possible to simply omit those scenes it would change some aspects of the book.
      I think that along with how difficult it would be to correctly depict the dreamlike portions of this book, these challenges would make it impossible to make an Invisible Man movie that is the same quality as the book.

Different Chains

Early on in the book, Bledsoe pulls out an old leg shackle and calls it a "symbol of our progress". Later in the book, we see a very similar scene except for that time, it is the narrator who has a different leg shackle on his desk. As such, I think it would be interesting to compare the scenes, looking at the chains themselves and what is done with them and considering the implications of those differences.
When looking back over the scene with Bledsoe and his chain, the first thing that jumped out to me was that he kept the chain out of sight. In fact, he keeps it buried under a pile of papers as is shown when Wright writes, "Suddenly he reached for something beneath a pile of paper, an old leg shackle". On the other hand, the narrator leaves the shackle he has out in the open on top of his desk. This, of course, draws connections between the narrator and Bledsoe. Most importantly it highlights a key difference between the two in what they do with the chain. However, despite the fact that Bledsoe hides the chain and the narrator leaves it in the open they seem to believe that it represents the same thing: progress. After all, the narrator says, "But I think it's a good reminder of what our movement is fighting against" which is very similar to Bledsoe calling the shackle a "symbol of our progress". As such I think Bledsoe choosing to hide the chain is just like him choosing to wear his mask around people like Norton. On the other hand, the narrator leaves his shackle on his desk because he still hasn't learned to wear a mask. As a result, we get the reaction from Brother Wrestrum which is a reaction that I would imagine Norton having if he saw the chain of Bledsoe's desk.
Which brings me to another point. The Brotherhood seems to be a different version of the college. For one, they are both focused on educating people but only in the sense that they want people to follow a specific set of ideas. Another reason is they both are mainly run by white men. The college has the founders and the Brotherhood has all of the brothers, most of whom are white.  The final is that both have a Bledsoe character. The college actually has Bledsoe but the Brotherhood has the narrator who fills a similar role. Bledsoe claimed that he was truly the one running the college and we are able to see that it was truly the narrator running the Brotherhood in Harlem because when he leaves it falls apart. As such, while the narrator has made progress, he has still ended up in a situation similar to the one he was in in college, if not just a little higher up in the system. 

Metamorphasis

The start of chapter fifteen is eerily similar to the start of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The Metamorphosis starts with, "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug." Looking at the start of chapter fifteen the reader can draw several similarities. For one, chapter fifteen starts with the narrator being woken up suddenly by a loud noise. While Gregor wasn't woken upon by a loud noise, he was woken up by "anxious dreams", which seems to mean a nightmare. And in my experience, a nightmare wakes you up suddenly as well. 
Another similarity is that they both wake up and have an itch. Gregor had an itch on his abdomen that was caused by some white spots and the narrator has the old grey skin that's making him itch. Yet another similarity is that they are both in a hurry. Gregor slept past him alarm and is going to be late for work and the narrator says, "I'd have to hurry. There was a lot of shopping to do". The last sort of connection is that Mary and the narrator see and try to kill some cockroaches. While it isn't positive that Gregor turned into a cockroach, the implications in The Metamorphosis makes me believe that Gregor did become a cockroach. As such, the scene where they try to kill the cockroaches made me think of when Gregor's dad tried to kill him.
While many of these similarities could be pure coincidence, chapter fifteen still has its own metamorphosis of sorts. Even though it isn't nearly as drastic as turning into a giant cockroach, the narrator has made a sudden change overnight. The reason we can tell is because the narrator notices the racist statue for the first time. While this might not seem like much, it shows definite change since the narrator hadn't noticed the statue before, not even that night before he went to sleep. The other metamorphosis sort of thing in the chapter is the scratching away the old skin part. That part made me think of a something like a snake that sheds its old skin. So in a way, the start of chapter fifteen showed the narrator shedding at least a part of his old self.

