Act 2, Scene 2 in M.Butterfly

Cronberg’s M. Butterfly film adaptation, Act 2 Scene 2, has been changed from the original text in both setting and script. There is no direct addressing of Gallimard to the crowd, which is not necessary anyway, as the action and conversation played out does enough to tell the story. In addition there is no flat or apartment that Song and Gallimard share. The setting instead has been changed to mountains somewhere. As the couple speaks to one another, this setting works for the scene by still providing them with a place of seclusion. In the film adaptation it is visually a beautiful scene.

The conversation has also changed. It begins with Song asking Gallimard to explain a mystery as to why Gallimard would choose “an Oriental woman with a chest like a boy over a Western woman.” This emphasizes the fact that Song is a man and Gallimard doesn’t know. Yet the viewer sees Gallimard respond as a man in love- and it is portrayed effectively in the film adaptation. Gallimard responds saying “Not a boy, but an innocent young schoolgirl, waiting to learn her lessons.” Gallimard is in love with this idea of what he later refers to as a perfect woman, and here a slave.

The scene is also a testament to how well Song is carrying on the role of a woman. He/She shows this by telling Gallimard what he wants to hear referring to herself as his slave. Also by telling Gallimard about the old Chinese proverb which says, “Teaching a girl lessons is like throwing rice in the wind,” further adds to the old mystic of the Oriental woman that Song is trying illustrate. Gallimard in the film adaptation responds in a form of rescue to her words telling her, “He is not threatened by his slave, especially when his slave has so much to teach him.” In a sense they are both showing each other a mutual respect in the roles they are fulfilling, Gallimard the dominant cruel but loving white man and Song the mystical submissive Oriental woman.

The movie scene is a good addition/adaptation from the play because it maintains and affirms their roles to each other. However the play’s script does hint more to the fact that Song is a spy, prying into Gallimard’s work with questions and flattery. In the movie though we find out Gallimard does give information knowingly for the release of his so-called son. But even in the play Song being a spy is something we come to find out anyway, so in regards to this particular scene the movie adaptation was better in place to me. It added to the confusion of identities in the seeming “comfortableness” which Gallimard and Song have with each other.

 

Irony and a Power Play, by a Douche-Bag

My post is about Iago’s speech from Act 2, scene 3, lines 262-272.

This entire speech of Iago’s is saturated in irony. First there is the idea that he is acting this out on a stage, at the same time he is acting out his plan to crush Othello, irony. The first sentence out of his mouth here is ironic because we the readers/audience know Iago is a liar even as he claims his own reputation as Honest Iago by saying, “As I am an honest man…”, and then he goes on to refute the whole idea of reputation. I also see it as Iago rubbing it into Cassio’s face by saying, look reputation doesn’t mean anything, admitting where he has good reputation he doesn’t respect it. Cassio also should have taken it into question a soldier not valuing reputation in some way.

The manner of the speech is ironic. First Iago sets up Cassio to get in trouble with Othello and then after it works he ends up feeding him advice to make it better. Only we the readers/audience know it’s part of his plan.

There is an antithesis of ideas in saying, “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving.” Reputation is being defined as gotten without earning and lost without deserving. It’s a juxtaposition of ideas. One can’t lose what they didn’t get. Reputation is being defined by Iago as a stereotype, given by others. As a reader I see him winking here as if to say, ” Yup, take me for example, I’m nothing like my reputation. People call me Honest Iago, but really I’m a jealous lying douche-bag.”

There are examples of parenthesis as Iago breaks off into tangents. These tangents are examples of apposition. In almost every line of the speech Iago makes a statement, comma, and then goes on to explain what he said. The only one line he doesn’t explain is, “What, man, there are ways to recover the general again.”, also ironic because Iago knows he set it up that way so Cassio could be used for blame later. This scene comes after one of Iago’s power play moves, where he just set up Cassio by getting him drunk and into trouble. This idea of the struggle for power and how it identifies the character echoes Bartel’s essay. This scene exemplifies what Bartels writes on page 451, “Iago’s attempts to demonize and disempower Othello respond, then, not to racial or sexual difference that proves the Moor an inferior outsider but to a political status that makes him the authorizing insider and that threatens to keep Iago in the margins of power.” Although this action is taken directly on Cassio it is indirectly towards disempowering Othello. Again it is just one of Iago’s first power play moves in his greater chosen villanous plan.

