Changing a Mindset: Take No Disrespect

            Octavia E. Butler’s story, Kindred, tells the story of Dana, a modern black woman who unintentionally time travels back into the slave-era in America to save a white person named Rufus, who also happens to be her ancestor. She periodically time travels back to her actual home in California, but whenever she was thrown back to the days of slavery she had figured out that Rufus was always in need of help. Each time she went back, her stay would get longer and longer, in which she learned to adapt and play the role of that which was expected of her then, a slave. A momentous turn in the book, as well as the part that got me all riled up, was when Dana decided that she had enough of dealing with the crap that came with being a slave.

She was in a private conversation with basically her slave master, Rufus’s father, Tom Weylin, and Dana was thanking Weylin for doing “at least one decent thing for Kevin and me, no matter what he was” (200). However, all it took for Dana to snap, and essentially break through the restraining mold that was holding her down as a slave, was the brief response from Weylin regarding the ‘thank you’ of “I didn’t do it for you” (200). She immediately responds to Weylin surprising him with a rebuttal, attempting to use the modern day equal logic of being grateful, one human being to another, but we all know that Tom Weylin did not see all human beings as equal. Weylin goes on to threaten Dana, saying “You want a good whipping!” (200), but instead of Dana rearing back and letting another rebuttal loose, she stays silent. She “realized then, though, that if he ever hit me again, I would break his scrawny neck. I would not endure it again” (200). And that was her breakthrough.

She had reached the point in her life where she had been through so much with the time travel and becoming a slave, that she finally said ‘no’. When I say ‘no’ I mean that she was not having any more of being slave, whether it be getting whipped or treated as lesser than a human being. Of course, one can’t just do something like this on a dime, it takes time. Think of it more as taking the process step by step, a progression of some sorts, rather than an all-out change. For Dana, she had some sort of sense of when to be compliant and when to be disruptive to her owners, as she was with Weylin mentioned earlier in this paper. Yes, she was in a position where she had almost zero authority when dealing with the white people. Nevertheless, she was still regarded as a threat to Weylin, as a fellow slave Nigel said, “He’s [Weylin] as close to being scared of you [Dana] as he’s ever been of anything” (206). This is the kind of thing that happens when one emboldens oneself, though, there is a fine line that must be followed with this kind of thing because too much emboldening can lead to trouble, or in Dana’s case, most likely torture or even death.

This sort of change of mindset is universal in the sense that anyone can do it. Yes, sometimes it takes some serious experiences and hardships that can be necessary for some to choose to make a philosophical change like that, but what I’m saying is that these kinds of changes can have profound impacts on one’s life. All it takes is one little step, one little variation to one’s mindset that can ignite the fire of change, which will lead to a forest fire that is one’s renovated self.

           

            

Struggles of Being Chinese-American

          The short story, No Name Woman, by Maxine Hong Kingston, struck a certain emotional chord within me. Through this story Kingston demonstrates the struggles of being a Chinese-American. Myself being half Japanese and half American, I have felt the pressures and difficulties of trying to uphold and live by the traditional East Asian values and way of life, while at the same time trying to fit into American society. I think that the story told by the narrator’s mother was utilized as a method to maintain the upholding of Chinese tradition. More importantly, the story essentially freaked the hell out of the narrator for what could possibly happen to her if she acts as a rebel to her family traditions as her forgotten aunt had, thus embracing American way of life more than her traditional way of life.

            In the story the narrator describes how attraction was always something that put her in a rut. She “hexed” herself, in the sense that she followed the Chinese tradition of romance and “she tried to turn myself [herself] American-feminine” (10), but had to put the back burner on her attractions. I can relate to this kind of feeling of entrapment because while I did live in a split cultured family with roughly half Japanese ideals and half American ideals, the conservatism and respect that is so closely associated with Japanese culture took a majority grip on my identity. This resulted in me being a rather shy kid, but it’s not like I was oblivious to how I could be more of an extrovert, and thus, choose to put myself out there in terms of attraction and romance. It was just the fact that how I was raised determined how I interacted in those situations, many similar to that which the narrator describes in this story.

