In Vargas Llosa’s The Cubs, the standards and expectations of the barrio play an undeniable role in P.P. Cuellar’s suffering; instead of accepting P.P. as he is, his friends in the barrio demand conformity and allegiance to defined standards—something he is physically unable to do because to his castration. I think there is strong textual evidence to support the barrio’s role in Cuellar’s suffering—Cuellar’s ostracizing nickname, his friends’ constant prodding to find a girlfriend, his ultimate rejection by the barrio.
Even so, I think it’s important to go a step further and note that while Cuellar’s castration was tragic, and while the barrio did push him to accept its standards, his fate was ultimately his choice and not something that can be blamed on the barrio. Cuellar chose to engage in behavior that was detrimental to his well-being, to retreat to the mountains, and to drive recklessly—in the end, he chose to engage in the destructive behavior that led to his demise.
I think it’s easy to point the finger at society with all its standards and pressures, but when all is said and done, we can’t control how others think, what they do, or what “they” tell us is right, but we can control how we react. We can decide whether or not to accept society’s standards, or to develop our own value system. When you don’t meet society’s standards, is it easy to buck the system and find your own definition of what’s right for you? Probably not. But, in situations as grave as Cuellar’s, what’s the alternative? Self-destruction? Death?
I wonder what the barrio’s reaction would have been and what would have happened to Cuellar if he had accepted his situation and tried to move forward instead of doing “nutty things to get attention” in an attempt to gain acceptance and prove his masculinity. I wonder if he could ever have found satisfaction and contentment by living life according to his own standards instead of society’s.
While reading Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land and the article on postcolonialism, I was struck by the idea of defining oneself by the look of the other. In Cahier, Césaire moves from self-loathing and identifying with the colonizer to reclaiming his history, his people, his negritude. Even so, his identity hinges upon identifying with an “other” that does not wholly define him; at the beginning of the work, regardless of the fact that he is not French, he identifies with the French colonizers, calling himself and his people “the vomit of slave ships,” and then later, upon returning to the island, he identifies with his African origins, even though he has never lived in Africa and is not African.
The dichotomy between who Césaire is and the group with which he identifies made me think about the similarities between the immigrant identity and the identity of colonized peoples: when you live with one foot in two different cultures—either by choice or by force—can you ever fully identify with either? And if you are the child of immigrants—especially immigrants who are slow to assimilate into their new culture—how do you balance your identity between your heritage and your present/future? When you are labeled as “the other” everywhere you go, then what? What does that do to your sense of identity?
To me, the idea of créolité makes much more sense than negritude or any movement whose goal is to reclaim lost origins–an impossible feat. While heritage is undeniably important, it is a mélange of our unique personal experiences and our heritage that make us who we are. And that is something that often cannot be defined, even by “the other.”
The first time I studied abroad in France, I was a 20 year old bright-eyed, bushy-tailed undergrad who had never traveled abroad before, and who was unversed in French culture and its roots in Catholicism. I think it’s safe to say that even though fewer and fewer French people consider themselves “practicing Catholics,” Catholicism permeates many different aspects of French life. Not knowing this, I didn’t understand Toussaint, or why every night on the evening news the weatherman told us what saint we would be celebrating tomorrow. And you can imagine my surprise when an older, wiser graduate student explained that the couple we saw canoodling in the Montparnasse cemetery was probably on a date! “Oh, yeah,” she coolly remarked, “I had a French boyfriend once who loved to take me to the cemetery on dates. It’s like a park.” What I thought of as morbid was simply the French embrace of death during life.
I thought of this as I read Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo and its mixture of life and death. Juan Preciado, the protagonist, sets out to explore the lives in his past only after the death of his mother. Even after he dies in the suffocating Comala, his soul lives to uncover the life of his dead father. Often, we, the readers, don’t know if characters are dead or alive and we see live characters converse with dead ones, and dead characters pray for live ones. Although the story is hard to follow given its lack of chronology (its almost like Rulfo wrote the story and then put it in a blender), characters that seemingly appear out of nowhere, and its surrealist qualities, its easy to see that the characters, like my canoodling couple on a date in the cemetery, are at ease with the idea of death; it is simply woven into life.
Often, when something is opaque or unfamiliar, I try to make sense of it by comparing and contrasting it to something else. Although Beckett’s Waiting for Godot probably can’t be considered less obscure than his play Endgame, I found myself comparing the two, maybe simply because I’ve read Waiting for Godot several times. In Endgame, we immediately see the pairing of the characters, Hamm and Clov and Nagg and Nell, just as Waiting for Godot pairs Vladimir and Estragon and Pozzo and Lucky. In both plays, we also see how characters are co-dependent. Hamm could not survive without Clov in a practical sense since he is both blind and immobile, and both characters depend on each other since being with someone, anyone is better than facing the world alone. Likewise, Vladimir and Estragon are co-dependant to the point that they are interchangeable in Waiting for Godot.
