Itching to be launched, released and freed. Pining to lift up, unburdened. Dying to walk aimlessly – on purpose. This is how I feel at the moment, when finals are the only things stopping me from the total relaxation and carefreeness that come with the winter break. Already I’ve caved in a little, indulging myself in something that was once thought to be just one of many threats to man’s sanity: reading.
If I remember correctly from what one of my favorite professors told me of the people of the earlier ages, several ways a person could grow insane, or mad, include: love, compulsive reading and yearning for knowledge. With regards to love, a person may have too strong emotions that he or she can’t handle when in love with someone. In many Shakespearean plays for example, there are countless characters who kill themselves for their long lost love, or who faint at the thought of losing their lover. With regards to reading, a person may not be able to stop themselves from taking in those word-filled pages, as if they were addicted to them. Yearners for knowledge or wisdom literally couldn’t live their life without learning. All these people’s felt deeply unsatisfied, and so the process of satisfying themselves took over their lives and inevitably caused them to go insane. This is actually one of the reasons I didn’t want to be a philosopher. I didn’t want to go crazy. I knew that changing the way I view the world so drastically by looking at it with philosophical, logical eyes would corrupt, and essentially end, my ignorant bliss. But still, it’s nice to tap into that mode or – more accurately – rush, of trying to satisfy your insatiable soul, every once in a while. Doing so breathes excitement into life, as well as rebelliousness, and lends a check on the list of things to do in life before you die.
I’m not saying I’m on the road to insanity – oh, hell no – I’m just saying that sometimes it’s fun to engage in some indulgence when you have the time . . . as I do during the winter break. “Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil.” Oh how there is a big BUT for all those who are imperfect. Temptation is everywhere. It’s outside our bodies and inside our minds. It’s as strong as the Hulk, yet so subtle; you could imagine the Hulk wearing an invisibility cloak so that when it passes by, you feel a slight swish against your body that piques your curiosity. And then you follow it. Several times I have been tempted to buy things right after I get my pay check. And during those times I’ve caved, to be honest. In fact, I’ve found it hard to go straight home after tutoring because Borders or Barnes and Nobles are along the way. That and the fact that Ate Sherry often picks me up from my tutoring area and I drop her off at either Borders or Barnes and Nobles so she could study there with her friend, Jeremy, before I drive myself home. But while I’m there, I kind of do a little shopping – for myself.
So, when I walked into Barnes and Noble today, with a fresh twenty in my pocket (my hand of course was in that pocket, holding the twenty, for I knew I won’t be able to touch it for long), I felt my heart pumping as a waft of fresh new books entered my system, clouding me with regret from the soon-to-be indulgence.
Needless to say, there are several new additions to my humble library in my room. Some contemporary, some science fiction, and a coming-of-age book (I have a soft spot for that subject). They only further what books and anthologies of short stories I have already on my bookshelf, accrued from semesters of English classes. In an attempt to combat the short attention span I have when reading, I made sure that the new books I have bought will only encourage me to read more books instead of short stories because, you see,if you give me a book, chances are, it’ll collect dust unless it’s super interesting to me; but, if you give me an anthology of short stories, I’ll most likely devour it -- however slowly it may take me, for I do like reading a little each night so that I have some more reading the next night.
There is a method to my madness, but no, I’m not going insane like those earlier people.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Literary paper on Susan Glaspell’s, "Trifles" and Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants”
This was one of my favorite papers I've ever written for one of my favorite professors. Before reading, so that you have a sense of what I'm talking about, allow me to give you some background summary of what the works are about.
Susan Glaspell's Tifles, written in the early 1900s, flows with the characteristics of most modernist works through the way readers are intended to view the characters: by seeing the inner workings of the minds of the characters by means of the inferences made and the implicit nature of the dialogue. Trifles is a one-act play that tells the story of a murder and the searching of the farm house of the murderer, Minnie, who killed her husband, John Wright. Interestingly, through the conversations held between the wives of the male investigators, we learn the real truth behind the crime -- something their men have overlooked.
