Last Post

I must say that it has been a long year that has gone by very quickly. I am not sure if that actually makes any sense or not, but the ambiguity of the statement also represents the ambiguity of my feelings regarding the end of high school and the beginning of college. I am happy, ecstatic even, that high school is finally over and all of the tests and essays that helped me in the long run but were annoying at the time I took them will never be seen again. I am also excited to be able to have a new start in the intimidating entity we all call college where I will be able to meet new people and enjoy a new found freedom that will likely define my future. Yet, despite this eagerness and thrill I feel, I am also sad to certain extent to leave high school where I have made so many great people and have created unforgettable memories. This said, I guess it is time to get on with the last blog entry I will likely ever make and it involves an ambiguity that is prevalent in my life at this point in time.
The final exam overall was a lot easier than any real test we have taken in class, at least in terms of the multiple choice section. Usually in the multiple choice passages we take in class, I know the answer to about half and guess on the other half hoping to get them right. On the AP exam however, there were a lot more clear-cut answers that allowed for the elimination of many answers instead of seeing four possible answers to a question. I would normally think about skipping five or ten questions and this is what I expected to do coming in to the exam room, but after reading the questions and the answers, I actually answered all of the multiple choice questions. This being said, although I felt I did decent on the multiple choice, the essays are the things that have me a bit worried. I feel that I did okay on the poetry essay and talked about literary devices that actually made sense in the scope of the poem. The same goes with the prose passage which was easier to understand than the one on the practice test, but my answer may not have been very clear. The essay that does have me miffed is the open question essay because I kind of feel like it was hit or miss. The question was about exile and enrichment and the novel I used was Frankenstein. I talked about the isolation the monster had because it had no one to associate with but the enrichment aspect of exile may have been a reach. I said that the monster was enriched with the knowledge it gained about mankind and cruelty of society. I am not sure if this even counts as enrichment, so is thus the one thing that has me worried about the exam. Other than this, I felt well-prepared for the AP Literature Exam.

Penultimate Blog

The penultimate blog of the year has finally arrived and along with it, the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I must say, the end of the play was quite interesting to say the least, especially the views on death that were revealed by both Ros and Guil as well as the various Tragedians. I guess it really does revisit the theme of life being like a play where each one of us gets a chance to walk across the stage and perform, whether it be improvisational or set in stone. Also the tone of the entire third act of the play kind of makes Ros and Guil sympathetic characters to a certain extent. From the very beginning of the play, we know that the final fate of the two main characters will be death because it is mentioned in the title. Despite knowing this however, I really didn’t feel any sympathy at all for the two because of the joking behavior and complete obliviousness the two showed. This only continued in the second act when they have no idea what to do with their lives unless someone tells them what to do. This is plainly evident through the fact that Claudius told the two to capture Hamlet after he killed Polonius and the two blindly do it without thinking of their friends feelings. In the third act however, things take a turn towards the more serious and more philosophical. Instead of plotting capture or some other action ordered by others, the two discuss death in what can be seen as humorous, but is likely much deeper than that. This is shown by Guildenstern’s claim that death is really nothing more than the fulfillment of an inexplicable and unavoidable fate. The fact that we all live a life that leads towards some death that is unavoidable is a concept that is recurring and is presented again near the end of the play. Our lives are like plays in which our acts have been mapped out and written in stone such that there is always someone watching and giving orders. As the end scene continues, more complicated and interesting views on death are given by both the Tragedians and the two main characters. The Player states that death is common and that light vanishes with life. Guildenstern replies that real death is not theatrical but is simply the absence of anything, the state of not existing. It is as if when a person dies, he or she just disappears in time, which is a very interesting concept in the scope of the novel because Tom Stoppard never really shows us when and how Ros and Guil die. Stoppard is holding something from us because from the very beginning, we expect Ros and Guil to die because of the title of the novel. Then when it finally comes time for their deaths, we don’t witness it and instead learn of the deaths of Claudius, Hamlet, Laertes, and Gertrude. I know this response is rather convoluted and doesn’t really have a centralized theme, but it does sufficiently express my confusion at the events that occurred at the end of the novel. Let us just hope an in class discussion can shed some light on the situation.

