Blog #7 The Memory of Caddy

Memory is different for every individual. The memory of one incedent could be truly significant for one, and just another random memory for another. For example, something as common as a wedding will be a complete different memory for everyone that attended it. For the bride it will be one of the happiest days of her life; for the paternts it will be bitter sweet; for the quests it will be just another wedding; for some little kids it is just another boring ceremony their parents dragged them to. What is interesting is what makes a memory stand out in someone's brain, compared to someone else's, or even compared to other experiences. Why is that one memory so meaningful?

In The Sound and the Furry Faulkner uses memory to tell a story about a girl named Caddy. Throughout the story we see different memory perspectives on the same events. Faulkner uses the memories of Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey to tell the story. Every character's memory plays out throughout their daily lives differently. Benjy's memory comes in and out throughout every moment of his life, the wiff of one tree and he travels back ten years to a memory of Caddy. Quentin's memory plays a big part in his life because is completely absorbed in the past, his whole life is revolved around past experiences, and he is forever doomed by the past. Jason only uses his memories of the past when it has a specific affect on him, or when it has to do with money. The one who probably has the most normal sense of memory use is Dilsey, who seems to go on about her life day-by-day, and she accepts the past as it is.

Throughout the story Faulkner uses a combined memory of Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and Dilsey to characterize Caddy, yet we never get a chance to see Caddy's memories, and how she views the past. I find it interesting that to tell the story of a girl, we never get to see anything from her point of view, we never get to see her memories! How odd.

So what is Faulkerner suggesting by his technique ? What I beleive Faulkner is suggesting by the way he uses memory, is that a person is truly characterized by the way they have an affect on others. So by the use of memories about Caddy we get to truly see who she is, without any personal bias. Though each character's memory of her may be biased in itself, none of it is filtered through Caddy because we are not seeing it from her perspective; therefore, we are truly experiencing the life of Caddy Compson through how everyone else sees it. We get a chance to see how she affects others lives and how the memory of her through others eyes is what truly characterizes her.

By Faulkner providing the reader with four different perspectives rather than just narrating the whole story from one point of view, that also helps characterize Caddy. Because it would be unfair to just take one perspective on a person or event and have that characterize the person or event as a whole. For example if we just had Quentin's memories to describe Caddy we would have a completly differnet idea of her than what we would if we added in Benjy's memories, and then Dilseys. This is similar to perhaps the memory of a wedding. If one had just asked the little kid who was bored out of his mind about the wedding, they would have a completely different idea of the wedding then they would if they had asked the maid of honor.

Memory is different for everybody, and people can definitely picture the past in different ways. Faulkner utilizes these facts about memory to characterize the character Caddy in The Sound and the Furry.

Blog #6 The Sound and the Fuzzy!

Though The Sound and the Furry has been very difficult to follow, I have actually enjoyed trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I mean, the whole concept of no time, and everything kind-of happening at once is really cool. It reminds me a little of Slaughterhouse Five. When I first read Faulkner's introduction I had no idea of what he meant by "I wrote this book and learned to read," but now I am gradually beginning to see where he is coming from. The fact that time doesn't have much of a purpose, and that the reader has to focuse on the relationships, the setting, the characters, is all pretty cool and interesting. What is interesting to me is that this story could easily be told in the traditional way by many authors; a story about a disfunctional family in the south. And although I keep finding myself quite frustrated with trying to figure out the story line, when we discuss it in class I feel like we, as a class, are getting much more out of this book than any other book we have read, purely because of the way which we have to look at it. Rather than look at the order in which things happened, the particular way in what happened, we are just looking at what is.

This book has also made me think about time in a different way as well, I mean for time to be insequential is very weird, and I still don't quite understand that part of the book either. I mean, I realize that Benjy is mentally ill, but I still don't see how everything is all kind-of occurring at the same time. To think that something that happened 10 years ago could seem like it's happening now is quite odd, so I'm still trying to grasp that aspect of the book.