            Acting in a rebellious manner is usually always a no-no in Asian cultures like the Chinese and Japanese. The mother’s story was clearly a warning for what happens when one rebels, especially when the rebel is a young woman, who lacks the same rights and privileges as woman do here in the U.S. While the narrator did mention how it was hard for her to break away from her family traditions, or ‘rebel’, in terms of having to comb her hair into an extremely tight bob, or the omnipresence of dishonoring her family, the fact that she is writing about something that was to be never spoken about is a testament that narrator is breaking away and ‘rebelling’. Thus, this story is one that describes the fine line that the narrator must follow, living in the external society that is America, while living in the unforgiving internal society that is her Chinese family.

           

            

Character Strengths and Weaknesses

             Kindred by Octavia E. Butler revolves around a woman named Dana and her experiences time travelling from 1976 to the antebellum South slavery period. Dana discovers as time moves on that she is continuously brought back to the same person, Rufus whenever he is in times of danger. Dana figures out that Rufus is a relative of hers and makes it her personal mission to keep him and the ones around him safe from harm. Unable to predict when she travels, Dana recognizes and exercises control when travelling back to her original and current time.  She always returns when she is faced with danger or a life or death situation. The violence that Dana faces increases over time, hardening her into a part of this historic time period.

            When beginning to read this novel, I was slightly doubtful whether I would like it or not. Time travel is sometimes a little iffy for me but I believe that Butler approached the science fiction of time travel in an appealing manner. She made the “rules” of her version of time travel very clear and made it easy for me to understand. Having completed the novel, I am slightly upset that I own a rental book because I want to keep it! The last half of the novel was hard to put down and I had no idea how this was going to lead up to the end (the prologue). While exploring the idea of the butterfly effect, I began to wonder while reading: is Dana going to cease to exist? If Alice does not give birth to Dana’s grandmother, will Dana disappear?

            As a reader, we see Dana struggle with reminding herself of the concept of reality. When she is whipped for the first time, the pain is registered and she finds herself realizing how dire this entire situation is. Not only does she have to keep Rufus and Alice alive, but she must also keep herself alive. There are many times where I want to root for Dana and other times I want to shake her and ask, “What do you think you’re doing?” When Dana attempts to run away to find Kevin, she states: “I felt almost sick to my stomach with fear, but I kept walking” (Butler 171). In this moment, I knew in my gut that she was not going to make it. Sure, Dana was very smart about running away; disguising herself as a man and waiting for everyone to see her go to sleep, but I was worried about her safety. I knew Rufus is not as consistent as his father when it came to threats and punishment but I was sure she wasn’t going to get away from the Weylin’s that easy.

            After her failed attempt of running away, Kevin does eventually make it back to the Weylin plantation. Dana makes an assumption that she and Kevin can quietly slip away from the home and get away from the Weylin’s but Rufus has something else in mind: “And without warning, with no perceptible change in mood, Rufus turned slightly and trained a rifle on us… I kept thinking I knew him, and he kept proving to me that I didn’t” (Butler 186). Rufus is completely against the idea of Dana leaving him that he threatens their lives if they don’t stay with him. Dana constantly has this idea in the back of her head that she can change Rufus and I seriously doubted that she could and this moment solidified that belief for me.

            This novel overall was exceptionally written and kept me on my toes, wondering what was going to happen next. Even though I wanted Dana to succeed, I was constantly questioning whether she was capable or not. What made Dana an appealing character was that she never truly gave up on Rufus. As much as she wanted to hate him, she found herself caring for Rufus and wanting to shape him into a good man. As a protagonist, Butler shapes Dana and creates her character development pleasantly, recognizing her faults and recognizing her strengths. My question to you all is this: Did you have any trouble trusting Dana? Were there any significant points where you began to root for her or want to shake her? 

Contradictions and the frailty of human life within the Shawl

This paper will look some of the contradictions found within The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick as well as some of reasons why these contradictions are used and what ideas or emotions they convey to the reader. Its through the use of the contradiction that Ozick is able to illustrate the frailty and instability of human life. 

