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.