Journal #10: 9 Short Stories

Set 1: Worn path. Rose for Emily. Everyday Use 

In these three short stories, there seems to be an overlapping theme of love in different forms. In A Worn Path, the theme of love takes the form of a guardian-child relationship. The story follows Phoenix Jackson, the single grandmother of a young child and her long journey to a faraway hospital.  She travels through a long and treacherous way in order to obtain a certain type of medicine to treat her sick grandson who is considered “a charity case”, implying that her hardships are possibly in vain. At her old age, she is shown to often be confused and forgetful “She spoke ‘It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip’”, yet her grandson is the one thing that keeps her aging mine clear and determined.  From her known background (“’I never did go to school’”) and attire, it can be inferred that she has lived a hard life without much wealth, but her actions suggest that she is willing to spend any meager amount of money she posses on the medicine for her grand child. Her determination in her actions highlights her protective love towards her grandson. In the second story A Rose for Emily, the “love” that is illustrated is somewhat twisted and perverse. Emily, a hard woman with traditional believes, struggles to accept the change in the life around her, and is unable to find acceptance in her society. The first sign of her refusal to accept change is her insistence to remain in her father’s sheltered life even after his death, and chose to be secluded in the dusty farmhouse that her father had left, revealing a type of stubborn love that Emily seems to have towards her father. When a new man, Homer, is seen in town, the townspeople had hopes that he would be the one to draw Emily out of her isolation. Yet their anticipation falls apart when the fellow disappears and is not seen again. It is only years later, after Emily’s death, did the townspeople realize that Homer’s disappearance was because Emily had supposedly murdered him with arsenic and preserved his corpse in a desperate attempt to keep him from walking out of her life, illustrating her perverse love towards him. The final story Everyday Use is a story of love turned into pity. In the story, the eldest child from a lowly family goes off into the world and returns accomplished, and shows her disdain towards her parent and sibling, whom she now looks down upon. It is seen that the mother-daughter relationship is strained due to the lack of knowledge Mama seems to have of her daughter. Wangero (Dee) seems to find glee in pointing out the simplicity in Mama and Maggie’s life, such as “the benches [the father] made for the table when [they] couldn’t afford to buy chairs”. She is also seen to have adopt an air of command, requesting this and that (the quilt originally for Maggie) from the already meager amount of possessions Mama and Maggie have.

Set 2: Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment. The Life You Save May Be Your Own. The Minister’s Black Veil.

A common theme in the second set of three short stories is that of the negative effects of human desire. In Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment, Dr. Heidegger’s “friends”, the subjects of his experiment with the water gained from fountain of youth are delighted to see that their much hated age fade away and is replaced by appearances of youth. Although they have now gained a youthful appearance, it is assumed that they still retained their knowledge and wisdom gained throughout the years. However, through the depiction of the now transformed subjects of Dr. Heidegger’s experiment fighting for the Widow Wycherly with abandon, it is revealed that even the age of wisdom and knowledge cannot suppress the inherent trait of human desire. In the short story The Minister’s Black Veil, the way that the townspeople condemned the Minister for his black veil due to his reluctance to reveal what lay underneath similarly reflects another aspect of the human desire. As noted by the Minister himself, the townspeople didn’t alienate the Minister for what lay underneath the veil, but rather alienated him because they could not tolerate the mere presence of it, and therefore buried him under with their loathing and judgment. In the end, even the Minister’s own wife, the one who had vowed to uphold their love and is supposed to accept him however he is, divulged her own distrust towards what was hidden beneath the minister’s veil. This revealed how she was just like the rest of the townspeople, due to their human desire for general conformity, could not bare the fact that the Minister stood out because of his black veil. In the last story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, the desire illustrated is clearly that for material goods such as riches. The two central characters of this story both demonstrate aspects of this desire in their purposes in each other. Ms. Crater allows her own blind, helpless daughter to be married off to a complete stranger due to her desire for a son in law who could perform her household labor free of cost, while Mr. Shiftlet manipulates Ms. Crater and her daughter into marriage so he may take off in the car he sees as the ultimate reward for his manipulation. Although both these characters achieve a level of success on their manipulations, they ultimately condemn the innocent daughter in their behaviors, highlighting the negative effects of human desire. In all three of these stories the authors seem to leave an underlying message of how the much of the human desires affect the world and the things and people they hold with much negativity.  

Set 3: The Lucid Eye in Silver Tower. The Fieldtrip. Winter Dream.