The most evident contradiction with The Shawl is the interplay and symbolism between the shawl and Magda. Magda is described as being very near death due to the ever present threat of starvation. “Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon; she should have been dead already” (Ozick 5). This threat of starvation is in part due to Rosa’s inability to produce milk very early in the story. “Magda relinquished Rosa’s teats… both were cracked, not a sniff of milk” (Ozick 4). Yet despite the threat of starvation, Magda survives for a time due to the shawl. The shawl is described as having magical properties to sustain an infant for three days and three nights. “It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three nights” (Ozick 5). As such the shawl, either directly or indirectly, supports the life of Magda, which is further supported by when the shawl is taken away, Magda is doomed to die. Thus the Shawl is symbol for life. However this is also directly contradicted when we look at how Magda is characterized. “Magda was a mute… Magda was defective… Magda was dumb” (Ozick 7). So while the shawl keeps Magda alive, it too causes her to be something less than human. So while the shawl supports her life, it also keeps her from being a normal human being. This contrast is further supported when Stella steals the Shawl from Magda. Madga then immediately comes alive as she “flopped onward with her little pencil legs scribbling this way and that, in search of the shawl…It was the first noise Magda had ever sent out from her throat since the drying of Rosa’s nipples” (Ozick 7-8). Thus once she loses the shawl she becomes a normal baby, but is doomed to die. 

However, looking at the story again, Magda could of lost the shawl at any point and thus died at any point. We can see this from the shawl itself. The shawl is just a piece of cloth used to swaddle a baby, where cloth isn’t the most solid piece of material. Cloth is bound to rib or fray with use and its just a matter of time as to when the shawl would be destroyed or lost. Thus really Magda had no chance to live, the shawl at best was just buying time until her eventual demise. And this is why I think Ozick choose the shawl to be the symbol of Magda’s life. The cloth, just like human life is frail and fickle and its impossible to know when one may die.

The Symbolism of "The Yellow Wallpaper"

            In the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” I find that the presence of the wallpaper itself represents one of the largest symbolisms. As story proceeds, it is apparent that wallpaper, which the narrator comes to hate so much, is a significant symbol in the story. I find that yellow wallpaper represents many ideas that consist of the sense of entrapment, the notion of creativity, and a health condition. Indeed, there are multiple ways to interpret the symbolism of wallpaper and I’d like to share some of my own ideas.

            From the beginning of the story, since the time narrator encounters the wallpaper, it is seen as something that drives narrator to interpret and that it affects her directly. Narrator first sees it as unpleasant - it is ripped, soiled, and “unclean yellow.” It contains ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator to figure it out using her artistic perception. After staring at it for countless hours, her perception changes drastically. She describes by saying, “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over (Gilman 12).” Her observation suggests the sub-pattern behind the main pattern is visible to be as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping. The woman is looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which she finds as the bars of a cage. Essentially, the women crawling behind the pattern also show narrator’s feeling of confinement to the wallpaper of her room. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the structure and situation of her status to be trapped in a way to symbolize the domestic life that restricts her from being “free.”

            The association of the color represented in the wallpaper also suggests an important symbolism as well. From what I see, the wallpaper symbolizes the health condition to place on women. Generally, the color yellow represents sickness or weakness by its meaning. The wallpaper’s disgusting yellow symbolizes the narrator’s own “illness”. This sickly yellow strongly depicts its restrictive and unpleasant circumstance, just like the narrator’s “illness,” which is fed by the confinement placed upon her current physical and mental condition. The wallpaper, in fact, makes the narrator more “sick” and worsens in health to the certain extent. The yellow wallpaper, to which I perceive, is a symbol of health screens that women encounter for having placed in such position. Furthermore, I can perceive how wallpaper’s color is “infuriating” and “torturing” from narrator’s suffering perspective under her restrictive placement in the society she lived in.

