Theme and Harlem

So you have to write a paper that will come out of you, so that it will be true.  But the truth for one person might be different than another person, especially if the races between the people are different.  Your perspective changes when you are the minority in your class room.  People might expect things from you that you refuse to live up to.  But when you are 22, your identity might still be forming.  Hughes likes to eat, sleep, drink and be in love and he would also like a pipe for Christmas or records.  But just because he is colored, dos not put him in the position not to like something just because he is black.  Because the paper must come out of him, will the paper also be black, or will it be white, so that it can connect with the teacher, who is also white?  Maybe the teacher does not want to be a part of a black man in college.  But they learn from each other and one is more free then the other.

What happens when a dream is not fulfilled?  Not a dream likes “I’m going to conquer the sea
 or anything like that.  But a concert dream?  Can it be easily forgotten or does it become a weight.  It can’t just pop off like a hair.  It can be like sugar, dried up meat, or rotten meat or does it explode? Either way it is going to leave a mark.

Harlem and Theme for English B deal with different subject matter.  “Theme” has to deal with what is considered truth between the races.. While someone could say that since both races can go to school together their truths about school should be the same since they are equal now.  But that might not be true.  If both went for tutoring, would both receive equal treatment from the teacher?  Since both students live in different environments, how does each one perceive there environment?  Can we all really perceive what another man perceives as truth and do we want to, especially if that other person’s truth might limit us.   Harlem deals with dreams and what happens when we can’t live up to them.  We all dream of something, whether it is a family or a certain job, when we can’t gain that dream, it will affect us, especially when we get older.  Oh we can say that we are fine settling for our number two job or dream, but it weighs on us.  Thoughts sometimes goes through our head such as “what could I have done differently “ or “ if it wasn’t for (blank) then I would have my dream.  It could become like dead weight or cause us to lash out and self-destruction.  Actually some people might prefer self-destruction over not have their dream or drag someone else down with them if they are after the same dream.  All the ways that Hughes describes the dream deferred is physical, from drying up to stinking like rotten meat.  These are all things that are difficult to hide, so is he trying to say that you can’t side the effects of a deferred dream and indirectly a broken person?

What is Afirca to a man who was never raised there?  Your ancestors come from there, but besides that how does it relate to you?  Is Africa noisy or is that just the sound of nature?  Are the men Strong and Bronze or regal black?  If one went back to Africa, he or she would have to adapt to it’s ways.  Are the jungle boys and girls like us, just searching for love.  The Imagery is beautiful, but could we deal with the customs, the reality?

When I was younger there was a movement to go back to Africa by the Black culture.  Whether or not it was a call to visit or move back I can’t remember.  Now I could said that when I was a kid I thought the movement was stupid, but I was obsessed over power rangers at the time so that would have been a lie.  But I do think the movement was stupid.  Now I’m not against exploring one’s background, but doing something just because it was a cultural movement is stupid.  If you had a genuine interest in Africa, then go visit, but if your interest is fueled by everyone else doing it then that is bad.  Our culture has changed so much from our time in Africa.  We have mostly adopted the Christan God, as a group know very little about our “homeland” and would probably take a long time to adapt if we could.  We call ourselves African-Americas, but it really just a title.  Cullen consider the Gods of Africa to be Heathens and he has no need for them.  But then Cullen identifies God as not black (“Wishing He I served were Black”)  So what does that say about him?

I Marvel

(Instead of a summary of the poem, I’m just going to repeat instead)    I Doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind and did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is Baited by the fickle fruit, declare If Merely a brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair.  Inscrutable His ways are and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand.  Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black and bid him sing!

If man asked God why he did so many things and I covered them all then I would have a really long blog!  But I’ll just cover this poem instead.  The main question Countee asks is what is God’s reasoning behind his choices and brings to light one of the most innocent questions usually asked by kids about God, If God is good then why does he let bad things happen.  Now one could argue about free will and choice, but that would be getting off topic of the work at hand.  The first half of the poem is asking questions, the one I find interesting is the one involving Tantalus, one of the many characters in Greek mythology.  Tantalus was invited to eat at the Gods table, but he stole ambrosia and nectar to bring to his people (and probably for himself) The thing about ambrosia and nectar is that it made humans like the gods.  The gods did not like this so they put him in the underworld.  I find interesting the Countee puts the reference to Tantlus, who wanted to be immortal, after the line “Why flesh that mirrors Him must die someday”.  Questioning why we must die and why we are punished for trying to attain immortality has a nice duality to it.  He then come to the conclusion that most people just go to, that we can’t understand his ways and that he is always right.