On Sunflower Sutra

Sorry friends, whatever place I copied the sutra from, won’t let me type normal anywhere, so Sunflower Sutra, by Allen Ginsberg, a poem filled with imagery, trashed by it, to show how America was trashed by mobilization and industrialization. Sutra literally means a line that holds things together, which is just how this poem is laid out and runs down, in a line, which gives it power in its flow. Sutra metaphorically refers to an aphorism (a line or rule) which works as Ginsberg’s aphorism of the sunflower as America. The imagery is not only trash but also uses  dirty language to suggest the same filth given America, this sunflower, is covered in. There is a repetition of dust, shade, shadow and gray which gives the reader that feeling of what has been worked over on this sunflower, the darkness. Yet I find with the repetition of riverbanks we are called to reflect, what else does one do on the side of the riverbank, like Jack and Allen do here, but reflect, and see life in it’s reflection. After all that is the purpose of this sutra, to reflect on what has happened to this poor sunflower, and America. Yet in the last break of the poem there is a vision of hope for America, an affirmation not seen, “we’re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside”.

Note the appearance of the poem being laid out in a line. It reminds me of Jack Kerouac’s spontaneous prose form, to write with uninterrupted thought, which even with punctuation this poem reads like a locomotive drives, down a line. The uses of commas, periods, and hyphens stress parts Ginsberg brings attention to. The stanzas are each almost small meditations in themselves about  America, whether religious, or focusing on Wasteland images, or just about the sunflower, a jewel-center for Ginsberg to dig on.

The sunflower becomes personified seven stanzas down. It is described as a shadow of a man ruined by industrialization. There is a lot of juxtaposition in this poem on a broader sense of nature and industry, the old ancient America (seen in the sunflower) and the new trashed wasteland vision, and then in word choice like toothless mouth, treadless tires, steel roots, and so on.

The rhymes are off but come and go, especially when read aloud such as in busted rusty, pole and soul, hairy head like a dried spiderweb. There is also alliteration here and there, a lot of times with s sounds.

The poem itself reflects the voice of the beat generation, not beat as down and out, as this poem suggests at points that America is seen as at first, but beat in the other sense, a state of blessedness or giving joy or bliss, which is in the end what this sunflower represents.

sunflower sutra, by allen ginsberg

Sunflower Sutra I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry. Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery. The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily. Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust– –I rushed up enchanted–it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake–my visions–Harlem and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past– and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye– corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb, leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear, Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then! The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives, all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt–industrial– modern–all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown– and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos–all these entangled in your mummied roots–and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze! How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul? Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive? You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower! And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not! So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter, and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen, –We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we’re blessed by our own seed & golden hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision. Allen Ginsberg Berkeley, 1955

 

Bring a bag, just in case

Select one figure of speech eh? Well at first reading of these poems I was sucked in to After Arthur Rimbaud. After reading Corbett’s Rhetoric guide, well it’s actually kind of amazing how many examples of figures of speech I can find in this one poem. As far as tropes go, this poem has metaphor and personification.  Then in the area of schemes I can see alliteration.

Here is a poem about a person described as a ship, which is in it self personification. The object is described having human qualities; it sees things such as skies and seas, and what other men have thought they’ve seen. It is also about a poem calledThe Drunken Boat, and about the poet of that poem, Arthur Rimbaud. The rhetorical effect of the personification is that the reader can see details from the perspective of a boat, in forms of metaphor.

Here are the implied comparisons of two (or more) things unlike in nature, yet with something in common: Where, dyeing all the blue, the maddened flames and stately rhythms of the sun, stronger than alcohol, more great than song, fermented the bright red bitterness of love. Maddened flames and rhythms of the sun are not seemingly alike yet they have heat and energy in common. Also maddened flames and rhythms of the sun are compared to alcohol and song, all unlike in nature yet all have strength in sensory images. One can hear the greatness of a song, taste the strength of alcohol, and feel the heat from both the flames and sun. If looking at these images together they all present certain energies also. This rhetoric effect gives aliveness and strength to the poem itself in the comparison of sensory images. It doesn’t stop there.

Alliteration: sweeter than sour, brine of brackish, sweeping and swell, star-seeped and mystic sea, and seen skies split with light, and night. The rhyme and rhythm of these words and lines give a kind of wavy read to the poem, like how it would feel to be a boat, or I guess on a boat. The way the alliteration reads adds that quality of rhythm like being on the sea, once again, it gives aliveness to the poem.