            To wrap up my idea, I find that these are some of the symbolisms present within the wallpaper itself. The wallpaper is perhaps one of the major symbols illustrated in the story that contains reflective and meaningful representation in regards to the narrator’s status. At the end, I view that this symbolic power of the wallpaper asserts and functions itself with greater prominence until to the point in which the narrator tears it to become “free.”

The Devastation of the Holocaust

            The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick depicts a small Jewish family being sent and living in a concentration camp during the horrific times of the Holocaust. This terrifying event has been embedded into world history and has been retold throughout literature again and again. For example, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was a the first piece of literature I read in elementary school that depicted different perspectives from two different little boys who were affected by the Holocaust. These two stories both examine, in detail how people were permanently damaged and emotionally scarred by the Holocaust.

            Ozick depicts with great detail the inhumane acts that took place during the Holocaust. In the beginning of the story, Rosa, the matriarch did not know exactly what was going on, but she was still aware of the fact that her baby, Magda would most likely be taken away from her. I understood this as possible maternal instinct and an overwhelming sense of doom placed like a cloud over their heads. Rosa, holding her baby, along with her niece, Stella, is being corralled like animals onto the trains towards the concentration camps. As they progress, Rosa contemplated leaving Magda: “She could leave the line for a minute and push Magda into the hands of any woman on the side of the road… And even if she fled the line for half a second and pushed the shawl-bundle at a stranger, would the woman take it” (Ozick 4). Being the head of their family, Rosa considers any possibility to keep her child safe.

            As I continued reading, each sentence was as bone chilling as the next. Ozick holds nothing back when portraying what life would be like in a concentration camp. The fact that the Holocaust was a real event that eradicated over 11 million people absolutely sickens me.  The ending of the story really resonated with me. Once the soldiers found Magda, I just knew that this was not going to end well. Magda’s death was terrifying and nauseating. Afterwards, Ozick shows us what is running through Rosa’s mind: “She only stood, because if she ran they would shoot, and if she tried to pick up the sticks of Magda’s body they would shoot, and fi she let the wolf’s screech ascending now through the ladder of her skeleton break out, they would shoot” (Ozick 10). Within a mere sentence, Ozick was able to convey Rosa’s mental state. After seeing her child brutally murdered, simply for being alive, Rosa bottles up her emotions on the inside, but remains stoic on the outside. The strength of Rosa as a woman and a mother is conveyed through these last sentences. Anyone who reads The Shawl will remember it not because it was sickening and disturbing, but because it was based on true events that occurred in history.

Definition of a "Good"

            In the story of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’ Conner, I find that it shows an elusive definition of “good.” Grandmother, who lives with Bailey and his family, strongly depicts the appliance of its meaning in which she indiscriminately labels “good” toward certain person. She also further points out one man as being “good” man and eventually leads to a point where it loses the meaning entirely. Finding this story to be ironical, there are clues provided by the author in regards to this complexity.

            In the middle of the trip, the family stops at a restaurant called the Tower, owned by Red Sammy Butts. Red Sammy complains that people are untrustworthy, explaining that he had been swindled by letting two men buy gasoline on credit. However, grandmother responds to his consequence, “‘because you’re a good man’” (O’ Conner 122)! Here, we can see that she applies the word “good,” though it seems that her usage of word unfits in this situation. Rather, in this case, “good” would mean such as poor judgment, blind faith, and the state of foolishness, in which none of meanings inherently fit to the true meaning of “good.”

            Another significant scene to look at is when family encounters with the Misfit. Recognizing that one of the men is the Misfit, grandmother asks him if he’d shoot a lady, and the he says he wouldn’t like to. Grandmother responds back, “’Listen,’ the grandmother almost screamed, ‘I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people” (O’ Conner 127)! Here, she refers “good” person to the misfit, but this meaning of “good” implies that there is a contradiction in moral code that grandmother and the Misfit adheres. On one hand, grandmother thinks he shares commonality of what it means to be “good” by her definition, but in response, the Misfit denies this. Although grandmother appeals her underlying value of “good” to the Misfit, her definition of “good” is entirely diminished, suggesting her claim that he doesn’t have “common blood” as her. Ironically, at the end, the Misfit, who is labeled as a “good” man, shoots and kills the grandmother.