One other thing I found intereting about The Sound and the Furry is how by Benjy's senses he kind of jumps from one point of time to another. This is cool to me because it's something that happens to me all the time, and I know it happens for a lot of other people too. For example, there are certain songs, certain smells, certain images, and feelings, and whenever I experience these certain things, I can often related it to the past, or it just often reminds me of something that has happened in the past. So to me it is really interesting how our minds work that way, which is kind-of what our little "timed" writing exercise at the end of Thursday's class showed us.

Overall although I'm enjoying figuring out some of the deeper meanings and what is really going on, the book as a whole is still a little fuzzy to me, and I'm curious to see how the rest of it will play out!!

Blog #5 The savagery! The paradox! The darkness!

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory fave the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath-- "The horror! The horror!" Heart of Darkness, Conrad, page 130.

In both Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, Coppola and Conrad show that although many think they are more "civilized" than others (such as those in Africa or those in Vietnam), we are all really on the same level of savagery. Sometimes those that are believed to be more civilized are actually more savage-like than others. One of the biggest examples of what is though to be someone who is a good, civilized man who ends up being savaged is displayed through the character of Kurtz in both the novella and the film. In Heart of Darkness Kurtz is shown as a great man of The Company, and in Apocalypse Now he is shown as an honorable military man. In both situations they are wanted dead; either by The Company or the army. And as their deaths play out we see how savage-like and brutal everything really is. For example before Kurtz is killed in Apocalypse Now we see how savage like he has become by hanging and chopping off the heads of many of the members of his community, but rather than ending the brutality by his death, the actual death is brutal in itself. By Coppola showing mixed shots of the hacking of Kurtz and the hacking of the animal into peaces, we see that the more civilized character of Captain Willard is performing just as brutal of an act as the act of Vietnamese village men. This scene coupled along with both Kurtzes saying "The horror! The horror!" when they die, shows the paradoxical aspects of the novella and the film. What is paradoxical is the fact that there is almost no way to end savagery but by a savage act. Like how the only way stop Kurtz from his savage acts was my murdering him. Another paradoxical aspect is that it almost takes one to perform such a savage-like act to fully grasp the depth of the "darkness". For example, although Marlow obviously encounters many dark moments throughout his journey, everything finally "hits home" after experiencing Kurtz's death. This was shown by him saying "I have never seen [it] before, and hope never to see [it] again." Overall, all of the paradoxical aspects of war is what pretty much creates the darkness of war, and it takes one to experience that and act savagely themselves to realize the true darkness. What makes one have to experience it for themselves is the fact that those that do experience the brutal darkness seem to cover it up and not explain their experience; either because they don't want others to experience the same thing, or because they don't want to revisit their own experience. This was shown by Marlow lying to Kurtz's fiance about his last words. The only thing colonization really does is tame and cover up this darkness, and this is why many are still under the impression that they are more "civilized" than others, when they really are not at all.

Blog #4 - Works of Art

If these stories are "art," what makes them a creative activity both for the reader and the writer? Choose a story and discuss its creative aspects and what is available for interpretation.

In the short stories we have been reading during class there is a lot of room for interpretation. Kind-of like the writers goals are for the readers to finish the story with a lot of questions and different things to think about. And I think that this is what makes them true works of art, for a writer to write a story that borders on that fine line of giving us enough information without giving us too much. Sometimes we have to look at what they don't say just as much as what they do say. By the author leaving much of the story unspoken it allows a certain "creative activity" because it is left to the reader to figure out what exactly is going un-said, and they have to figure out what is being implied. But on the flip-side, it seems like the authors don't always exactly have their mind set on one particular story line, and so they are still unsure themselves as to what exactly goes on within their own story.