There could be a great many other figures of speech in this here poem. I feel like I could find antithesis, anastrophe, and epistrophe. There are instances of puns in this poem too. Like Corbett has pointed out these figures of speech help give aliveness to the poem. The figures of speech “decorate” the words and give strong images to the reader.

 

A first thought on PF

Philadelphia Fire is a trying book, and nothing quite like I had expected. I was imagining a story about a fire, how it happened, why it happened, and maybe what happened after. This book instead is a puzzle. It seems to me to be the puzzle inside this mans head, this man being Cudjoe.

I cannot help recall my struggle with reading, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsing. In Pirsing’s book his protagonist is voiced in many ways. It is extremely confusing, which is the same sense I am getting from Philadelphia Fire. But the epiphany, which doesn’t clear everything up, it just provides some explanation to the drifting sifting points of view, (which is actually just one character) is that the protagonist is insane, crazy, literally, has went crazy and is dealing with his two personalities in his mind. I was trying to believe that maybe Cudjoe was a poetic character. Wideman uses a lot of metaphors, alliterations, allusions to other stories, the book even reads like spoken word at times, its saturated in imagery, so much as a reader I forget where I am, what time I’m in and whose speaking in the story. My conclusion is that it’s still Cudjoe, and his many voices. The real correlation came on page 122,

“ Why this Cudloe, then? This airy other floating into the shape of my story. Why am I him when I tell certain parts? Why am I hiding from myself? Is he mirror or black hole?”

Here I see Cudjoe now addressing himself, his voices addressing each other. I am not saying he is insane or has had past insanity like the character of  Pirsing’s but he is battling within himself, and not in a way I always find sane.

There is a theme of age that seems repetitious, not only in talking about the child Simba and the children he meets who are family friends, or the children he teaches, or his own children, but also in the many ways Wideman references to childhood stories. Throughout the book are references to The Lion King, Gulliver’s Travels, Humpty Dumpty, Wizard of Oz, Bambi, and other Disney characters. Then there are all the images and references to the Bible, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, Greek mythologies, Oedipus, The Tempest, Charles Dickens, and Shakespeare.  It is age symbolizing time, as is pointed out on page 133, “ So this narrative is a sport of time.”

Then the story shifts to Wideman getting a letter from a member of Move. So I’m left wondering when is it Wideman’s head we are in as readers and when is it Cudjoe’s? Is this voice in a head to be seen as insanity or is this just the author’s tricky use of point of view switches? This book covers enough points of view to make me as a reader wonder, like I said, where I am and who am I listening to?

 

Time and being a child in PF

“ The play’s really about Prospero’s guts. Everyman. The inner drama. The war of light and darkness within our souls.” (P145)

Philadelphia Fire was nothing like I expected.  The story itself deals with battles. There is a battle of voices, a battle of ages, and a battle of contradicting ideas, metaphors and imagery. Many times throughout the story I was confused to whose voice I was hearing. The points of view switched rapidly, as did the time and places the story was taking place.

The theme of time, it moving and not moving, or being stuck in time was shown a lot through characters. Time represents another dueling force. Towards the beginning Cudjoe reflects on watching Sam’s daughter Cassy showering. In his moments alone he thinks about how he would explain himself to his friend, watching his daughter shower. He explains her as a duality though, something of a woman on her own, and something of her parents joy, something so young and alive in the night, and something foreshadowed to be dead in a car crash.

He talks about his son, when wondering if he will ever write his story. His son is stuck, literally in prison, but also in between the idea of age and time. His explains his son sits in limbo, he is left with the chaos of his personality, the duality within one’s self. His parents want him to be tried as a juvenile while the court is trying him as an adult.

Later he reflects on his grandmother’s birthday. There is a great tribute to the difference of age in the room. He talks about the two decades living, his grandmother and grandniece, in the same room. He writes, “ A life can be a great soaring arch with the shadows and sorrow of a century huddled under its span or shorter than the tick of a clock.”

The story of the girl Melissa again exemplifies the theme of time and duality. “ She is perhaps enchanted. By her time of life. Neither little girl nor teenager.” Then taking that away it says, “double Dutching like theres’ no tomorrow. Because there isn’t . For some.” It stressed that children aren’t children for very long, and we never know how much time we have.