The love song

T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one man’s response to death or someone talking to someone else who is dying for the intro.  The translation of the intro is someone talking to someone else that is about to enter the abyss, since they aren’t coming back.  As for the poem it’s self, it seems to be about a man longing for a relationship.  (Which is about half the guys in college?)  There a line that is repeated through the “stream of consciousness” poem that says “In the room the women come and go, Talking about Michelangelo”.  It seems that the narrator is in his apartment complex, a setting that seems familiar to him.  The narrator describes what is outside, which is a fog that seems to cover all over the city.  Many thought go thorug his head, such as how to prepare his face to meet other faces.  He has a lot of time, time for decisions not to be made, time for visions of what could have been if he had tried.  His insecurities feed into his indecision, asking himself “Do I Dare? Do I Dare?”  He worries about his thinning hair and his attire.  He knows the body of the women that pass by, but can’t approach them.  In the end he is his own worst enemy, he will destroy himself before he even has a chance.

     The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is the thought process of every insecure guy ever born.  But it specifically is the thought process of a middle age man that can’t build up the courage to talk to  women.  Since it is stream of consciousness, the poem comes off as jumbled, but focused on a main topic.  He over thinks every possible interaction that he could possibly have.  Instead of talking to women he plans things, lines 122 and 123 give that feeling.  “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare eat a peach” Even an action that doesn’t concern women is concerning to him.  He is afraid of his own word “It’s impossible to say what I mean”. Line 84 says “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker” makes the reader aware that the narrator is aware of his own short comings, he admits that he is afraid.  In a way this is a very introverted man.  If it wasn’t for the fact that his hair was described as thinning, then the reader could have mistaken the narrator for a teenage boy who is trying to find his way.  You have to wonder if it has always been like this for him or did some event happen to him to turn him to this personality?

The Wasteland

T.S Elliot's The Wasteland is surreal to say the least.  I can't really make a summary of it, but i'll try my best.  The Wasteland is split up into five sections, The burial of the dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death By water and What the Thunder said.  Each section, eventhoguh it deals with different things, seems to be connected.  Burial of the dead speaks of clairvoyantes and memories of mountains and childhood.  While The Fire Sermon details an encounter between a man and a woman that may or may not be concensual.  These stories seem to detail memories of events.  They seem to be foggy and you only remember certain details, but you sure do remember the feelings.   The Game of chess seems to be linked to The Fire Sermon.

I wil admit this is not the most confusing piece of media i have experience, but it probally in the top ten.  All the sections seems to be connect.  I get the feeling they happen in the same state or atleast nearby each other.  They all speak of an unreal city, which I assume is the setting.  The ambiguity of it brings about some questions such as what was the purpose or was there even suppose to be one.

Huck chapters 23-30

The show that the King and the Duke put on was defiantly not for children.  The Duke took care of the door until the theater couldn’t hold any more men..  He then went to the stage through the back and started to work up the crowd about how this was going to be a great tragedy.  At the point that the crowd couldn’t take anymore, the king came out on all fours, painted with stripes and naked.  The crowd laughed and howled and the Duke dropped the curtain.  He said that they will only be performing for two more nights due to prior engagements.  The crowd, not taking this news well, asked, Is that all?  They were about to cause an riot until one big man got up and said, We don’t want to be the laughing stock of the town, so we should sell up the show so that everyone else will be fooled too, so we are not the only ones that are fools.  So the second night went ok, but the third night the townspeople were ready with rotten food to throw.  The Duke got a man to watch the door for a minute, while he and Huck started to speed walk to the raft after they got out of the theater.  They discovered that the king wasn’t in the town at all and all of them escaped by the raft with everything going according to plan.  They took in 465 dollars for the three nights.  After The Duke and King fell asleep, Jim started to question how the King and Duke acts, that they were rapscallions.  Huck said that most royalty is like that.

So after sleeping The Duke and The Kings tried to come up with some plan.  They dressed up Jim in some of the costume left over from King Lear, and put a sign up in front of his wigwam calling him a sick Arab.  Soon the group bought some new cloths and started to head for a town, deciding to start a a plan once they get there.  They saw a steamboat floating above the city and decided to take a boat to it.  A young man rode with them, which the King decided to ask for information.  Comes to find out that a rich man named Peter Wilks died and that his brothers William and Harvey were being waited for in the town.  The king asked the man all the information that he could about the town until he drained all information.  Then Huck and the crew came ashore and flagged down another Boat towards the village, where when they got there the King introduced himself and the Duke as William and Harvey.  They were informed of Peter’s death and started to mourn.  They also meet the three nieces of Peter, one which was named Mary-Jane.  Everyone was fooled by them, except for the doctor, who didn’t believe the Kings English accent.  After a while the money peter left behind was found and the king hid it under his bed, but Huck started to feel bad about deceiving the Nieces, especially Mary-Jane, so he took the money and hid it in the coffin.  Soon after wards Huck tells Mary-Jane the Truth and the real brothers show up.  Since the village people can’t tell the difference, they decide to use the body to decide through identification.  But while on the way to the body, Jim surprised the party and they were able to escape.  Then The King and The Duke start to fight amongst themselves, until they got drunk.