The story that left me with the most questions and room for interpretation was the Rape Fantasies story. I mean, for me personally I had a lot of things that I was wondering about when I finished reading it, and I think the rest of the class did too because we discussed it for about an hour! I was left wondering; who is this girl talking to? why is she at a bar by herself? what is she looking for? is she actually trying to get to know this guy so that he won't rape her? does she really just want someone to talk to? is she really that naiive? why is she doing this because she is making herself more vulnerable? what would I have done in that situation? what was the guy thinking and why wasn't he saying anything? do these people really have rape fantasies?? Haha, there were just a ton of crazy questions like that that were flowing through my head. And it was obvious that the writer did this on purpous. They left enough out to make us curious, but the fact they left out all these little things is what really made us want more. What I thought was the most creative part was that at the end of this girl rambling on about rape to some stranger, was how she said that what she doesn't understand is how somebody could sit there and have a conversation with somebody else, and then rape them. This was strange to me because she says this right after she just forced this long conversation with a stranger... almost as if she was creating the same situation which she described as something she couldn't understand. And since the story ends there it left me wondering if she did get raped afterwards by that guy, or what her thoughts were after having that conversation. I think that throughout the whole story she was constantly searching for answers, and by the author not giving any of those answers, the readers are also left searching for the answers to those same questions.

Blog #3 - He's a maniac!

Iago shifted from a religion to a game the moment he started plotting an evil scheme against Othello. The reason it became a game was because rather than it being set up so that "the best man wins," Iago turned it into a battle between who played the game the best. When Iago used his wit and cleverness to outsmart everyone around him, the game began. And Iago used almost everybody in the story as a game piece. He tricked them in such a canniving way that he lead everyone to do exactly what he wanted them to. Almost as if he was the one playing the game and moving all the pieces around as he pleased. I think the moral pyromaniac part comes in when he did things such as use the littlest remarks and comments to spark a flame underneath these other characters, or as he saw it; just other pieces of the game. When he did such things, such as leading Othello to believe Desdemonda cheated on him, then that flame moved and shifted all of the game pieces around, just like Iago wanted. But the thing is, Iago didn't actually have to ever move the pieces around himself, he just had to spark that flame because he truly understood how to play this game.

Blog Post #1 - Quotes I stole.

"Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe." --Not sure.
"Some people are too scared or something to think things can be different. The world's not exactly...shit. I guess it's hard for some people who are so use to things the way they are -even if they're bad- to change and they kinda give up and when they do, everybody loses." --Pay it Forward
"Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome. That's what momma always says. She says that beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up. And it will..." --Hope Floats

Blog Post #2 - This stuff is confusing to think about!

When I finished reading Oedipus Rex it left me thinking about the answers to questions that don't really have answers.

I thought a lot about fate. How can you be responsible for your fate, if what you are going to do is already decided? I guess that your fate is already decided, but you reach that fate by your own choices, and maybe that is how you can be responsible for it because you do ultimately make those choices. But then I wonder if a higher power already knows exactly what choices you are going to make to reach that fate, so at that point you may not really be choosing to make those decisions? To me this is similar to the discussions I always had with my dad when I was younger. We would always talk about the idea of infinity or time being endless. It's interesting to think about, but the fact that we will never really understand it is very overwhelming... and that's how I felt when we finished reading Oedipus Rex and had our class discussions about fate.

Not only did I think about fate in the since of whether or not we are responsible for it, but it's also interesting (to me) to think about whether or not you can change your fate. And how sometimes the more you try to change your fate the closer you reach it. This happened in Oedipus Rex many times... like when he was leaving his village because he was trying to avoid killing is father, but on the way out he actually killed his father! And I also thought about this... the play is full of dramatic irony because we know what his fate is, and we can kind of laugh to ourselves sometimes because of the things that Oedipus said that we know are not true. So do the higher powers who know our ultimate fate watch us and laugh at us? Becase if you think about it they know our fate so a lot of our lives could be dramatic irony? Haha, it's kinda of a quirky thought but I thought it was interesting.

Other than these questions and ideas that I had, I honestly left with kind of grossed out pesamistic thoughts and images -- I mean, the whole end of the play was filled with them. The fact that Oedipus's children are his siblings, incest in general, Iocaste hanging herself, and Oedipus stabbing his eyes out!! UGH!! Gross is all I have to say to that.