Term Paper

Anthony Jackson
English 333
Dr. Gleason

Term Paper

For the final term paper I chose the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler for step one.
The ten pages that I have chosen are 198-208. During my reading of these pages many
questions came to my mind, such as why do I enjoy this text? One of the reasons why I find myself so intrigued by Kindred is the fact that I can relate to most of the events that occurred during the story. Throughout my life I have had to deal many of the same issues that are faced in Kindred. One of the issues that are dealt with in Kindred that I also had to deal with was racism. One of my most vivid memories of my life comes from an experience in the second grade in which I was subjected to the ignorance and stupidity of another human for the first time. The similarities between my experience and the experiences that Dana faces would include characters and even the roles in which they play in both stories.
While I was in the second grade around September or October, a few friends of mine and one who I believed to be my friend decided to play on the newly built playground and slide set. While preparing to go down the freshly painted yellow slide, one of the boys behind me yelled “Hurry up Nigger”. At that moment my conscience found itself in a state of shock, I honestly did not know how to react to the incident that had just occurred. Initially I felt a sudden burst of rage fill my mind and body, but I managed to hold it in and continue my journey down the slide only to wait for him at the bottom. I stood there at the bottom of the slide waiting to get my revenge on him, but before I could get my revenge, he did not slide down properly and bruised his leg on the way down. He either twisted his leg or scrapped it really good, because the scream he made never left my mind. I choose to confront the issue head on and simply talk to him about what he just said to me, I also offered to help him get to the other side of the playground, but he refused to let me help him he said “get away from me you nigger!”.
This can be compared to Dana’s experience with Rufus when she traveled through time to the Weylin home and tripped over Rufus. Initially she saves his life because he was in a puddle so deep the water almost covered his head. Although Rufus seemed to be somewhat thankful of Dana saving his life, he later turned his feelings into pure hate and rage because he couldn’t have Alice and then later he realized that he couldn’t have Dana as well.
As with any white person that Dana meet from Rufus’s time period the word Nigger was very common and most slaves did not find it offense initially and certainly did not question the hatred and knowledge behind the word but in 1995, I was raised not say this word and I knew the hatred and evil behind the word. The similarities between my story and Dana’s do not just end there. A few moments later I walked to the other side of the playground closer to the classrooms where I found the same boy who had previously degraded me and placed a mental scar in my mind. I asked him one last time why he decided to call me out of my name, he decided to say it one more time. By the time he finished pronouncing the last “r” he was already lifted high above my head and was five seconds away from crashing down to earth. This was my way of showing revenge, giving him the same feeling that he had just given me. While in Kindred Dana found herself hating Rufus and with a passion for everything she had done for him, from the letters to Kevin never being sent out to her saving his life every time they meet. Dana became agitated with being forced to leave her life every time and randomly sent to a time in American history where she is not welcome and is not treated as an equal human. Dana later was forced to make a choice whether or not to take Rufus’s life and she gave into temptation and literally committed a sin, but the question is whether or not it was a sin to wipe the Weylin plantation clean from the virus known as slave owners. I found these two situations to be very similar in the choices and decisions that were made.
One way of interpreting the ten pages that I have selected would be by the text-text stage. For my theorists I chose Toni Morrison from IV Revisiting History. In the text Toni writes about the important work in the history of late twentieth century African American fiction. “Morrison’s narrative of black men and women after the Civil War weighing the value of remembering a traumatic past resonates strongly among a middle class readership itself only thirty years removed from the de facto apartheid of pre-Civil Rights Movement America.” Morrison also talks about other selections and how the authors of the postmodern era revisited the past to elaborate on stories about the present day. Tony Morrison also “in writing about the impeachment in 1998, Morrison wrote that, since Whitewater, Bill Clinton had been mistreated because he "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas” Wikipedia. Also during 2008 during the Democratic primary Toni Morrison stated to Time magazine "People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race." One of the biggest and most controversial novels that Morrison wrote was Beloved. The similarities between Kindred and Beloved are also there. In Beloved the story is loosely based on the life and legal case of the slave Margaret Garner. In the book one of the famous quotes that arises states “sixty million and more” which refers to the estimated number of slaves who died during the slave trade. “In this novel, Morrison paints a somber picture of the brutal effects of slavery. It examines both the mental and physical trauma caused by slavery as well as its effect on survivors. The book follows the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver as they try to rebuild their lives after having escaped from slavery. “The story follows the basic traditional outlines of a typical slave narrative and incorporates a painful taboo and certain aspect of slavery. During my search on Toni Morrison and related topics, I stumbled across a song that is very familiar to me and most African Americans. The song I chose is Wade in the water.
Wade in the water (children)Wade in the waterWade in the waterGod's gonna trouble the waterIf you don't believe I've been redeemedGod's gonna trouble the waterI want you to follow him on down to Jordan stream(I said) My God's gonna trouble the waterYou know chilly water is dark and cold(I know my) God's gonna trouble the waterYou know it chills my body but not my soul(I said my) God's gonna trouble the water(Come on let's) wade in the waterWade in the water (children)Wade in the waterGod's gonna trouble the waterNow if you should get there before I do(I know) God's gonna trouble the waterTell all my friends that I'm comin' too(I know) God's gonna trouble the waterSometimes I'm up lord and sometimes I'm down(You know my) God's gonna trouble the waterSometimes I'm level to the groundGod's gonna trouble the water(I Know) God's gonna trouble the waterWade in the water (children)Wade out in the water (children)God's gonna trouble the water
While on the other hand there is a comparison to the text-world. When you compare the choices that Dana had to face, to kill Rufus and set free all of the slaves or to let him live his life tormenting all the slaves he owned. Regardless I chose to compare it to the Civil Rights movements during the 1960’s and the choices the African American leaders had to make. During the 1960’s many blacks followed the teaching of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Americans and more specifically blacks found it easy to understand the analogies that he used because most of them were used in a biblical sense. While Malcolm X used more violent protest to get his point across and in some ways threaten the lives of people. These two leaders left Americans with a choice, who would be their savior when it comes to Civil Rights. I compare Dr. Martin Luther King to letting Rufus stay alive and I compare Malcolm X to the death of Rufus.




