Invisible Bigger

The narrator of The Invisible Man is clearly "invisible", seeing as he states so himself at the very start of the book by saying, "I am an invisible man". And he clearly doesn't mean it in the sense he is unable to be seen because he clarifies by saying, "No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms". So the question is why is he invisible? As he puts it, "they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me." What this means is that when people look at him they see a generalization of someone who is African-American, instead of an actual individual person. So what he means by being invisible is actually just hiding behind the fact that people see him as a generalization and therefore don't identify him in their minds as a person. This is shown when the narrator is taking to Norton and Norton refers to the narrator as a cog, showing him he thinks of him as no different from the rest of the students.
Bigger is invisible in the same way. With the exception of Max and Jan, most white people in the book fail to see him as his own person. For example. Dalton sees Bigger as just another African-American he's helped just like how Norton views the narrator. Another example is how during the search for Bigger the mob rounds up lots of other people like him even though they have a picture of him. This is similar to when the narrator beats the man up and the man claims he was mugged just because it fit convention. Another thing to consider about Bigger is that he is written to be invisible. An important part of Native Son was how Bigger was defined by environment more than he was by his actions. So in a way Bigger is meant to be invisible to the reader so that we can look past his character and more at the environment which Wright is trying to criticize.

Powerful Paranoia

Something core to most conspiracy theories is questioning he normality of an event. That being, is something that happened just a coincidence that isn't very unlikely, or does it have some aspect of abnormality to it and as such is of more importance. DeLillo plays around with this idea in several situations. The first time DeLillo brings something like this up is during a Nicholas Branch scene where he is looking at the deaths among those associated with Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby. DeLillo starts out the scene by writing, "Somewhere in his room of theories, in some notebook or folder, Nicholas Branch has a roster of the dead. A printout of the names of witnesses, informers, investigators, people linked to Lee H. Oswald, people linked to Jack Ruby, all conveniently and suggestively dead. In 1979 a House select committee determined there was nothing statistically abnormal about the death rate among those who were connected in some way to the events of November 22. Branch accepts this as an actuarial fact. He is writing a history, not a study of the ways in which people succumb to paranoia. There is endless suggestiveness." What this does is try to shut down the idea that there was anything strange about the death rates. I find that interesting because Libra is a conspiracy novel, so it shutting down something like that seems counter-intuitive. Still, DeLillo goes on supporting the fact that they weren't anything special by talking about the methods of killing and how they were completely unconnected. My question is, why would DeLillo, after showing how these killing are normal, go on to give details about each one, in a say similar to someone trying to make something of them would? And I think the reason he does so is to show how easily the human mind makes patterns and jumps into paranoia about certain things. Even after he explained that there wasn't anything statistically off, when I read the part where he describes several of the deaths, I can't help by be suspicious. My mind automatically makes the connections and says that there is something going on even though I know there isn't really.
DeLillo also brings up some coincidences during a scene with Lee and Ferries. During that scene he portrays the coincidences as exactly that, just coincidences, and shows how David Ferrie uses them to manipulate Lee. By doing this he is once again saying that these coincidences people point to aren't really all that odd, but at the same time is pointing out the coincidences as if to say, "still it seems like there us something strange about that doesn't it?" This once again shows how we really can't help connecting certain things.

George de Mohrenschildt

Of all of the characters in the book, the strange and interesting ones seem to be the people that DeLillo isn't making up. So I thought I would do a little research on George de Mohrenschildt who seemed to be the most interesting of all of the real characters. As DeLillo describes him he is an international man of intrigue like Lawrence Parmenter but is real. As DeLillo writes George de Mohrenschildt was
A charming and worldly man able to converse fluently in Russian, English, French, Spanish, probably Togo as well, or whatever they spoke in Togoland.  Larry liked the man. He’d known him for some years and was aware that George had been debriefed by the Agency after several trips abroad. But even though their business interests had overlapped once or twice, he wasn’t sure quite what George’s racket was.
This leaves this air of mystery around him because we don't actually find out what he really does for a living. DelLillo also writes,
But his marriages didn’t explain his apparent association with Nazis in World War II, his apparent ties to Polish and French intelligence, his expulsion from Mexico, his apparent communist leanings when he was at the University of Texas, his Soviet contacts in Venezuela, the discrepancies in his stated history, his travels in West Africa, Central America, Yugoslavia and Cuba.
While I was reading this I wondered how much was true, so I did some research. I found that there were in fact rumors that he had ties to foreign intelligence and that he admitted he had ties to French intelligence. I also found that he was born in Mozyr, Russia and was part of the Dallas Russian community that had shunned Lee because of his background. I also found that there were, in fact, allegations of Nazi activity on his part. Crazily enough he also did get kicked out of Mexico. According to him it was might have been because General Maxino Camacho of the Mexican Army, was jealous of his relationship with Lilia Larin, a Mexican citizen he met and fell in love with.
I found various other things that match with DeLillo's short summary of what he has done and I must say I was expecting at least some of it to be made up.

