A Second Attempt

I actually might have picked up a little something this time around with the reading. My entire last blog was over how I couldn't understand any of it, so this should be a little bit of an improvement.

At this point, I don't like Hank much anymore. Here's the problem... On one hand, he tries to act as if he wants to make a difference, that he's disgusted by how things are done in the sixth century.

"To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags -- that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy..." [65]

There you go. He obviously doesn't like it. And he makes these kind of similar statements throughout the entire thing. However, he still seems arrogant to me. Like the whole episode about the fountain in the Valley of Holiness or whatever it's called -- going out of his way to make a big show of it (kind of like the nobility about everything, cough cough) and humiliate Merlin. He takes advantage of the common people and the monks by degrading what they consider to be the cornerstone of their lives -- the Church -- into something that's fixable by plugging up a leak. Doesn't bother to explain it to them really, either. Then he goes on with all the fireworks... I don't know, but I just don't like him. Here he is, saying how he wants to make a difference, but then he still associates largely with the nobility and makes an effort to appease them, goes about spending all that money for dinner to humiliate Dowley... I mean, come on. Hypocrite. He even says at the beginning that he has a leg up on everyone else because he's more educated... I don't know how many times it's seemed like he's looked down on people when he finds out they can't read. I feel like I'm ranting, but I just want to say -- who does he think he is?!

A Little Mark Twain

I just finished reading through Ch. 10 of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court...
And I have no idea what to make of it.

I've really never been in this situation before; in fact, I'm known to say far too much rather than not enough when it comes to anything literature-related. All my past English teachers both hated and loved me for that very reason.

But, I really can't seem to pick up on anything but the literal. I have to say that I find some passages really funny... Maybe detect a little irony, some sarcasm... Yeah, but that's it. The story just seems so literal that I can't figure out what to say about it. I don't know where to begin or even how I would begin if I wanted to analyze it.

What do I know about Mark Twain? Not much, other than what I've just vaguely heard from other people. I've read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and I loved both... But, I had a problem picking up on the language then, and it seems to not have corrected itself since that point. Feels like his writing is styled around the "off-the-cuff" feeling, kind of how I would consider my thought processes run. He'll -- meaning Twain as the main character's voice -- talk about one thing, maybe run off on a tangent that he claims we'll later understand better, and then go into another little "story" or whatever you want to call it.

I'll feel better when I get an idea of what everyone else thinks, and hopefully we'll all be a little lost... Not so much "lost" but instead a little "shallow"... Yeah, I just feel like all I'm getting from it is the shallow part of the story and missing some sort of deeper meaning.

Any ideas?

Intro. to "Black Metropolis"

I was given two assigned readings for my English II class with the instruction to develop a blog on one of the two, expressing my initial reactions to the piece and discussing whatever else I found important about it. I chose to write on the second assigned piece, as indicated in the title. The introduction mentions discusses the writers' motivation behind the text, the writers being a Richard Wright, a St. Clair Drake, and a Horace R. Clayton, all African-American gentlemen living in Chicago in the post-WWII era, though only very shortly after such.

What interested me most was the constant use of paradoxical, opposing language... Constant mention of black vs. white, life vs. death, and other 'opposites' to set the tone for the work, with it being focused on how prejudice still plays an integral role and will continue to do so not only in terms of 'black vs. white' but on a much larger scale. Firstly the writers define their perspective of the city of Chicago during that time, with an "...open and raw beauty... that seems to either kill or endow one with the spirit of life." Even in that sentence, at the very beginning of the text, one can see the blending of opposites, which -- in that certain section of the text -- goes on to define Chicago as a city both impersonal and personal, complete with the unfeeling machine-aspect of industry that the city is so well known for and the emotional worker behind it. The theme of opposites continue, with the main writer saying, "... I found that sincere art and honest science were not far apart..." And, quite honestly, at this part of the essay the writer has moved on from discussing the city to the general understanding of Negro life... Just the same, there is a slight comparison between the city and the African-American population of Chicago that never is really made distinct.

I wish that I could go on further. I made so many more connections with how opposites defines the 'Negro' and his chosen city, the machine of class distinction and the industrial Chicago in general, that I could go on for far longer than 200-250 words... I mean, the writer throws so many polar opposites into one sentence so flawlessly that I sit amazed when the picture is still so clear, and then much later when he/they go on to, in a way, glorify Hitler... Really, it's a stunning piece of work.

I mean, why would a black man, in post-WWII society, choose to go to Chicago? I could not get that thought out of my head throughout the entire essay, and then my very question was answered in a beautiful way... Though the city of Chicago is so machinated, industrial, unfeeling, it allows someone to go toward that sense of unguaranteed success with the same freedom as that of a white man, of someone without boundaries and enslavement. It is simply free will that makes it so appealing.

I wish that I could go on! But, I guess I'll have to stop it there.