            Grandmother’s usage of “good” is not necessarily tied with the actual meaning of its word, but it is solely based on values aligned with her own. She considers Red Sammy to be “good” because he takes trust on people and she finds that she can relate to this. Then She calls Misfit as a “good” man because she reasons, he won’t shoot a lady, in which this is a part of value of her own moral code. Essentially, in the mind of the grandmother, the concept of the men that is “good” is defined as someone who takes similar values of personality and morality means as herself, not based on the actual context of its meaning.  

Luck or Heavenly Coincidence ?

         Frederick Douglass is an extraordinary man; no one can take that away from him. He essentially taught himself how to write and for the most part read. He became a free slave and wrote arguably one of the most compelling slavery-era narratives from the perspective of a slave. All of these very impressive things are largely derived from his personality traits that are largely perceived to be as that of a revolutionary figure (he transcended the brutal and inhumane paradigm of slavery by educating himself and being able to critically think and analyze things, something not many slaves back then were doing). These traits could be seen as resilience, work ethic, extreme desire, and mental toughness the list goes on. However, has anyone ever thought to consider that maybe Douglass’s rise wasn’t entirely the product of his own personal qualities, but that maybe it was that of good fortune and favorable coincidences guided by a higher power that helped Douglass become the man that he is so widely known to be today.

            In his story, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass himself evens admits to something along the lines of this idea. He refers to scene where he leaves Colonel Llyod’s plantation to live in Baltimore as “the first plain manifestation of that kind providence which has ever since attended me, and marked my life with so many favors”(30).

When I took time to think about all the favorable occurrences and the small details that entailed them, I noticed a pattern of this holy guidance. First, he was the “first, last, and only choice” (30) of all of the slaves that were being chosen to go to Baltimore. Then the first nice white lady he ever met teaches him the A, B, Cs along with some simple words, granted it didn’t last for long, but it did give him that ‘inch’ which would turn out to be one of the catalysts for his determination to learn to read and write, and eventually learn to become a freeman. Stemming from his extreme fortune of moving to Baltimore, Douglass was able to interact with “the little white boys whom I met in the street” (36) which lead to the succession of learning to read. How convenient that there just happens to be boys who are willing to become “converted teachers” and set up the vital tool [reading] to lay the foundation down to that of becoming a freeman. Another favorable moment in Douglass’s life was the meeting with Sandy Jenkins. Sandy Jenkins was the person who handed him the ROOT, which stimulated his tipping point during that scene with the physical entanglement with Covey that demonstrated “how a slave was made a man” (52).

I guess the question that I have to come to after analyzing some of the more favorable coincidents in his life, is whether Douglass was chosen, or better termed, guided by a higher power to become the man that he is seen as today, or was it just because he was a lucky guy?

Slavery: Turning Slaves and Slaveowners alike into Beasts

In the book Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave, the author Fredrick Douglass recounts his experiences as a man born into slavery and the ordeals he suffered before escaping. His aim was to expose the horrifying and brutal nature of slavery on both the salve and slave owner and how slavery reduced the slaves animals. Douglass also writes using a sort of reflective rhetoric, to add more significance and power to his writing. One such use of this reflective rhetoric is the quote “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (Douglass 107). But I believe that this use of reflective rhetoric also serves another purpose in Douglass’ narrative. That this reflective rhetoric is used to give the reader an idea that slavery doesn't only turn the slaves into brute and animals, but it also affects the slaveowners in much the same way. 

We can see this explicitly when Douglass talks about his experience within a salve action. One of this first and very vivid descriptions is how we illustrates how the slaves were valued as livestock. “We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horse, sheep, and swine… all holding the same rank in the scale of being” (Douglass 89-90). Yet only a few lines later he sees these same effects happening to the slaveowners. “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass 90). So from these two passages alone we can see Douglass’ belief that the slaveowners are undergoing the same exact human degradation into beasts that slavery requires. 