Playing a Character?

In Kindred, Dana has talked about how she and Kevin are just playing characters and aren't actually a part of what is going on many times. In class, we also talked about how she is pretending to be someone she isn't and that she understands that. An example of this is when Dana says, "we humored the people around us by pretending to be like them. But we were poor actors. We never really got into our roles.We never forgot that we were acting" (Butler 98).  This shows that while they are playing characters they are still separate from their characters. This becomes apparent in this scene that followed when Dana talks to Kevin about what is wrong with the game the children are playing and even says that she breaks character herself. But at the same time, the understanding that she is playing a character enough to separate her from her character. This is true both mentally and physically. Take, for example, the scene where Tom Weylin sees Dana leaving Kevin's room in the morning. Even though Dana knows that there is nothing shameful about what happened in her time, Weylin is able to make her feel ashamed because of the character she is playing. But on the other hand, Dana is still susceptible to physical threats and pain because even though she is acting, the consequences are all too real. This becomes apparent at the start when the patroller tries to rape her and continues through the book. These difference to Dana just being an actor made me think of a book I read several years ago. It was about a detective who went undercover as a girl who had been murdered (because she looked very similar) to try to find out who murdered the girl. During the book, the detective knew she was playing a role but was still in danger. I think that that is a better analogy to Dana's situation. She isn't an actor as much as she is an undercover detective.

Unclimactic War

There is no question that the goal of the Slaughterhouse-Five is for it to act as an anti-war novel. The narrator himself promises that it will be when he is talking to Mary in chapter one. He makes his promise by saying, "I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne" (Vonnegut 19). What he is saying is that the story isn't going to be about the "glory" of war but instead about the inherent truth. But that raises the question is it possible to write an anti-war book? That question has to be asked because of so many movies and novels that show war as a glorious thing.
But despite that, Vonnegut definitely succeeds in making Slaughterhouse-Five an anti-war novel. To do so he uses several techniques that make the novel incredibly anti-climactic and makes the reader feel uninvolved. He does this by making Billy Pilgrim the epitome of a horrible soldier. He writes it so that Billy is seen as a joke, often because he acts like one. He picks out the most ridiculous jacket, he puts on silver boots from a play and even gets asked if he is trying to make a joke. When combined with the way Billy acts disconnected from everything around him, for example, smiling at the weirdest times, the war-like scenes in the war don't seem exciting. An example of this is the scene where the two scout gets shot. While there is action going on, the tone of the book and the straightforward way it was narrated was able to make the scene not interesting in terms of action.
Another strategy he uses is irony. The book is absolutely full of irony and most of it is built around the same idea: those that are ready for the war and want to live, tend to die, while Billy who is not prepared whatsoever and makes no discernable attempts to stay alive continues to live. Once again a perfect example is the scene when the two scout gets shot. The two scouts who know what they are doing get shot and die but Billy somehow makes it out alive. What this does is show that war isn't a chance to prove yourself at all. You can prepare all you want but when it comes done to it the nature of war is so brutal that it doesn't matter.
Another thing Vonnegut does is using soldiers that don't match the stereotype used in typical war movies and books. Instead he follows up on his promise to Mary and portrays the soldiers as children and other people who don't want to be there. By making the soldiers in the war children like Roland Weary and Werner Gluck, or farmers like the soldiers that found Billy and Roland, or teachers like Edgar Derby, Vonnegut creates absolutely no character that would be played by Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. This shows that wars weren't actually entirely fought by people who were seeking honor and glory and instead shows the hard truth.