Human beings, on individual levels, have the capacity to do very good things, but we as a group tend to be very horrible.  Case in point with Huckleberry Finn, If only one person got fooled, he wouldn’t spend effort in getting the whole town to be tricked too just so he wouldn’t be the only fool.  But since a large group of people were fooled, they decided to fool the rest of the town out of their money so that they won’t be the only fools.  They didn’t care that they were indirectly taking money from their fellow neighbors, they just cared that they didn’t look like fools, which was really selfish.  The Village shouldn’t focus all of their anger at Huck’s crew as much as they should towards the first group that saw the show.  If they didn’t lie and just told the truth about the show, then they would not have loosed so much money.  Instead of trying to help their fellow man, they dragged them down with them.  This is something called the crab effect, which is basically a story about a Crab trying to escape from a pot, but his fellow crabs drag him back down repeatedly.  We see the crab effect sometimes in our culture, even sometimes towards college.  Sometimes people will make comments like “oh you think you are better than me because you are going to college?” or they discourage you from going all together.  It might be because they don’t want you to succeeded, that they don’t want you to advance in what your goal is.  This effect is not only limited to college.  Instead of being happy for a friend who won a new car, someone might say “oh why does he get a new car and I don’t” and they might decide to damage the car in some way.  I think that it is a sad condition.  Now my feelings towards The Duke and The King officially changed after they decided to impersonate the brothers of a dead man.  At first their tricks were not on a personal level.  They trick a whole town through a play and the trick worked because a few people in town didn’t want their pride and image hurt.  But through impersonating the Peter Wilks’s brothers, they are playing of a small group of people’s grief, especially the three nieces.  It was at this point that I came to the realization that they could have done this in the past.  How many other people’s lives they have ruined in the past?  They try to rationalize their own actions to themselves by say that the Girl’s will be alright because they will have their house, but that doesn’t justify what they tried to do.  Actually getting to know the victims enforces the fact to the reader that what they are doing is harmful.  Their last victims were a crowd.  It is hard to identify with a crowd because they are a mass.  But an individual is easier to identify with.  An Individual you can find out their history, get to know their personality and see the effect that your actions have.  A crowd usually express one emotion, don’t really have much of a personality and the actions of a crowd usually doesn’t have an effect on an individual level, except for the target of the mob.

The War Prayer

     A community is getting ready to send it’s young men off into a war.  This war is named “The Philippine-American War” Every day the men walk down the street in their new uniforms, with their loved ones cheering them on.  The community has been overunned with patriotism.  The pastors in the churches across the community invoked the God of Battle through their speeches.  The People against the war wanted to speak up and say their peace, but feared for their physical well being.  Then Sunday came soon.  Everyone was in the church, especially the young soldiers with dreams of retreating foes and flashing sabers.  They would be sent off to the front the next day.  The people who had no family to send off to war were envious of the one who did.  Then the Pastor started to read a chapter from the Old Testament to start out the prayer.  No one in the audience can recall a prayer like this one, but during this prayer an old, pale stranger walked in and starts to go towards the pastor.  Soon the pastor finished his prayer and was surprised by the stranger.  The pastor was gently pushed aside and the stranger said that he was a servant of the Lord and your prayers have been heard.  But he warned that the prayer had a message that the community was not aware of.  The community had prayed indirectly for the suffering of complete strangers, their enemies’ families in the war.  After the stranger stopped talking, he left.  He was considered to be a Lunatic.

            The War Prayer talks about something that most people seem to either ignore or forget the enemies’ family.  We tend to dehumanize the people that are against us so that we don’t think about the fact that someone’s son or daughter is not coming home.  War has never been glamorous in reality.  Of course we have the whole “Fighting for ideals and country” thing, but I think in the field it is about survival and human beings on an individual and whole level will try to do their best to survive.  We tend to forget the enemy is human.  But it is not the solider on the fields fault when they pull the trigger.   They are fighting to survive, not for some idea.  It is not a bullet enters a body and a nice little hole is created and you fall down and die.  No, people get blown apart and die slowly sometimes, while their fellow solders either have to watch or leave them behind.  Then there is the why they are fighting.  The soldier probably doesn’t hate the enemy personally, but they are thrown into a fever pitch because their country is at war with their enemy.  The soldier, in a way, is kind of like the bullet they fire.  They are pointed towards their target and sent their way.  A difference is that a solider has a life, a choice, and someone who will miss them when they are gone. So no one really wins in a war.  A country or a group can win, but a person not so much.  Something is always destroyed,  it could be the enemy, someone’s home or sense of security in their world