Our persevering roots...

Wow what a whirlwind of a quarter this has been! There was a lot of planning, a lot of failed plans, lots of ideas that had to get reworked, and just a lot of chaos in general. But, Hey!, that's the American way right?

I love that this quarter ended with spring...no, not only because of the sunshine and warm breezes (though those do help!), but because I feel like I have such a fresh perspective on everything now. You know your an English major if...you can relate every single thing that happens on any given day back to a book you recently read. Seriously, I feel like there isn't a day that I don't reflect back to something we covered this quarter. When I ask myself why this is, it's simple: because these readings are our roots. What we delved into this quarter was the beginning of it all. The way we are today, the way we act, and react, and feel, think is all a direct result of the issues and ideas that are at the core of all this literature. That's pretty, genuinely awesome. I have never quite felt the kind of direct connection to literature as a whole in a single class as I have this quarter. I mean, yes, there are books and poetry that speak to me on far more levels than some of this work did, but as an entire unit over the course of two weeks...I am almost taken aback by it now that I am really reflecting.

This quarter has given me profound understanding.

Now where did we start? At the beginning would make sense...so, ahh, Mr. Mather and his witches...

What did I learn about my current American perspective?
We,as a culture, are still scared of anything that doesn't make sense. We would much rather classify and degrade those who are different or even odd than actually deal with what may or may not be going on. We still, to this day, try to separate ourselves from anything that may seem out of the ordinary. Do we still see the body as a register/barometer for evil? Yes, though I don't think we attribute it to "evil" anymore necessarily. We still resort back to these deep-seeded roots of resentment towards anything we don't have a firm understanding of.

Quote I'll take with me:
"Alas, the Philistines, of Hell have cut our locks for us, they then blind us, mock us, ruin us: In truth, I cannot altogether blame it, if People are a little transported, when they conceive all the secular interests of themselves and their families at stake; and yet at the sight of these Heartburnings, I cannot forbear the Exclamation of the Sweet-spirited"

Next: Young Goodman Brown

What did I learn about my current American perspective?
I think that most have become very transient with their faith. Goodman walked into the forest knowing the temptation and evil that it (supposedly) possessed. He walked out on his faith yet when he needed to recover from the experience he had he returned to his faith. I am not a religious person but it frustrates me to no end when people pick and choose which situations they will approach as a spiritual person. In the Catholic Church sin flies around like it's nothing, but as long as you go say a few "Hail Marys" and put on a good act of apology for your priest then everything is magically A-OK...How does that make any sense? People today are just as quick to re-assume their faith as they were to write it off in the first place, and it's all situational. Did Young Goodman Brown start it all?

Love this last part:
"A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate, man did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because another anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain"

That then leads us to: Women's Indian Captivity Narratives--Mary Rowlandson.

What kind of perspective did this give me on our modern American culture?
In class we discussed the hypothetical/philosphical question of what a combined Indian/ Puritan belief system would have looked like had the Indians and Puritans gotten along and I think that the beautiful thing is that now that sort of thing does exist in this country. Sure there are still people getting belittled and picked on but that will happen anywhere. For the most part, here in America, you can feel free to be the person you want to be, whoever and whatever that is. It was a long time coming from where we started but we have made it.
Also, I couldn't help but think about our culture's obsession with white women's captivity. It is a story that we can't get enough of to this day...Silence of the Lambs, Law and Order: SVU, Taken, it is everywhere in pop culture and Rowlandson was really the first woman to come out with this sort of story. Do you think she knew she have such a groundbreaking idea?

Quote to take with me:
"This sight was enough to melt a heart of flint"--I just think that is so beautiful and gives such context to her situation.

"I had taken two or three pipes and was presently ready for another"--I really liked this scene as a whole because it brought humanity to the Indians that have been portrayed as such savages and also seemed to bring a little light to the situation.



After that we read: The Conquest of New Spain

Current culture insights:
Desire.For.Domination. It is still so alive in this culture today, as we saw with the wrestling movie. Men still have this incredible need to be the biggest and the best, to overcome and conquer and we, as women, tend to feed the viscious cycle. I'll be the first to admit, I adore my boyfriend for his big, muscley arms and for the fact that he is in the army and plays football. That's what every classic American girl wants right? Why? Nowadays, it is a hard question for us to answer but I think anymore there isn't an answer directly relating to the current status...it all goes back to our roots. This is a mindset that has been passed down and manipulated from generation to generation. I'm amazed that it hasn't spiraled completely out of control yet (or maybe it has).