The Sun Also Rises Through Reed Glasses

In class, we talked about what we thought the world would look like today if we thought about it in the context of the atonists and Jes Grew. We talked about how the Black Lives Matter movement could be seen as the black empowerment part of Jes Grew. We also talked about how academia had become much more atonist. Overall, I thought that the discussion was very interesting. But something during the not so brief recap of the entire known history of Jes Grew caught my attention. Reed writes,  "When he heard of this, old Set ordered the murder of the Bulls and being a particularly mean cuss, ordered that they be tortured 1st. (This led to the sport that the American writer Ernest Hemingway took such delight in)" (Reed 167). This, of course, reminded me of The Sun Also Rises and made me wonder what it would look like if I thought about it in the context of Mumbo Jumbo. As I was skimming through the book to help refresh my memory I noticed how atonist the book seemed so it made sense that Reed referenced it. For example, there is the romanticization of the Basques. But thinking about history in the context of Mumbo Jumbo, The Sun Also Rises could have been an Atonist novel similar to how Harding could have been an Atonist puppet even though his slogan, "a return to normalcy", wasn't in reference to Jes Grew.
Since the overall plot of The Sun Also Rises is clearly Atonist, I decided to try to look at some of the main characters and judge where I think they would land on a scale from Hinckle Von Vamptom to Papa Labas. I started with Jake and decided he would land towards Hinckle Von Vampton simply because he is quite racist and homophobic and is one of the biggest fans of the bullfighting . For example, he makes fun of an African- American's speech and is called an aficionado. As for Bill he is around the same as Jake but is a little more outwardly so. Then there is Brett. Unlike the other two, she isn't racist or homophobic. She even defends some people from Jakes at times and seems involved in the culture in France. However, she doesn't really respect the culture in Spain. As such she is more towards the upper-middle of the scale. As for Cohn, I don't really know where he would fit because his role in the novel was mostly related to Brett.

Plausible History

It is undeniable that the history portrayed by Doctorow in Ragtime has its elements of fiction. But Doctorow writes the book so that some of what he made up has an element of plausibility. This is especially true towards the start of the book where he would add small details to show that the events he was talking about happened but nobody else knew about them. This creates this bubble in history where something could have happened, but as far as we know didn't. But the bubble only remains if you don't look farther into what Doctorow is writing about. If you do, there are small details that can disprove it. An example of this is the strange scene in the prison between Harry Houdini and Harry Thaw. At the end of the scene, Doctorow writes, "Houdini was to tell no one of this strange confrontation". Of course, if you look into it Thaw was in a different prison than the one Houdini escaped from. However, if you didn't look it up you have to consider the fact that it might have happened.

Throughout the beginning of the book, Doctorow continues to hide his fake events in bubbles in the past. Another example is the meeting between Ford and Morgan and the secret society no one else knew about. However, as the book progresses, Doctorow does less and less to make it seem like the events are true. This starts around the time of Coalhouse's retaliation for the vandalism of his car. In fact,  after the bombing and attack on the second firehouse, Doctorow does the exact opposite of what he was doing before. Instead of having very few individuals know what happened, all of America knows. He writes, "The story of Coalhouse's second attack made the front page of every newspaper in the country". Of course, this raises the question of why Doctorow would specifically write it so that it shows that everyone would have known about it. I think that it is so he can show just how easily events that are thought to be incredibly famous at the time can so easily be forgotten over time. And at the same time how easy it is to write a fictional story that can just seem like forgotten history.

Ragtime Pride

Doctorow has portrayed pride it 3 main ways in Ragtime and for the most part, they apply to three different characters . He starts out by talking about Ford watching the results of the assembly line. He portrays Ford as proud of his work but makes his reaction seem robotic. He writes it where he has Ford give himself a set amount of time to celebrate which makes his life seem so structured that he seems robotic. However, he also acknowledged Ford's genius in the creation of the assembly line but is ironic when talking about his views of the workers. This creates the sense that Ford's pride is deserved because of his genuis but Doctorow mocks how far it goes because Ford thinks he is so much better.
The next person Doctorow writes about and portrays as proud is Morgan. He starts off by talking about Morgan's search for the reason he is so much better than everyone else. However, when Doctorow is writing about Morgan he uses a much more ironic tone and makes fun of him. Doctorow writes about how he took his prexisting wealth and increased it by being cutthroat. In this way he doesn't acknowledge the fact that he deserves to be proud of what he has accomplished unlike Ford, and even uses Ford to make fun about his great discovery about reincarnation.
The last proud person that Doctorow has written about is Coalhouse Walker. Unlike the other two Coalhouse isn't rich but he still is a respectable person with a good job. The way Doctorow tells the story of how his car got vandalised makes it seem like Coalhouse did the reasonable thing. Doctorow also writes it in such a way that shows how much he respects Coalhouse's pride. Doctorow also uses irony when other people complain about Coalhouse's pride to make it seem like they were the ones being riduculous. Since Doctorow seems to respect Coalhouse completely, his pride seems to be the most deserved in the boook.