Work Cited

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved(novel)
www.cocojams.com/african_american_secular_slave.com

11/13/08 V for Veronica

So far after reading the opening passages for Veronica, I find myself in modern times far away from the dull futuristic views of Neroumancer. The text of the novel is very simple and easy to read. At times the text seems to try and sterotype what "cool" or what modern is. The usuage and more importantly the tone of how the characters converse are where i find "Veronica" trying to hard to be something its not. That can be found on page 6 when Freddie says " But they probalby just tell you I'm an a-s-s-hole, like well, whats on TV." I dont beilieve that part is necessary for the book, but I am willing to give Veronica a try, after reading Neroumancer I will give just about any book a try now.

10/30/08 a Future with a question mark

As I began to read the opening pages of Neuromancer, it slightly reminded me of the great opener of Kindred. In fact while reading this book I find myself constantly comparing it to Kindred. So far I have found it extremely difficult to read Neuromancer. I love sci-fi and I loved the matrix trilogy, but for some reason I do not find the book as interesting as I would have hoped for. I do like some parts of the plot, or the parts that make sense to me, like the betrayl of friendship that goes on and the technolgy that they use in the "future" or "matrix". I believe that I may have been expecting to much from this novel, even though I have only finshed a quarter of the book, I do not know if the story has more twists and turns left in it, hopefully. While reading the book, I found several references to the matrix, i originally thought this book might have been published sometime after the release of the first movie, but I was shocked to learn that the book was first published in 1984. I believe the reason that I could not connect with the book is because of the mysterious background of the setting, and where that setting could possibly be. I compare it to "finding your footing" you can not find your footing if you do not know where you are.