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is, like Glaspell's work mentioned above, a modernist piece, in that it also has an implicit color. In fact, the reader must infer from the extremely allusive dialogue what the whole conversation between the man and the woman is about. What are they actually talking about when the woman mentions the simile, "hills like white elephants"? What implications does that have on the way men view the world and all human circumstances in comparison - or contrast - to the way women view the world? The setting takes place in a train station alongside a long and lonely road in a desert-like area, with hills, in the Ebro River valley of Spain.
Bernadette Tinio
Professor Scheckel
EGL 218
30 April 2010
Girl Talk
The early 1900s was a period of time in American history that just got out of an old-fashioned ideology of the 1800s, which was the cult of domesticity. The cult of domesticity embodied the concept of the woman as being a mother and wife who was religious, pure (specifically, chaste), submissive to her husband and who worked in her own domestic sphere while her husband worked outside with public affairs. Modernist works that were created at the turn of the century illustrated and revealed the latent and yet instinctual strength of women above the man, or, viewed from a different perspective, the shortcomings of the man. In any case, the women in some modernist works are seen to have more power over their male counterparts. This can be shown in a variety of ways, particularly in language – what is said, what is not said, how information is communicated. Thus, language has grounds in innate feeling. The women in Susan Glaspell’s, Trifles and Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants” are able to show their power through silence, language and the withholding of information because they take advantage of the power of intuition.
One way the women in Glaspell’s one-act play show their power is through their silence – through the inability of the men to hear them – through their withholding information. This is seen after they discover the dead canary and deduce through intuition that John Wright had killed it by wringing its neck and that he, therefore provided Minnie reason for her to kill him. Mrs. Hale says to Mrs. Peters, “My, it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us. Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a – dead canary. As if that could have anything to do with—with—wouldn’t they laugh!” The men physically cannot hear the women because they are in different parts of the Wright’s home; this is how they are silent. By being silent this way, they are withholding evidence. This shows the women’s power over the men by revealing the fact that they have arrived at the truth (that Minnie killed John Wright, only because he took away her happiness and freedom which are symbolized by the bird) before the men did and that they have chosen not to tell them because they (the men) would just “laugh.” Their silence, therefore, becomes a mask because they know information that the men do not know and they do not share it. They are showing their power precisely by not showing it; they are asserting their power in secretive ways by hiding behind the mask and choosing what to tell and what not to tell the men. They arrive at the truth through intuition and signs of feelings, like the broken bird cage, the killed bird and all that it symbolized. Meanwhile, the men have a literalist view, needing to see physical evidence, rather than signs of feelings, and they need to find a motive for legal reasons, to tell in court. This motive functions similar to a story or a performance; but, it is fake, whereas the story of the women is true because they ground their evidence in feelings.
Women in Glaspell’s play do not only show their power through their silence; they also show their power through giving false information, and in the process we see the different modes of perception from the men and women. This is seen when the County Attorney, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale talk to each other:
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries.] Well, ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?
MRS. PETERS We think she was going to—knot it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure. [Seeing the birdcage.] Has the bird flown?
MRS. HALE [putting more quilt pieces over the box.] We think the—cat got it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [Preoccupied] Is there a cat?
[Mrs. Hale glances in a quick overt way at Mrs. PETERS.]
Instead of withholding information, the women provide the Country Attorney with deceiving information: instead of telling him the truth behind the birdcage, they tell him a lie (the cat got it). Like the women’s silence when the men could not hear the women’s arriving at the truth, the giving out false information is a form of the mask. The women know the real truth and they are masking it with a cover-up. They know information that he does not know and they take advantage of it by choosing what they decide to tell him. Not only does this passage show the women’s ability to show their power through deception, it also reveals the ideology under which the men view the situation. Here, the evidence is right in front of the County Attorney; but, he does not see it because he sees the evidence as an object with a simple assumption (the bird flew away). He sees no signs of feelings. As representative of men, he has a literalist view; they have the kind of view William Howells would support, which is one where the reality is “out there,” rather than in the mind, and it is something tangible. The women have a view that is more similar to the Jamesian ideology of realism, which is that the reality is different for each person and it is what the mind portrays as reality; reality is what one feels to be real. Minnie’s reality is hidden in the signs of feelings that the women found. Therefore, the women get to the Truth through intuition.