However this alone doesn’t prove that Douglass is trying to convey the idea that the degradation of humans to animals happens for both slave and slaveowner. We need some other characterization of the slaveowners themselves to see this. When exploring into the literature I found rhetoric that was animalistic in nature for Mr. Thomas Hamilton, Mrs. Hugh, Master Andrew and Covey. Often when describing the punishment the slaveowners would deal out upon their slaves, there would be some use of “savage” or “brutal” like adjectives used. One such example describing Master Andrew can be seen on page 91. 

“Master Andrew—a man who, but a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody disposition, took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood gushed… committed this savage outrage upon my brother” (Douglass 91)

For any compassionate and decent human being, we would never expect them to be described as an animal. Yet Douglass intentional describes their action as such to convince the reader that these slaveowners are just as barbaric and brutish as any common animal. But Douglass doesn’t only describe their actions in this way, but also their personalities as well as their souls. When describing Mrs. Hughs transformation into a typical slaveowner her soul “became stone” and her once “lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (Douglass 82). As such we can that once a white man becomes a slaveowner, their souls turn to stone, and they harbor a personality much like an animal. 

Douglass further illustrates this connection by stating that religious slaveowners are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly” (Douglass 117). In this case, basest is being used to refer to these men as something lower than human, like an animal. With all of these contextual references it is safe to assume that as Douglass describes the process in which he is forced to become a brute, he is also trying to show the reader that the slaveowners are brutes themselves. This would match Douglass’ use of reflective rhetoric as Douglass illustrates that if one ttys to force another to become a brute, they themselves must act as an brute as well.

The Courage & Faith of Douglass

             In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass gives his readers a detailed and in depth insight into his times as a slave and his eventual escape from slavery. The most compelling passage to me was the section where Douglass is deliberating whether to return to his abusive slave owner, Mr. Covey or potentially stay hidden in the woods. As he contemplates potentially facing death at Mr. Covey’s or in the woods, he comes across a fellow slave and old acquaintance, Sandy Jenkins. Douglass states: “He told me, with great solemnity, I must go back to Covey… I must go with his into another part of the woods where there was a certain root, which if I would take some with me, carrying it always on my right side, would render it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man to whip me” (Douglass 111). Prior to this encounter, Douglass becomes very angry with God, shouting at him, begging for answers as to why terrible things like the abuse of Mr. Covey happen. When Douglass runs into Sandy, I, as a reader, questioned what the root actually meant. I interpreted it as a symbol of Douglass regaining his faith, taking this journey with Sandy and facing his master with newfound strength.

            Douglass portrays great courage in this particular moment of his narrative. Earlier, he was questioning his faith and deciding whether to die or live and fight. I felt that Sandy was the figure that put him back on the right path of facing Mr. Covey and helped him regain his faith in God. The root that Sandy gives him symbolizes Douglass finding his strength and gaining the will to fight, and he does. When he returns to face Mr. Covey, Douglass explains: “Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment – from whence came the spirit I don’t know – I resolved to fight” (Douglass 112). I believe the “spirit” Douglass refers to may be the strength he gained from the root or the “pep talk” Sandy Jenkins gave him. This becomes a turning point in the narrative as Douglass begins to find a reason to fight back: gaining freedom and having faith in God.

            Douglass refers to religion, specifically Christianity, numerous times throughout his narration. He uses it to compel his readers to take his side and understand that using slavery, as an excuse for religion was wrong. Many slave owners believed that their actions could be justified because they were doing it in the name of Christianity. Douglass’ viewpoints must have been incredibly different and new to people reading his narrative during that time period. He does not explicitly say that all slave owners are bad, but he tells his readers what he knows and how he lived his life. Since religion is a part of his and many slaves lives, Douglass’ faith becomes a vital piece of his storytelling. Everyone, in some way or another, can relate to having faith in something; maybe not necessarily religious but a person or and idea. Douglass wants his readers to relate to his understandings and to comprehend his side of the story, using faith as his most commonly used topic.