The book underlies with the story of the Philadelphia Fire. The fire is a reminder of death and the death of eleven people. Then again the story is saturated with images from the Bible, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and of birth. There are also all of the references to childhood characters and stories such as Disney characters, Mickey mouse, Donald Duck, Bambi, Humpty Dumpty, the Lion King, and the Wizard of Oz. There are repeated childhood sayings like sticks and stones, once upon a time, and walls fall down. The whole story seems to be a reminder that time is fleeting and childhood cannot be held onto.

 

Characters and Identities In Tar Baby

It is the characters in Tar Baby and their consistency to identify themselves and each other that hold precedence in this story. Each character has his or her developed background story and is deeply rooted in it. Valerian (valerian-also the name of a plant which helps to induce sleep- which his character is always in a greenhouse and has so much trouble sleeping) is set to his destiny, being that he will inherit a candy factory and retire at age 65. For the intent he is said to have in retiring he finds it one step closer to death. He regretfully comes to find that he has been clueless to important things in his life and being the powerful figure he is blames his cluelessness. He relates his guilt in carelessness to innocence. Sorry but he didn’t take me as the innocent kind. (P243) He did not however torture his baby son.

Then there is Margaret. This is a tormented character in many ways. First is her past and only being able to recognize her self as a thing of beauty. (P82-83) She is tormented by a lack of compassion from her husband, her son, and her help. She is lost in figuring out who she is and what she wants, yet finds deliciousness in torturing her son as a baby. It is only when she is finally forced to admit this that she is able to take hold of her identity and force.

The character of Jadine is the girl without a mother who has come to identify herself with the idea of making it in the world. Even when she gives in to love it is that identity of an orphan being comforted that she relates to love. Her identity however is so strong to her character that it eventually leads her back to her own loneliness, the only thing she does find strength in. Her NY manifesto is: Talk shit. Take none. (P222)

Son on the other hand did not always know who he was, but he knew what he was like. (P165)  His strong hold on his identity from his past, and of being a black male delude his character into constantly having to be fighting for something. It is shown in his interactions with Jadine. He can only relate to the identity he knows, the women he knows, the place and people he came from in Eloe, and his ten cents. In the end he abandons love he and runs up to join the horseman. This comes full circle in supporting his identity which he most strongly relates to which is one of origin.

The characters of Sydney and Ondine are the most rational of the bunch. It is the job of being caretakers and also their worry of necessity to take care of each other and themselves that creates strength behind their characters. However simple their beliefs they too hold to them. Seem like folks used to take care of folks once upon a time, (P283) Sydney says to his wife. They have only to identify with their own caring simplicities.

I want to mention also how Morrison personifies the images throughout the story and give them identities also. The clouds march, the mists breath, the moon watches, the tress dance and the fogs sit. They are like spirits always moving and changing with the energy of the characters.

Voices Among Us, aka POV’s

Omniscient point of View- Winesburg, Ohio By Sherwood Anderson

Anderson as the narrator tells the story of the small town of Winesburg, and all the peculiar characters in the town. He relates to the reader the thoughts and feelings of those characters, especially George Willard, the young newspaper reporter. Anderson’s omniscient point of view travels through all the individual stories of the townspeople, their pasts, presents, and afterwards, and how they are retold to George. Readers can feel the characters feelings through their told struggles. We are able to see what shapes the ideas and opinions and decisions of George through the telling of these stories and his own events, which lead to his eventual conclusion that he has grown into a man and must leave Winesburg. Anderson’s point of view allows us to see this small town of Winesburg, and its effects on the growing up of George Willard.

Intrusive Narrator- Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

The narrator Steinbeck tells the reader in the preface: “This is the story of Danny and of Danny’s friends and of Danny’s house. “ The reader sees Danny and his friends change on a day-to-day basis, accompanied with drinking a lot of wine. Steinbeck relates the story of Danny and his friends to the old story of the Knights of the Round Table, a symbol of holy friendship. We not only see the story unfold but Steinbeck explains at times the motives and actions of the characters, such as in the character of Pilon, “Enough of Pilon to do good and to be rewarded by the glow of human brotherhood accomplished.”(P62) The intrusive voice of Steinbeck leaves us with no doubt that when Danny and his house perish so do all remains of friendship.