Quote:
All the description in the narrative was so, so beautiful! But I loved this description of gunshots and the apparent deceit:
"For they told him we shot out flashes of lightning, and killed many Indians with our horses, and that we were angry Tueles, and other such childish stories. But now that he had seen us, he knew that we were of flesh and blood and very intelligent, also very brave. Therefore, he had a far greater esteem for us than the reports had given him, and would share with us what he had."

Also, not from the book but it was said that Cortes asked Montezuma if they had any more gold because he and his men "had a sickness of the heart which could only be cured by gold"--talk about laying the greed on thick...I will remember that forever...

On to...The Coquette!

Cultural connection:
Females in today's society seem to be plagued with an inability to find a suitable mate, hence half of all marriages end in divorce. How sad is that? Can we never learn? Or has Eliza's mindset grown and mutated over the generations causing and entire population of women with an inability to make a wise decision? Maybe I'm being a little too harsh and a little too broad...but still the stats exist and prove that we as a culture have become completely incapable of finding suitable mates.

Quotes:
"I am young, gay, volatile."

"Sometimes I think of becoming a predestinarian, and submitting implicitly to fate, without any exercise of free will; but as mine seems to be a wayward one, I would counteract the operations of it, if possible"

Week 6 Brought us Thoreau and Emerson and unfortunately I don't think we see any more than brief glimpses of them in certain people in our current day. We live in a culture of people who all think they are thinking for themselves, but when reality strikes the truth is that each and every one of our opinions is very guided through channels that we don't even realize most of the time. "Let yourself be a counterfriction to the machine" is something I think that a lot of us would love to embrace, but none of us, likely, will have the guts to actually do it. It's far easier to fall into line and besides, we're too busy to make plans to stir things up anyways....

As for my slave girl friend Linda...
Connection to today:
I think that in its very base form we can find the largest connection to be FREEDOM! So many worked so hard to get it and we do take it for granted in the modern day, but it is also something we take advantage of each and every single waking (and sleeping for that matter) hour. I think that in the hustle and bustle of the every day we forget about our freedoms but when it comes down to it if you were doing street interviews and asking, "What is the best thing that we have in America?" I guarantee you most everyone would say "freedom." It is ingrained into us, it is what we are passionate about.

Quote to forever hold...
"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?"--heartbreaking...

In the Heart of the Sea--
brings us back to the idea of dominance and conquest that is still alive and breeding in our culture. However, this story brings to life the risk and the affliction. This is something that is not integrated into our culture anymore and if it is we seem to be used to/immune to it. The sad thing is that even though we can hear these tales and feel this pain with these men, it still will never curb the appeal of this core form of masculinity...sadly enough.

I will never forget...
"began by removing the most obvious signs of the corpse's humanity"--gut-wrenching...

O POE...
Current day connection:
We love the dark and the gothic and although we have modernized these sorts of things in various ways it all comes back to Poe. Today we also hear far too often about love becoming an obsessive, consumptive force...there are so many stalking issues, and rapes, and murders that have to do with this force that it's almost sickening. And to think that Poe was the one who tapped into it all first!

Before Reading Ligeia I had no idea that Poe could write to beautifully...too bad it was obsessively driven...

Line to remember..."Misery is manifold"

DICKINSON!
My love! My heart belongs to Emily! JK! but not really...

Connections:
We spent a lot of class time looking into who Emily was as a person and we were very critical of her lifestyle, as many have been. Maybe she was one of the visionaries for this type of lifestyle, however, today it is very commonplace to most creative people to be at least somewhat seclusive if not completely. In solitude I think many find their purest thoughts and in that I see Emily's way still being alive today...

Forever and ever..."We are the only poets and every one else is prose"...


This is what I will take with me...and with this I feel content. I have learned so much and will continuously refer back to these stories, to our roots, for reference and inspiration. Thanks so much for everything!