The repetitiveness of both plays is also apparent, seen in Godot through the repetition of the acts and when Vladimir constantly asks to leave, followed by Estragon saying they have to wait for Godot. In Endgame, Hamm repeatedly knocks on the wall and is insists on returning to the middle of the room after his ride. Endgame also suggests the repetitiveness of the hell that is life, with the blurred line between the beginning and the end. Despite the similarities between the two plays, I found Endgame to be darker than Godot. The idea that Godot (God?) may come seems a twinge more optimistic than the apocalyptic attitudes in Endgame.
But in the end, I found myself comparing the relationship between Clov and Hamm, a father and son in a sense, with the relationship I saw as a little girl between my grandmother and Granny, my great-grandmother. Granny was always very independent, until she suffered a stroke at the age of 93. Like Clov and Hamm, both disabled to different extents, both Grandmama and Granny were elderly at the time of Granny’s stroke. As Clov became Hamm’s servant, it also seems like Grandmama became Granny’s servant in a sense, always at her beck and call. Granny was never the same after her stroke. The vibrant woman I once knew who cooked lavish meals for 20, worked in her garden, and made quilts had faded into a difficult woman who, confined to her little house, was simply waiting around to die, like Hamm. Remarkably, regardless of how mean Granny was, Grandmama kept taking care of her. Looking back, I can see how much my grandmother aged after she started taking care of Granny. However, while Clov took care of Hamm out of a sense of obligation, fear of being alone, and facing the world on his own, I know that Grandmama took care of Granny for two very different reasons: respect and love.
I love teaching and being a student myself. I love learning something new “just because,” and attempting to share my passion for language (and life) with others. I seem to have lost sight of this lately, though, because my schedule is INSANE. I think my current situation might be why the modernismo movement and the works of Darío and Martí were so striking to me. Due to my lack of time and abundance of obligations, I feel like my day to day activities are becoming utilitarian, instead of being a celebration of the things I love. I, like the modernismos, want to reject this utilitarianism!!! I want to focus on art and soul and spirit! Sometimes, I too wish I could freeze time! At this point in my life, I, like the modernismos, feel like I am trying to define myself.
For me, one of the most powerful lines of Darío’s poem Niagara was the first two words: Stop passenger! Encapsulate into these two words are the notions of speed, lack of control, and the idea that we are travelers merely passing through this life who should take advantage of the world around us, sentiments I often feel in my everyday life. So thank you, Darío and modernismos, for helping me regain perspective.
According to René Wellek in the article Realism in Literature, the literary creed of realism stipulates that “art should give a truthful representation of the real world: it should therefore study contemporary life and manners by observing meticulously and analyzing carefully. It should do so dispassionately, impersonally, objectively” (52).
Having read this before I read the Sentimental Education, I was surprised to find numerous instances in the novel in which the author, through the voice of Fréderic does not provide a dispassionate, impersonal, or objective description of the city of
Paris. Throughout the novel, Fréderic’s painstaking observations are often influenced by his feelings at the time, disqualifying them as unbiased or impartial. For example, at the beginning of the novel, when Fréderic has returned to Paris for law school, he is dejected and unhappy due to his inability to see Mme. Arnoux. Inasmuch, his descriptions of
Paris and her streets reflect this: he notices yellow reflections in the mud and shadows on the sidewalks while the fog enveloped him, and the gloominess of the city “fell indefinitely in his heart” (42).
The doom-and-gloom vision of Paris is again offered by Fréderic when he hears Mr. Arnoux is out of town and goes to visit Mrs. Arnoux only to find out that the opposite was true: Arnoux greets him at the house as Mrs. Arnoux is in Chartres. For months after this visit, he wallows in self-pity, and his impression of Paris suffers: he describes the Seine and its quays as gray and black and the walls of the schools in the Latin Quarter are described as “more morose than ever” (84). Even the people of the city do not escape his scathing eye when they are described as base, foolish, and idiotic.
However, when things were going well with Mme. Arnoux—or when Fréderic was simply near her—he describes the city from a completely different perspective. For example in the beginning of Part 2, when Fréderic returns to Paris and sees Mme. Arnoux, he describes the city as exuding freshness. He savors the “good air of Paris which seems to emanate romance and intelligence” (122).