Unlike the women in Susan Glaspell’s play, Jig, the girl in Hemingway’s story, shows her power by having a point of view that leans more towards modernist and Jamesian ideology and using it through language; however, she shares the source of power with Glaspell’s women – intuition. At one point during Jig and the American’s dialogue, Jig, after walking to the other side of the station and taking in nature, starts a quick, terse conversation with the American in which they do not seem to be talking about the same thing, although Jig knows what they are both talking about. By saying, “No, we can’t,” consecutively in response to what the American says, Jig asserts herself with intuition. Proof of her intuition is in the fact that she starts this conversation right after looking into nature, the source of her truth. In nature Jig finds the truth because she sees fertility and new possibilities that there could be should they keep the baby. The phrase, “No, we can’t,” has an aura around it that makes it just the same as saying, “I just know.” These two phases derive from intuition in that the speaker (Jig) is certain, based on gut feeling. Also, as seen through their conversation, Jig’s perspective is both modernist and Jamesian. She shows signs of modernist thinking because she is isolated in that she has a reality that is so subjective that the American cannot penetrate and feel what she is feeling. She shows signs of Jamesian thinking because her reality that she makes in her mind – the white elephant as a symbol of new possibilities instead of the obvious and commonplace sign of burden (which is the point of view of the American) – is projected in the nature she sees in front of her. It is because she uses these ideologies that she works on intuition and is therefore closer to the truth than the American is. Using these ideologies, she shows her power by telling him frankly what she means, but he does not understand her still. This is the power of language – she is using it strategically to assert her power that she knows the truth, the possibilities, and that he does not know and even still, she chooses not to tell him directly, but ambiguously and sincerely.
This concept is made even more explicitly at the end where Jig shows her power through her ambiguous language. The ending, from the time he walks through the barroom to when she answers that she’s “fine,” is particularly ambiguous because we do not know if Jig has decided to have an abortion or not. Only she is the true conductor of the train, meaning that the train symbolizes her as she is in the conversation, the decision-maker. Everyone else, especially the American, is waiting for her to make up her mind; but, the train never comes. Her ambiguity is her power. The train’s not coming, therefore, symbolizes how her and the American’s conversation is not going anywhere, as far as he knows, because she is the one in control and she has not made clear her decision, if she has made it or not. He comes out of the bar that is filled with people waiting for the train, and asks her if she feels better. It is important to note that she does not answer clearly, with a certain yes or no answer; rather, she simply and obscurely rejoins that she “feel[s] fine,” which is not exactly better or worse, according to his question. Her ambiguous answers are the mask in action because she knows what is going on (she knows his limitations in seeing the obvious burden of a baby and she is aware of the endless possibilities that also comes with having a baby, which, to her that is the truth) – after all, she is the one who is going to make the decision – and she is able to understand that and tell it to him in a way in which she maintains her power.
It is interesting that the women do not overtly show their power, but assert it underhandedly or implicitly through lack of words, deceiving words and ambiguous phrases. They are able to use their intuition and it is their intuition that their power comes from. Why do they not show their power in an obvious manner? That is, why do they not tell the men, clearly, what they are thinking of? Perhaps it is because they know that they (the men) will not be able to handle what their (the women’s) intuition has lead them to – the Truth. Their being silent is similar to the true witness who cannot say the truth of what they have seen; they cannot speak except in poems and songs. In regards to the women, if they do speak, their men may not believe them, just as if the true witness spoke, we know it is not the real truth. The only difference is that the women may be speaking the real truth. Songs and poems are different from men or rather, women in the Hemingway’s story and Glaspell’s play did not have another medium of communication, such as songs and poems, just language between them and the men and that is what they use, that is what they manipulate. Language can take many different forms, just as the mask can be applied to different situations. Silence, deception and ambiguity can be different forms of the mask.
Susan Glaspell's Tifles, written in the early 1900s, flows with the characteristics of most modernist works through the way readers are intended to view the characters: by seeing the inner workings of the minds of the characters by means of the inferences made and the implicit nature of the dialogue. Trifles is a one-act play that tells the story of a murder and the searching of the farm house of the murderer, Minnie, who killed her husband, John Wright. Interestingly, through the conversations held between the wives of the male investigators, we learn the real truth behind the crime -- something their men have overlooked.