Ros and Guil and Macbeth

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 19-28)
It seems that throughout the reading of the absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, there has been mention of life being a play in which we as humans march across the stage portraying our character to the world. Along with this reading comes the fact that we are all but ordered to do every action we make in life or are at least influenced to do it just as actors are told to do things in a play. I think it is this fact that is highlighted above all else in the play, at least to the place we have read so far. It seems that Ros and Guil need another character, another personality, on stage to have any type of identity for themselves. They are simply lost without others and rely on others for any individuality of their own. This is ironic because of the fact that they need others for individuality, which essentially defeats the purpose of the thing, and the identity they create for themselves is ambiguous within itself. This is no more apparent than in the scene where the two are talking to a Player about Greek tragedies and whether or not one needs an audience to have a purpose. Once the player leaves, Ros and Guil have no idea what to do with themselves. They yell “Next” off stage expecting somebody to come and once again give them their identities. But, despite getting identities from others, Ros and Guil are unable to differentiate between each other almost as if they are two parts to one whole.
You may be wondering why I included the soliloquy from Macbeth in this blog, because I have made no mention of it thus far in the writing. You can either think of it as me leaving the reader in suspense or as me not being able to remember why I typed the soliloquy. One thing we have repeatedly discussed in class though is the connection between the soliloquy and the way Ro and Guil go through their respective lives. Macbeth, in uttering the speech, is rather existentialist in stating that life is “a tale told by an idiot” that signifies “nothing.” It is also in this manner that Ros and Guil go through their lives. They see no meaning in what they are doing and rather go through life as directed by others. Once the direction they have been given is done, they are then “heard no more.” I have just read through what I have written in this blog, and everything is rather convoluted and confusing. I didn’t mean for it to be this way as I am having trouble voicing my opinions on the very confusing way, but when you think about it, the confusing manner of my writing kind of fits with the play as most things seem to happen for no reason. All this said, the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is one of the most interesting plays I have ever read, from the nonsensical happenings to the extremely crude humor that is present, it is a truly entertaining experience.

"What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue"

With the seminars that are currently happening in AP Lit. there seems to be one topic that has not been discussed and that has been the many songs present in the novel. Ralph Ellison is known as a man with a connection to the African American culture and jazz music is a huge part of this culture. One of the songs I noticed in the prologue, a section that will be discussed in class tomorrow, is the song “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.” This song was originally written by Thomas Waller and was later sung by the great Louis Armstrong. The reference to the song, as aforementioned, occurs in the introduction of the novel and the narrator discusses how he wishes to feel the vibrations of the recording of “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.” Because Ellison spent a lot of time writing the novel, I figured that the song must have some significance in the scope of the novel and was not placed accidentally. For this reason, I decided to research the song, a song I likely should have researched for my Invisible Man Research project.
“(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” was originally written by Thomas “Fats” Waller for the Broadway musical called Hot Chocolates. It was one of the first musicals to be performed by only African Americans and was written to show the sadness of a dark-skinned woman who had lost her man to a lighter-skinned girl. In 1955, Louis Armstrong took the song and transformed it into a nationally recognized song representing the powerful protest against racial discrimination. The song also has a historical significance in its message against racial discrimination and expresses the futility that some African Americans felt during the time period. The impassioned performance of Armstrong came eleven months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared segregation of schools to be unconstitutional. Before and after this controversial decision, there were a series of murders of African Americans in the Deep South in states of Mississippi and Alabama. In the same year, 1955, Rosa Parks sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat thus starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A few years later, Louis Armstrong spoke out harshly against President Eisenhower when the president was reluctant to act when African American teenagers were banned from a high school in Arkansas for no other reason than their skin color. With the start of the civil rights movement and the much political and social turmoil present at the time of the release of the song, Louis Armstrong essentially recorded an ultimate articulation of the concerns of the African American population. The song became a symbol and anthem of African American complaint against the invisibility that the speaker in the novel justifiably claims is present.

Invisible Man = Frederick Douglass

Because we are on the topic of the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, I figured I would discuss one of the many figures that the narrator is compared to in the novel. The list of people that the narrator, or the invisible man as some people like to call him, include Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, but the person I would like to focus on is Frederick Douglass. Although Brother Jack states that he wishes to mold the narrator into a newer and better form of Booker T. Washington, and there is mention of him being like Washington in the Battle Royal, the one historical figure that I see most in the narrator is Douglass. Since I did not really do research on Frederick Douglass, I thought I would do a little digging on his history to see if there were more connections between the two people.
Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin and eventually became a slave. Although it was unlawful for slaves to learn to read and write, Douglass did by giving away food in exchange for lessons. By the time he escaped slavery, he became a staunch abolitionist and experienced a meteoric rise to fame and prominence. He eventually became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln and participated in the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. The one point that I saw, which provided a distinct similarity was the fact that both the narrator and Douglass both experienced meteoric rises to prominence. The narrator rose to prominence in the Brotherhood in a relatively short period of time through his brilliant oratory skills similar to the way Douglass became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement because of his oratory skills. Another point of similarity is that Douglass lived his life by following three keys: take advantage of opportunities, believe in yourself, and use the power of the spoken language. These three things embodied Douglass as a person and I feel that they also are key characteristics of the narrator. The narrator uses his belief in himself to take advantage of the Brotherhood situation. By using his ability to move the audience emotionally through his pathos-driven speaking, he is able to translate his belief in himself to others believing in him. This also brings along the added benefit of making money and increasing his standing in society. Eventually his pathos-driven speaking adds the element of rationality and science to cause him to be the perfect fit to be the Brotherhood’s spokesperson. By knowing his abilities and his limits and by believing in himself, the narrator went from being nearly homeless looking for a job to being rather well-to-do. This is again exactly like Douglass as he used his ability to be eloquent to get close to the many prominent political figures of his day and eventually rise to unmatched prominence in the African American community. These are of course only come of the connections that exist between Douglass and the narrator as I only did some surface research to come up with the similarities. Deeper research would likely yield more common points as I do firmly believe that the narrator is more like Frederick Douglass than any other African American historical figure in the novel.