It would be difficult to argue that Flaubert’s L’education sentimentale is not an astute example of realism—it provides an incredible portrait of Paris in the 1840s. I am certainly not trying to do that. The fluctuating manner in which Paris is described in this novel, however, shows yet again that no novel can meet all the requirements for a certain genre. Literature, thankfully, is not that black and white.
Filed under: "The Chimney Sweeper", Horatio Alger, Industrial revolution, William Blake, child labor
As I read William Blake’s poem, “The Chimney Sweeper,” an obvious commentary on the social injustices and child labor in England at the beginning of the 19th century, I was struck by how the poem conveyed the innocence and optimism of children through its simple verses. Although the children are miserable, living and working in inhumane conditions, they idealistically look toward a brighter future in the next life “with God as their father.”
The last line of the poem, “So if all do their duty they need not fear harm” seemed very different from the rest of the poem. While the other parts of the poem describe children whose pleasure (or lack thereof) was determined by the adults surrounding them, this line suggests that the children hold the key to their own destiny; if they do “their duty,” they will eventually be rewarded with happiness. The last line, therefore, would seem to encourage the child worker’s dutiful service to the adults exploiting them. 
This made me think of the rags to riches stories of Horatio Alger in 19th century America. These books, including the Ragged Dick and Tattered Tom series, suggested that through hard work, determination, and a little bit of luck, anyone could achieve the American Dream. This fueled workers’ attitudes and led to their compliant work in horrible working conditions, even though the promise of a better life was rarely achieved. Likewise, because the vision in Blake’s poem suggests that happiness awaits the young chimney sweepers who are loyal and hard-working, the young boys accept their miserable fate, and strive to do their duty. Inasmuch, it seems to me that both the Alger stories and the Blake poem can be read as propaganda.
Last Sunday morning when I turned on the French news, I was sad to learn that Abbé Pierre, the beloved French priest and founder of the Emmaus homeless charity, had died the age of 94. Although he was not well-known on this side of the Atlantic—due probably to the fact that he did not speak English—Abbé Pierre was extremely admired in France; he was consistently voted the most popular Frenchman in national newspaper and television polls until 2003, at which time he fell to second place only behind footballer Zinedine Zidane. Needless to say, all of France is mourning his loss.
I could go on and on about Abbé Pierre’s celebrity, make a laundry list of his charitable good deeds, or list his numerous accolades and awards. But I won’t. (To read more about his remarkable life, click here.) Suffice it to say that above all, he was an advocate for the poor, for the homeless, for those who suffer. (Even so, his life was not without controversy. In 1996 he supported his friend Roger Garaundy, an author who questioned the existence of the Holocaust. He later apologized and never lost face with the French public.) He also repeatedly challenged the values of his Catholic Church and thus had a tumultuous relationship with the Vatican. He called for the marriage of priests, the ordination of women, and the use of contraception to combat the AIDS epidemic. He never sought popularity within the church, but beyond the church, with the people. His goal was to advance the cause of the poor, not of the Church.
If you’re still with me at this point, you’re probably wondering, “Why the description of Abbé Pierre?” Answer: because on the French Wikipedia page on Humanism, on several French news programs this weekend, and in several news articles, Abbé Pierre was referred to as a humanist, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was an accurate description. Was he a humanist, or a humanitarian, or both?
On one hand, he definitely advocated the dignified treatment of all human beings—especially the most marginalized—and pushed for social reforms for the poor and homeless, which would qualify him as a humanitarian. In regards to humanism, can we say that Abbé Pierre was interested in man’s role in a world God created? Yes. But can we say that he was more interested in what humans can do than what God wants, another facet of humanism? Can we really know who was at the center of Abbé Pierre’s worldview? On one hand, it could have been man, which would make him a humanist. His works would certainly support this stance. But then again, his work on behalf of humanity could also be a byproduct of his religious beliefs; he just as easily could have had a worldview with God at the center. In order to know for sure, we would need to know what he considered to be motivation. I need to do more research on this to find out if he left us any clues in his writings or interviews. (If you know of any, let me know.) Even so, can we ever define someone’s motivation as coming 100% from one thing or another? I’m not sure that we can.
Admittedly, I am still trying to sort all these “-isms” out. But I think that the example of Abbé Pierre shows how “-isms” like humanism do not fit neatly into a box, as much as I sometimes would like them to. They are complex, multifarious, and often hard to define. And I am learning to accept that this is the nature of the beast.