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is, like Glaspell's work mentioned above, a modernist piece, in that it also has an implicit color. In fact, the reader must infer from the extremely allusive dialogue what the whole conversation between the man and the woman is about. What are they actually talking about when the woman mentions the simile, "hills like white elephants"? What implications does that have on the way men view the world and all human circumstances in comparison - or contrast - to the way women view the world? The setting takes place in a train station alongside a long and lonely road in a desert-like area, with hills, in the Ebro River valley of Spain.
Bernadette Tinio
Professor Scheckel
EGL 218
30 April 2010
Girl Talk
The early 1900s was a period of time in American history that just got out of an old-fashioned ideology of the 1800s, which was the cult of domesticity. The cult of domesticity embodied the concept of the woman as being a mother and wife who was religious, pure (specifically, chaste), submissive to her husband and who worked in her own domestic sphere while her husband worked outside with public affairs. Modernist works that were created at the turn of the century illustrated and revealed the latent and yet instinctual strength of women above the man, or, viewed from a different perspective, the shortcomings of the man. In any case, the women in some modernist works are seen to have more power over their male counterparts. This can be shown in a variety of ways, particularly in language – what is said, what is not said, how information is communicated. Thus, language has grounds in innate feeling. The women in Susan Glaspell’s, Trifles and Ernest Hemingway’s, “Hills Like White Elephants” are able to show their power through silence, language and the withholding of information because they take advantage of the power of intuition.
One way the women in Glaspell’s one-act play show their power is through their silence – through the inability of the men to hear them – through their withholding information. This is seen after they discover the dead canary and deduce through intuition that John Wright had killed it by wringing its neck and that he, therefore provided Minnie reason for her to kill him. Mrs. Hale says to Mrs. Peters, “My, it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us. Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a – dead canary. As if that could have anything to do with—with—wouldn’t they laugh!” The men physically cannot hear the women because they are in different parts of the Wright’s home; this is how they are silent. By being silent this way, they are withholding evidence. This shows the women’s power over the men by revealing the fact that they have arrived at the truth (that Minnie killed John Wright, only because he took away her happiness and freedom which are symbolized by the bird) before the men did and that they have chosen not to tell them because they (the men) would just “laugh.” Their silence, therefore, becomes a mask because they know information that the men do not know and they do not share it. They are showing their power precisely by not showing it; they are asserting their power in secretive ways by hiding behind the mask and choosing what to tell and what not to tell the men. They arrive at the truth through intuition and signs of feelings, like the broken bird cage, the killed bird and all that it symbolized. Meanwhile, the men have a literalist view, needing to see physical evidence, rather than signs of feelings, and they need to find a motive for legal reasons, to tell in court. This motive functions similar to a story or a performance; but, it is fake, whereas the story of the women is true because they ground their evidence in feelings.
Women in Glaspell’s play do not only show their power through their silence; they also show their power through giving false information, and in the process we see the different modes of perception from the men and women. This is seen when the County Attorney, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale talk to each other:
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries.] Well, ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?
MRS. PETERS We think she was going to—knot it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure. [Seeing the birdcage.] Has the bird flown?
MRS. HALE [putting more quilt pieces over the box.] We think the—cat got it.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [Preoccupied] Is there a cat?
[Mrs. Hale glances in a quick overt way at Mrs. PETERS.]
Instead of withholding information, the women provide the Country Attorney with deceiving information: instead of telling him the truth behind the birdcage, they tell him a lie (the cat got it). Like the women’s silence when the men could not hear the women’s arriving at the truth, the giving out false information is a form of the mask. The women know the real truth and they are masking it with a cover-up. They know information that he does not know and they take advantage of it by choosing what they decide to tell him. Not only does this passage show the women’s ability to show their power through deception, it also reveals the ideology under which the men view the situation. Here, the evidence is right in front of the County Attorney; but, he does not see it because he sees the evidence as an object with a simple assumption (the bird flew away). He sees no signs of feelings. As representative of men, he has a literalist view; they have the kind of view William Howells would support, which is one where the reality is “out there,” rather than in the mind, and it is something tangible. The women have a view that is more similar to the Jamesian ideology of realism, which is that the reality is different for each person and it is what the mind portrays as reality; reality is what one feels to be real. Minnie’s reality is hidden in the signs of feelings that the women found. Therefore, the women get to the Truth through intuition.