The Stranger and The Dog

This week marked the first week of our Lit Circle novels and I must say, I was quite interested in the book I chose. The Stranger actually held my interest throughout the sixty pages we had to read for this session and it went by relatively fast. One of the most surprising things about the actual novel was the relative simplicity involved with the writing, at least stylistically. Every sentence was very short and did not really have any real substance or descriptive factor. I later learned that this was to show the characteristic monotony of the main character, Meursault, but the fact that Camus, the author of the novel, chose to write like that is still surprising. This leads directly into another thing that was really interesting about the novel and that was the way that Meursault reacts to situations. He has absolutely no emotions. This was discussed in more depth in our actual literature circle discussions, but Meursault is an apathetic individual, and seems almost incapable of feelings. When his mother dies, he shrugs it off as if he has just witnessed the death of an ant. He does not cry or weep and eventually goes on to resume his daily activities as if nothing has happened. When his girlfriend Marie states that she loves him, he states that love does not mean anything and when she wants to marry him, he states that marriage too means nothing. Arguably the most important phenomena in life, that being love, and the biggest commitment one can make, that being marriage, are again shrugged off by Meursault. We only really see him reveal any emotion when he kills and Arab at the end of the first section, something that does not really show any promise for his future. His emotions come out when he kills, sounds rather foreboding, which coincides with the rather strange title of the novel, one that invokes an aura of mystery.
Another one of the characters that had me very confused was the presence of Salomano and his dog in the novel. Salomano is presented as the neighbor of Meursault and is an old man whose only companion is his dog. The two resemble each other in appearance as both have hunched necks and scabs all over their bodies, yet the man hates the dog and the dog is deathly afraid of the man. Originally, I wondered why in the world the man would be included in the novel, but it was clarified when the scene where the man lost his dog took place. The old man was actually weeping when the dog slipped its collar and ran away despite showing hate towards it. Salomano goes on to tell a story about how he bought the dog when his wife died to be his companion. The dog likely filled the void left behind by his wife’s death and now that the dog is gone, the void has reopened provoking tears. The situation with the old man and the dog also reveals one of the aspects of Camus’s philosophy, one that is present throughout the novel. The story goes along with the saying that you don’t appreciate things until they are gone. It also highlights the pettiness of man and the absurdity in the events that occur in one’s life.

The Invisible Man is Running

I must say that I am quite thankful that we are finally done reading the Invisible Man, a book, despite whatever my test grade will indicate, that I did finish late Sunday night. Despite the pain in the … that the novel was, at least in trying to finish all of the never ending assignments that remain to go on, I did actually enjoy the novel as surprising as that may seem. In my research of Ralph Ellison, I found that he explored race relations in the times after the Civil War in a way different than those before him in that he depicted the African American culture as vibrant and full rather than diminished and nearly dead. This different way of writing about race relations and the invisibility of African Americans was very interesting and caught my interest throughout the novel.
When looking back over the novel in a futile attempt to study for the test, I noticed many things that connected the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel that I had not initially picked up on. One of these things was the “running” theme and diction used. In the moments after the Battle Royal took place as the narrator watched the naked lady do her mesmerizing dance and was forced to fight, the narrator was able to give a speech. This speech contained a certain eloquence that would be reciprocated during his times in the Brotherhood but the white men listening did not truly appreciate it. The school superintendent merely gave the narrator the scholarship and an official looking document and sent him on his way after the white men had been entertained by the black men. The night he received the document, the narrator had a dream where he read the letter and it said “Keep This [expletive for African American]-Boy Running” (Ellison 33). After explaining the dream, he stated that he did not get the meaning at the time, but it is apparent that he eventually did glean the meaning. The funny thing about the letter and the dream is that it came true. Usually when one says that his dreams came true, it is a god thing but in this case, it was the opposite as the narrator was forced to run through various locations. He ran from his home to college and while at college ran around following instructions. He was eventually kicked out for running an errand incorrectly and was ran out of the college and forced to go to New York. When in New York, he ran around the city giving his “letter” of recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe to the employers only to never get a call-back. After this, he went to the paint factory and eventually gave his speech about dispossession after which he again ran away from Brother Jack. This running continued as he followed other people’s wishes and did what they expected of him, something that he eventually realizes and rebels against. In the very end of the novel, on page 534, he states that “I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.” In stating that he is running within himself, he is essentially stating that he is running away from himself and his personal identity. His identity has been dictated by other for so long and now that he has decided to harness it as his own, he has been rendered invisible as people can no longer see him in the way that they want, but now must realize that he is finally his own man. This at least was my interpretation of the word running and the invisibility presented in the novel as the two go hand in hand.