The last time I read Machiavell’s The Prince, I was a fresh-faced, quasi-innocent undergrad, only months out of high school. I had just acquired a cunning little Yorkshire terrier, the result of his surprise offensive at PetSmart’s Saturday adoption fair. He pulled out all the stops in his ruthless pursuit of a new home: calculated nuzzles with his wet nose, premeditated tail-wagging, and perfectly-timed whimpers—nothing was spared. After having him at home for a week, he ruled the roost. I joked that he was my own little Machiavelli, and the name stuck.
Yesterday night, after reading the excerpt from The Prince in class, I pulled out my old copy of the book and sat with the two Machiavellis—the dog and the book—on my lap. This time around, I saw clearly how Machiavelli’s humanism exalted and freed the individual. His ideal prince, for example, was no longer judged or defined by religious standards or morals. The prince had the freedom to act as he saw fit in order preserve his power and public appearance; he was no longer bound by societal or divine standards, but was able to act according to his own values. For example, the Prince is not expected to tell the truth “when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer” (Chapter 18). We thus see less emphasis on God, and more emphasis on the individual.
Wiser and possibly a bit more jaded since the first time I read them, I was also struck by the similarities between Machiavelli’s ideas (the author’s, not the dog’s) and the current political scene in America. It seems that in recent campaigns, market research has shown politicians what issues (and stances) are popular, allowing them to tweak their own positions in order to secure votes. Although ethically questionable, this allows politicians to tell voters what they want to hear, and, in essence, allows them to secure their own power. According to Machiavelli, this is key; deception was acceptable in the name of maintaining power.
To me, this idea is quite frightening. It is even more frightening that strands of this philosophy are woven into the tapestry of modern-day politics. After all, it’s one thing to have a sly, four-legged Machiavelli lurking around the living room, and another thing to have a Machiavelli prowling around the world stage.
In his article “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” Hayden White refutes the opposition between history and literature and calls for a renewed connection between the two fields. For White, the role of the historian is to make sense out of unfamiliar facts and chronologies through emplotment, a process by which he/she inserts facts into specific plot structures in order to make sense of any given historical event. White also contends that what a historian chooses to leave out of his/her historical text is just as important—if not more so—than the facts that are included. Inasmuch, history is not concrete or exact, but rather an interpretation of events, much closer to literature than to science.
I agree with the idea that historical events are filtered through the historian/author. Undoubtedly, this is why we have so many different texts about the same event, such as the US Civil War, and so many different biographies about the same person, such as Abraham Lincoln. Therefore, the idea that history is closer to literature than to science seems reasonable.
The connection between literature and history was fresh on my mind this week when I saw the play “Moonlight and Magnolias” at the Dallas Theater Center. This play, written by playwright Ron Hutchinson, is a comical view of the five days in 1939 during which producer David O. Selznick, writer Ben Hecht, and director Victor Fleming rewrote the script to Gone With the Wind. As I watched the play, I saw White’s ideas being played out: the events and facts surrounding the writing of Gone with the Wind’s screenplay were molded and shaped into a farce by the playwright through the process of emplotment. Because he saw this historical event as comical, Hutchinson emplotted the play so that the audience, familiar with the attributes of a farce, would find the event funny. On another level, we saw Hutchinson’s take on how these three men interpreted Margaret Mitchell’s book for their film as they discussed what elements of the book to leave out, to highlight, and to downplay. Going one step further, through the play’s discussion of Margaret Mitchell as the author of a historically accurate novel, we see how Mitchell emplotted the events of the Civil War in her book. Knowing that history is in fact told within these constraints, the spectators of the play Moonlight and Magnolias, the audience of Gone with the Wind, and the readers of Mitchell’s book may construct a more accurate assessment of the history presented in these works.
Back to Hayden White. On the other hand, I do not completely agree with White’s idea that historical events are chaotic chronologies of unfamiliar facts in need of a historian to create a model and make sense of them. In certain instances, facts, such as the number of casualties in the 9/11 attacks, can speak for themselves. To me, suggesting that the atrocities of trench warfare in World War I or the horrors of the Holocaust are in need of a historian to make sense of what people saw, experienced, and felt negates and marginalizes the experiences of those who lived them. I would be more apt to agree that the historian often makes sense of these events for outsiders, those who did not live a certain event first-hand or who do not have access to primary sources. While this may seem like a small distinction, I think it is an important one.
In any case, I think it is clear that given the many different facets of any one historical event, it is our responsibility as students and, on a larger scale, as citizens of the world to thoroughly seek out different accounts and interpretations of events, to use evidence intelligently, and to form educated opinions based on all available resources. Even so, I think that creating our own personal “truth” about an event can be a slippery slope; if taken to extremes, all perspective and “truth” is lost. As my mother always said, “balance is the key to everything.”