10/23/08 Kindred Round 2

For the first time in my life I have finished a book that made "think outside the box" and consider anything a possibility. As odd as it sounds and as odd it is for you to read this, I felt somewhat of a connection between Dana and myself. I could literally put myself in her shoes during each and every moment in the story. There were of course times at which I wish she would have been more aggressive, mainly because that's what I would have done if I were in her shoes. To be honest, before I read this novel I thought that my knowledge of slavery and how slaves were treated was accurate, when I remember my high school history classes I remember vivid pictures of slaves that were beaten and whipped but soon after those classes ended I forgot about the hardship that these people were forced to endure, some for most of there lives. Kindred made me wonder about my own family history, it made me wonder how many times my great great grandfather was beaten and whipped for having a baby with a white female. Throughout my time reading Kindred I found myself connecting ties within my own life to that of Dana's. In the end I give my credit to Octavia Butler, for providing me and others in the class with a strong picture, and an even stronger story that I am sure none of us will ever forget.

10/16/08 Kindred

I have to say that the newest novel that I am reading titled Kindred is by far the best book that I have ever read. That may not mean a lot to you but for me this is a big deal. I love Kindred, I love the sci-fi aspect of it and I love the descriptions that the narrator provides us with. From every detailed beating to how Dana "teleports" into the past, are all well thought out. I love the conflicts and the struggles that Dana, Rufus and Kevin all endure during the story. For me the book reminds me of a movie that I could watch all day. The book is written in a more personal textual style, Octavia Butler writes in a complex yet simple style that makes reading the novel very easy and smooth, like drinking a Pina colada on a hot summer day, its a thirst quencher for entertainment. I cannot wait to finish the story. I can honestly say that I have never connected with a book in this way, when I read the text I actually get lost in the words and my imagination kicks in and I picture everything thats happening almost like its a TV series that's unfolding before my eyes. I believe that I am drawn in because of the harsh theme, which is basically the reality of slavery in the past and this story has brought forth details of the time period in the past that I had not known.

Past, Present and the Future

Since the beginning of time or first grade for me, I have never found myself to be a great writer or even a decent writer and I believe that is because the points that I try to get across are sometimes misinterpreted into being something else. I can remember as far back as the first grade when our entire class took a trip down to the school library and we were asked to all pick out your favorite reading material. Some students in the class chose “Where’s Waldo” while most other chose the book and series titled “Clifford the big red dog”. I choose to pick up the “ESPN” magazine and the only reason why I choose it was because I was interested in the mini player cards that came with the magazine. Every once in a while I would read some of the articles if they pertained to my favorite player, but I believe that this set the path for me and the choices that I would make in the future regarding the subject of English and eventually would come into play when it involved my writing skills.
After my slight interest in reading magazines while younger, my interests for magazines doubled when I entered high school. During high school I took a total of 4 very different English classes, two of which were with the same teacher, this same teacher is the only person to ever tell me that I have the potential to become whatever kind of writer I want to become. My teacher saw something in my early screenplays that seemed to amaze him and in turn he pushed me to become better and better. For many people reading and writing is extremely difficult to do. I am no different than anyone else, I believe that with the help of my teacher he pushed me in the right direction and showed me an entirely new doorway which I had the choice to step through it or not. My biggest fault is the fact that I try to take the first shortcut that I can find just to finish first; I will be the first to admit that I am lazy to a certain degree. Randy Moss the wide reciever from the New England Patriots had one of my favorite quotes of all time, Randy said “I play and I block when I want to” that is basically how I feel when it comes to writing. Before I took this class, I only read magazines and the magazines that I did read were Money, Hot Rod Magazine and Popular Science. This put a temporary damper on my writing skills and did not help increase my reading skills. Before this course I was in the Text-self stage. For most sentences in all of my papers I used the word “I”. That was one of my biggest problems when writing papers in high school.
Now at the moment I believe that my writing skills are at their highest point that they have ever been at. With all of the English classes that I have taken, none have ever required as much reading and writing as English 333 has. I know that my writing still needs a lot of improvements but this class is teaching me a lot about myself as a writer and I find it interesting how my procrastinating and basically laziness effects my writing, examples can be found in several blog posts most notably in the blog post for 9/11 which was a very short blog regarding Pulp Fiction. In the post I did a horrible job describing what was going on in the story and I did not follow the guidelines for our blogs. I know that I should be in the stage of Text-Other Texts but I do not believe that I am 100% there just yet. The word “I” still makes a strong appearance in my current work and shows up in almost every sentence in this blog.
When it comes to answering common questions that arise in the world, I believe that I am improving on my writing skills but I do plan on putting forth as much effort and dedication as possible. I do want to be at the stage of Text-World by the end of the semester. I believe that I will be able to decipher a story to the best of my ability and apply what I have learned and plan to learn to better suit myself for my future and to provide something interesting to read. If you read the very first blog post that I have written for the course, the comments are what I base my future off of. I believe that is an example for Text-World.