Unlike the women in Susan Glaspell’s play, Jig, the girl in Hemingway’s story, shows her power by having a point of view that leans more towards modernist and Jamesian ideology and using it through language; however, she shares the source of power with Glaspell’s women – intuition. At one point during Jig and the American’s dialogue, Jig, after walking to the other side of the station and taking in nature, starts a quick, terse conversation with the American in which they do not seem to be talking about the same thing, although Jig knows what they are both talking about. By saying, “No, we can’t,” consecutively in response to what the American says, Jig asserts herself with intuition. Proof of her intuition is in the fact that she starts this conversation right after looking into nature, the source of her truth. In nature Jig finds the truth because she sees fertility and new possibilities that there could be should they keep the baby. The phrase, “No, we can’t,” has an aura around it that makes it just the same as saying, “I just know.” These two phases derive from intuition in that the speaker (Jig) is certain, based on gut feeling. Also, as seen through their conversation, Jig’s perspective is both modernist and Jamesian. She shows signs of modernist thinking because she is isolated in that she has a reality that is so subjective that the American cannot penetrate and feel what she is feeling. She shows signs of Jamesian thinking because her reality that she makes in her mind – the white elephant as a symbol of new possibilities instead of the obvious and commonplace sign of burden (which is the point of view of the American) – is projected in the nature she sees in front of her. It is because she uses these ideologies that she works on intuition and is therefore closer to the truth than the American is. Using these ideologies, she shows her power by telling him frankly what she means, but he does not understand her still. This is the power of language – she is using it strategically to assert her power that she knows the truth, the possibilities, and that he does not know and even still, she chooses not to tell him directly, but ambiguously and sincerely.
This concept is made even more explicitly at the end where Jig shows her power through her ambiguous language. The ending, from the time he walks through the barroom to when she answers that she’s “fine,” is particularly ambiguous because we do not know if Jig has decided to have an abortion or not. Only she is the true conductor of the train, meaning that the train symbolizes her as she is in the conversation, the decision-maker. Everyone else, especially the American, is waiting for her to make up her mind; but, the train never comes. Her ambiguity is her power. The train’s not coming, therefore, symbolizes how her and the American’s conversation is not going anywhere, as far as he knows, because she is the one in control and she has not made clear her decision, if she has made it or not. He comes out of the bar that is filled with people waiting for the train, and asks her if she feels better. It is important to note that she does not answer clearly, with a certain yes or no answer; rather, she simply and obscurely rejoins that she “feel[s] fine,” which is not exactly better or worse, according to his question. Her ambiguous answers are the mask in action because she knows what is going on (she knows his limitations in seeing the obvious burden of a baby and she is aware of the endless possibilities that also comes with having a baby, which, to her that is the truth) – after all, she is the one who is going to make the decision – and she is able to understand that and tell it to him in a way in which she maintains her power.
It is interesting that the women do not overtly show their power, but assert it underhandedly or implicitly through lack of words, deceiving words and ambiguous phrases. They are able to use their intuition and it is their intuition that their power comes from. Why do they not show their power in an obvious manner? That is, why do they not tell the men, clearly, what they are thinking of? Perhaps it is because they know that they (the men) will not be able to handle what their (the women’s) intuition has lead them to – the Truth. Their being silent is similar to the true witness who cannot say the truth of what they have seen; they cannot speak except in poems and songs. In regards to the women, if they do speak, their men may not believe them, just as if the true witness spoke, we know it is not the real truth. The only difference is that the women may be speaking the real truth. Songs and poems are different from men or rather, women in the Hemingway’s story and Glaspell’s play did not have another medium of communication, such as songs and poems, just language between them and the men and that is what they use, that is what they manipulate. Language can take many different forms, just as the mask can be applied to different situations. Silence, deception and ambiguity can be different forms of the mask.
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