Posts

Beloved: Narrative Structure and Sethe’s Iron Wall

Beloved by Toni Morrison has a very interesting narrative structure. The novel circles around its core themes, its mysteries, getting ever closer with each chapter. The question then rises, why did Morrison choose to write like this? An easy answer: it’s simply a unique structure that makes the novel more interesting to read. However, there’s a much more complicated answer that deserves a closer look.   There are two main memories that Morrison hints at slowly throughout part 1 until the full scene is finally revealed; those being the moment in the barn where Sethe’s milk is taken and the moment in the shack where Sethe kills the baby. The narrative structure of both moments is interesting, but here I’ll just focus on the first one as understanding Sethe’s response to the second event is too much for me to cover meaningfully here. The first event is more clear-cut, an intensely traumatic moment for Sethe.   Sethe is an iron wall. From the very beginning of the novel, Paul D associates
10 comments
Read more

Their Eyes Were Watching God: An Empowering Love Story? Perhaps Not

During class as we discussed Their Eyes Were Watching God for the final time, we talked about how it can be viewed as a love story or a story of Janie’s empowerment as a woman. I believe that looking at those two interpretations as mutually exclusive is wrong, likely brought on by an assumption that love stories must inherently be simple and meaningless. However, just because a love story can be about individual empowerment does not mean that Their Eyes Were Watching God is both of those things. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a love story but certainly not a novel about Janie’s empowerment.   What does it mean for Their Eyes Were Watching God to be a love story? It simply means that the plot revolves around love. It revolves are Janie’s relationships with various men and how she feels about them. Obviously, the novel is more complex than the image that I get in my head of the classic romance novel, straying very far from the formula of the genre. But I’m not claiming that Their Eye
5 comments
Read more

Different Interpretations of "Not About Poems" by Carolyn Rodgers

For reference, this poem, presented by Cadi, is on page 17 of the Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry   In class, we discussed how “Not About Poems” could be talking about a poet writing a poem. We said perhaps the poet is a lonely poet and thus every poem they write is inherently lonely as well. The lines “i can write about almost anything— // but a lonely poem ain’t got / no audience” (Rodgers 17-19). Could potentially be hinting at this point but are somewhat ambiguous. Is the lonely poem “about almost anything” or is it just that the poet chooses to write lonely poetry, distinct from those ideas discussed in the verse preceding it. Obviously, even asking what seems to be a simple question, that of “what makes a poem lonely”, is incredibly ambiguous. Here I want to focus on some more intense ambiguity in the poem and some potential interpretations. In the final lines of the poem, Rodgers writes “i say / oh say / can you hurt? // who needs me…” (25-28). There are three interp
5 comments
Read more

On Names in Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison’s writing, as we’ve seen reading Invisible Man is stoked with symbolism. In discussing his novel, it seems as though every other word is making some sort of reference to a deeper meaning, a deeper message that the reader must uncover. In fact, every other word is not nearly as much of a hyperbole as it may seem on the surface, as one of the most symbolic aspects of Invisible Man is the names of the characters themselves. The first character to discuss is obviously the narrator and his lack of a name entirely. This is obviously an allusion to his invisibility. He has lost any sense of himself by being pulled around by societies’ whims. Another obvious connection with a name is Rinehart, whose name we talked about a bit in class. The name “Rinehart” seems like a combination of the words “rind”, like the outside layer of something (usually in the context of fruit), and “heart”. “Rind” has clear connections to the outside, the visible layer that must be peeled back to reveal
5 comments
Read more

Why is Tod Clifton so Attractive?

       Reading the description of Brother Tod Clifton that the narrator gives on page 363 of Invisible Man is certainly a bit jarring. No other character is described in nearly as much detail, nor as positively. To show just how unusual this description is, here is the narrator’s description of Brother Jack upon first meeting him, “A short insignificant-looking bushy-eyebrowed man with a quiet smile on his face stood beside me, looking not at all like a policemen” (287). That is the whole description. One single sentence that leaves the actual character’s features vague and undefined. Now, here is a section of the description of Brother Clifton, “I saw the broad taut span of his knuckles across the dark grain of the wood, the muscular, sweatered arms, the curving line of the chest rising to the easy pulsing of his throat, to the square, smooth chin, and saw a small X-shaped patch of adhesive upon the subtly blended, velvet-over-stone, granite-over-bone, Afro-Anglo-Saxon contour of his
8 comments
Read more

The Identity of Invisibility

Ralph Ellison’s novel begins with a simple statement, “I am an invisible man” (1). The narrator then goes on to describe his experience feeling literally invisible, his entire existence practically incomprehensible to anyone but himself. But a question arises when we see the slow onset of invisibility suddenly face a rapid progression in chapter 12 through a sickeningly intense electro-shock therapy session. As we see our narrator begin to lose himself and fall deeper and deeper into invisibility, does he lose his identity? Or does invisibility itself become his being? Here, I’d like to argue that not only is invisibility a valid identity, but in fact, it is the only valid identity. Trapped on the operating table, our narrator thinks “I could no more escape than I could think of my identity. Perhaps, I thought, the two things are involved with each other. When I discover who I am, I’ll be free” (243). Our narrator is absolutely right at this moment. He finds his identity, through i
3 comments
Read more

Bigger Thomas, (Alleged) Rapist Before Murderer

     Bigger Thomas is a rapist and a murderer. The second twice over, but the first only once. These three crimes should be more than enough to convict and sentence him to death, yet, in his prosecution, Buckley chooses instead to focus instead on a heinous act that Bigger did not, in fact, commit, the rape of Mary Dalton. This rape is the very crux of Buckley’s case, exemplified in his statement, “He killed her because he raped her! Mind you, Your Honor, the central crime here is rape ! Every action points toward that!” (413). This approach is permissible in court because Max allows it. Max completely dismisses the idea that Bigger did not rape Mary saying, “Let us not concern ourselves with that part of Bigger Thomas’ confession that says […] he did not rape the girl. It really does not matter” (403). Why does it not matter? Why is Bigger convicted largely on a crime that he did not in fact commit?            The answer comes down to public perception. Bigger himself sums it up bes
11 comments
Read more