Week 8!

So much to work through this week and so little space in my mind to process it all!

Okay, so Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl...vivid and brilliant. This is one of those readings that I feel like no matter how far down my path of life I happen to be, I will remember this story (even if just momentarily) and be able to be completely submerged within Linda's world. This can happen for only a few select reads and I think, I think this might be one of them, but, alas, only time will be able to tell [and believe me this book is competing with some greats...need I mention My Side of the Mountain, I Capture the Castle, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, etc.?) There I so much good juice in this book!

I think that the relationships in this read were what affected me the most. She bears her heart and soul to us, though I guess that's not a huge sacrifice considering nothing much worse can really happen to it. There were moments when I literally felt my stomach churning with anger for the anguish she lived through..."Why does the slave ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wretched away by the hand of violence"..."above all things I was desirous to spare my lover the insults that had cut so deeply into my own soul"...How can those words not make you just want to throb!

In class we got into some really deep material and discussed how our culture has a morally complicated relationship with choice and brought to light some of the questions that have embedded themselves within our culture relating to social respectability. Linda was not respectable in the eyes of the whites but had also made other slaves ashamed of her. Her grandmother told her that there was more virtue in death and/or rape than in what she was doing, citing "stand by your children and suffer with them till death." Wow are those some heavy words or what? We also discussed briefly that you must be selfish before you can sacrifice because you must have something to sacrifice before you can sacrifice it. Maybe what Linda was doing was selfish, but it was also selfless in the fact that she had the eventual aim of helping a cause much larger than herself. However, she had to work towards her freedoms before anything would be able to come of it.

To add insult to injury, I was browsing around and found this beauty...


How pathetic is it that these are the works which are more likely to be picked up in a bookstore and read by some poor, lonely, ignorant housewife rather than the real, heart-wrenching words of a woman whose life was spent actually struggling with all these toils. It makes me sick. [But now I can be assured that although I may one day I may very well become a housewife I surely won't be completely ignorant when it comes to my choice of reading materials.]




You know what also makes me sick? Cannibalism. No seriously.

That being said, In the Heart of the Sea, was an awesome read--gut-wrenching rather than heart-wrenching but good nonetheless. This was my first introduction (redundant?) to this story, as I have never read Moby Dick and that being said I apologize if I get hung up on some of the big-picture ideas, as I have never really worked through them before. First and foremost, I couldn't help but be continuously preoccupied with this notion of us, as humans, having such a huge preoccupation with conquering things so much larger than ourselves (which goes back to Conquest of New Spain, I know). Why climb the tallest mountain in the world and risk your life? Why go to war with another country and risk your life? Why set sail on a little boat and try to kill a monstrous whale? A beautiful, wild whale that has lived its life in serenity. What's with this little man syndrome? Why can't we just let things be the way they have been? There's no need to go around picking fights...I just don't understand. But when it really all comes down to it I suppose it's because we all feel this intense desire to prove. think about it, our lives completely center around proving anything and everything to other people. So I suppose if you start out big then all the little, everyday battles of life are a lot easier to win, in other words, if you kill a whale no one will really be interested in picking fights with you. And it's a lot easier to hook up with the ladies! Don't believe me? Well, "there was rumored to be a secret society of women on the island whose members pledged to marry only men who had killed a whale" (13). Which again brings me back to this human fascination with all things "big". No one wants to be with the simple man, we all want bigger and better...but why?

In class I loved the connection we made with Rowlandson with the word "affliction". I think at first the definition of affliction could be found amongst the men on the boat wrapped up with the intense weight that seemed to always be on their shoulders. The weight of having something to prove. For instance, take the character of Lawrence, he was afflicted with the fact that his every move was being watched and that with even the smallest of mistakes his entire reputation (or the one he was trying to gain) could to ruined forever..."he knew that the mate was analyzing every one of his movements. If he let chase down there would be hell to pay" (52). That is some serious pressure if you ask me. However, that kind of affliction has no comparison to affliction in its most extreme form that these men would have to deal with down the road.
"As they lost weight, they became lethargic in body and spirit. They became increasingly irritable. Concentration became difficult. They were appalled by their lack of physical strength and coordination, and many suffered blackouts when they stood up too quickly. Their limbs swelled. They lost their sexual desire and would indulge instead in a kind of "stomach masturbation," describing favorite meals to one another and pouring over cookbooks for hours at a time" (158). In severity, this was a whole new kind of affliction. Then, "they were about to eat one of their own shipmates...this was not a whale or a hog or a tortoise. This was Lawson Thomas, a shipmate with whom they had shared two hellish months in an open boat. Whoever butchered Thomas's body had to contend not only with the cramped quarters of the twenty-five-foot boat but also with the chaos of his own emotions...Dean began by removing the most obvious signs of the corpse's humanity" (165). Yikes! Does the word affliction even describe this anymore? I think we might need to create a new word to suite this situation. This is seriously heavy.

An intense week this was...a lot to pack in...hope I did it!