Focus of Narration/Focus of Character- The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The story of the Little Prince, although told from a first person point of view and not a third person point of view still seems to me to fall under this category in so much as it resembles the example given in Abrams literary glossary. “Both the focus of narration and the focus of character (that is, of perception) in a single story may shift rapidly from the narrator to a character in the story, and from one character to another.”(P273) The pilot narrator, who tells us the story from his “I” point of view, lands in the desert upon where he meets the Little Prince. For the entirety of the story the point of view drifts back and forth from the pilot, being a grown-ups’ point of view to the Little Prince’s point of view, which is that of a child. The two learn from each other’s point of views and find a common understanding of friendship. They show each other how differences in points of view can really matter to one person. Through the two’s perception the reader comes to see what’s really important.

First-Person point of view: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac as the character Sal Paradise in On the Road tells my favorite point of view here.  Sal tells us his story of travel in the first-person, the journey of a young man searching through his freedom for the American Dream. Sal/Kerouac tells us about all the beautiful places he goes, the variety of characters he meets, how his ideas are affected by them, and also by his life on the road. It is the young “I” voice telling the story of a young America. It is this first-person point of view voice that becomes the voice of an American generation.

Limited point of view: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

On the Road is a first-person point of view but under this heading in Abrams I was drawn to the words “stream of consciousness”, which is a term greatly related to Kerouac’s work. He also has an idea of writing called spontaneous prose, which is closely related. Here I believe Kerouac blends the first-person and limited point of view through his interior monologues with the characters. Even though the story is told from the “I” point of view Kerouac stays inside the confines of what Sal Paradise sees, feels, and experiences through the story. It is Sal/Kerouac’s stream of consciousness that gives on the road it’s blended voice.

Second person point of view: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins

“You” are an ambitious young stockbroker named Gwendolyn. Your boyfriend’s monkey Andre is missing, your 300 pound psychic friend Q-Jo is missing, your job is up in the air, and you have befriended a man named Larry Diamond who assures you, we are all amphibians from space. The narrator Robbins tells you, you are having the weekend from hell, as if you didn’t already know.  You stumble through these anomalies to find out what your next step in life should be, with the knowledge, “We are amphibians from space and the Universe is no more logical than the stock market.”(P304)

Self Conscious narrator: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is noted in Abrams as a first-person point of view. Yet Nick Carraway also falls under the heading of a self-conscious narrator.  He is an unreliable narrator. He modifies the story to his own opinions as the events open up to him.  He tells us in the beginning, “I am inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me…” and later says, “reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” (P1)  The reader never gets the truth of the story and events that take place nor does the reader get to understand whom the protagonist, Jay Gatsby really is. It is a story told only by what Nick Carraway sees through his romantic mind. He relates to his difficulty of writing the truth in the beginning by stating he is inclined to reserve all judgments. The reader is conscious of the fact we get the story of Gatsby only through what is representative to Nick.

Race and Ethnicity in Medieval Times

The definitions and ideas of race and ethnicity are still being argued over today. The Modern world is having trouble-defining race. In times now people feel uncomfortable using the word race because of racism and the inability for everyone to see the common meaning of how race is defined. However it seemed in the medieval ages the defining of race came as an easier answer.

I am in favor of the simpler view of defining race and ethnicity; such as it was in medieval times. Originally it was thought that we were all in some way or another descendants of Adam and therefore all human and all of the “same family tree of humanity.” (Bartlett 45) The Medieval ages defined people not by color or creed (p50) but by where people had come from. Peoples’ race depended upon their custom, language and law. (P53) There is no stereotyping. The definition of race and ethnicity are biological and geographical. With this, the medieval idea of race and ethnicity we see people by where they live and what governs their lives, rather than a modern idea of color.

If the modern defining of race and ethnicity are looked upon in such a negative light, why not reevaluate the idea back to that of medieval times? In this way, society would be less afraid of using the word race in the wrong context. People could use the word race from an unbiased standpoint, one that does not imply inferiority based on color or stereotype. I am not saying I would be excited to be seen as a Long Islander, but the fact would be true. American could be seen as an ethnicity also, it being a place where people live and have customs and laws that govern them. People would no longer be referring to race as a stereotype. Race would be a fact of “geographic determinism.” (P45) The idea from Hippocratic “Airs Waters, and Places”, that states people resemble where they are from is a simple idea and one Modernists should reconsider.