10-2-08 Maus

This week I have finished the novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. Before I even read the first page I questioned what exactly could this book be about. The first thing that stood out to me was the Nazi symbol on the top of the book that is engulfed by a mouse. After reading the story I quickly realized how awful and how dramatic the Holocaust truley was. I never knew all of the details that came along with the story of the Holocaust and how something of this magnitutde could have been accepted, it's borderline barbaric. I found most of the pictures in the book to be very inlightning, but I have to mention the hangings on pg 83 because even tho you see mice being hanged, the reader can still picture an actual human being put into that same position and I myself can see how someone could see that image replayed into their head over and over. In the end I am glad that I read the book and understood what was going on in the dialouge and the backstory. I found the end of the book ironic because Vladek burns his sons mother's diaries and his son called him a murderer, in a sense Vladek did what the Germans did to the jews.

9-25-08-You Dont love me yet screenplay

Today in class we revised our screenplays that we wrote for Jonathan Lethem novel "You Don't Love me Yet". I was very excited to see that Lethem actually wanted to read what we have written. In our adaptations of the story, we altered certain characters, changed dialogue and created a new atmosphere for some scences. In a sense this now makes us students who portray the role of writers. The story that my group had was the yellow arm chair scene, in which we changed some of the dialouge for the COMPLAINER and for lucinda. We tried to give the COMPLAINER a much faster pace for his tone, we wanted him to get to the point and get there fast. While for Lucinda we tried to give her an even stronger and more dominante personality then she had in the actual novel. In the end I was very proud of our group's screenplay and I am sure Lethem wil be as well.

9-18-08 Why dont you love me? Lethem

So far I have enjoyed reading "Why don't you love me"? by Jonathan Lethem. The story is very interesting because it shows characters that we can mostly relate to in our own life's. The story is rock n roll infused and plays heavily on that theme so far as the story follows the various band's members. One of the most interesting things that I have read in a while occurred during the "Yellow Chair" scene in which the COMPLAINER and Lucinda have a deep conversation regrading the COMPLAINER and his obession with "the most beautiful girl he has ever sleept with, but not really". When I first read the dialouge which reffered to the COMPLAINER performing oral sex on his dream girl, i was just blown away and i did not see the expect that level of detail and weirdness to transpire.

09/11/08 Pulp Fiction-Tarantino

When I contemplate what Pulp Fiction is, I quickly come to the conclusion that the movie can be compared to four slices of pizza, all with different toppings, that come from the same restaurant. There are four different sets of characters that are all involved with Pulp Fiction. Each character moves in and out of the plot and eventually come together to form the core of the plot. Overall Pulp fiction is a case of several stories wrapped in one movie.

9/4/08-City of Glass-Paul Auster

The theme of the City of Glass seems to be one of change or one that questions whether or not you can truly define someone or something based on a single name for it. The story forces you to think in ways that you may have never thought before. Paul Auster does an amazing job of confusing the reader by using multiple identities for characters and creating a distinct aura that surrounds the main characther Quinn as everything that we read is manipulated through his eyes and what we read my not be what is truly going on in the story, everything that happens in this book is placed there to cause confilct with what you thought that you believed and what you will believe.

8/28/08-Moulin Rouge-Baz Luhrmann

Moulin Rouge is a unique story that tries to separate itself from the rest by giving the audience the actual plot before it unfolds. The story is full of meta fiction and Christian's fixation on love. The story was somewhat difficult to understand at the beginning, but around ch 10 in the movie, the plot began to make sense and i did not expect the twists that accommodated with the movie. The subtle hints that were displayed out during ch12 will question whether or not you really need to watch the entire movie, as seeing that the short performance that is giving to the Duke explains the entire plot including death. In the end Moulin Rouge is and ideal story being told through an ideal narrative via the eyes of Christian.