The common theme in two of the short stories from the last set of stories is the naivety of youth. In The Lucid Eye In Silver Town, the protagonist Jay August flashes back to a specific event in his youth from the perspective of his adult persona, giving the audience a commentary from his grown self of his actions from the youth. In his youth, he was frustrated by his father’s meekness and their poverty, wondering why his father couldn’t just bring in more money for his family.  In his adult persona, he reflects upon his rudeness towards those around him and the immaturity of his childish tantrums. He also conveys a sense of guilt of his childhood behavior, as he now understood that his family was still waist deep in the poverty of the dark times. This ignorance and immaturity of children are similarly reflected in The Field Trip, when Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien returns to the sight of battlefield after twenty years, as a present to his ten year old daughter Kathleen. He had hoped to grant insight on his memories and history for his daughter, but was instead met with grumbles and complaints. His daughter was unable to understand the underlying importance and weight that the place held for her father, and could only see a barren land that held no connection to herself. In both these stories, the childhood naivety and ignorance is highlighted against their parents patience and understanding. In the last story Winter Dreams, the story did not focus exclusively on the happenings of the main character’s youth, but rather on the span of his life. In this story, the third person narration describes the evolution the main character Dexter through the span of his life from an innocent child, to a young man, and finally a matured grown up. His growth is reflected in his changing goals in life. In the first stage of his life, he was focused on the adults in his surroundings and their seemingly “strange” behavior, in his teenage years, he was pursuing a girl supposedly “of his dreams”, and finally in his matured years, it was about his bitterness now that he’s achieved all his life goals. With a different style of narration and focus, the first two stories are slightly in contrast with the third, although they share similar themes concerning the stages of life.

Journal #9: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Section 1: Knowledge and Understanding (Outside of Class Response)

“Before noontime they’re at the fog machine again but they haven’t got it turned up full; it’s not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard. One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have, but for the time being I’m interested in this new man (42)”

The “fog machine” mentioned in this passage is a recurring feature and appears somewhat frequently throughout the early chapters of the book. As to this point in the book, it is not quite certain to the audience whether this fog machine is a literal thing that the institution switches on and off, or merely just another figment of Chief’s imagination. Whether intentional or not, this “fog machine” is almost always connected to the feeling of lost or despair from the Chief’s point of perspective. It also seems to possess a not tranquilizing, but deadening power over Chief.

Right now, she’s got the fog machine switched on, and it’s rolling in so fast I can’t see a thing but her face, rolling in thicker and thicker, and I feel as hopeless and dead as I felt happy a minute ago, when she gave that little jerk—even more hopeless than ever before, on account of I know now there is no real help against her or her Combine. McMurphy can’t help any more than I could. Nobody can help. And the more I think about how nothing can be helped, the faster the fog rolls in (101). Reading this passage, I could almost imagine Chief trying to describe the fog, but when he realizes he is getting pulled under, he starts this uncontrollable rambling before completely submitting to the. This reminds me in a way of how person who has fallen into the water might call out flail wildly before finally losing the will to fight and is completely dragged under the murky depths of the water. Another time, Chief talks about the lost of control and lost of perception of time once the “fog machine” was “turned on”, About the only time we get any let-up from this time control is in the fog; then time doesn’t mean anything. It’s lost in the fog, like everything else (71).

By this point in the story, it seems evident to me that whenever the “fog machine” is “switched on”, Chief seems to lose focus of himself and fade into a trance that he cannot break however hard he fights. In the quote above, he explains how one day he will decide to “quit straining (42)” and submit completely to the fog similar to some of the other members of the mental institution.  It could almost be said that the fog represents Chief’s escape from reality in his times of despair. He locks himself into this mental fog, considering it a safe hiding pace from reality.  

These mentions of the “fog” are applicable to the daily lives of many people. It is human nature to run away from fear and into our own mental “fog”. We hide in it to escape from our problems to avoid the pain of failure that follows. Yet if we do not reemerge to face our fears, we will drift deeper and further into this escape from this numbness and eventually “let [ourselves] go completely (42)”.

Section 2: (Outside of Class Response)

Through the unique perspective and narration of the character Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, author Ken Kesey weaves a tale of the intrusion of newcomer McMurphy into the dull lives of the mental institution patients. The book is essentially a glimpse into Chief’s mind as a narrator to this story and an observer to the events he narrates. Although the author rarely directly describes Chief as a character, many of Chief’s characteristics are revealed through Kesey’s portrayal of Chief’s personal voice in this non-sequential and almost rambling manner, which adds an element of interest to the story.

I’m the last one. Still strapped in the chair in the corner. McMurphy stops when he gets to me and hooks his thumbs in his pockets again and leans back to laugh, like he sees something funnier about me than about anybody else. All of a sudden I was scared he was laughing because he knew the way I was sitting there with my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped around them, staring straight ahead as though I couldn’t hear a thing, was all an act.

“Hooeee,” he said, “look what we got here.”

I remember all this part real clear. I remember the way he closed one eye and tipped his head back and looked down across that healing wine-colored scar on his nose, laughing at me. I thought at first that he was laughing because of how funny it looked, an Indian’s face and black, oily Indian’s hair on somebody like me. I thought maybe he was laughing at how weak I looked. But then’s when I remember thinking that he was laughing because he wasn’t fooled for one minute by my deaf-and- dumb act; it didn’t make any difference how cagey the act was, he was onto me and was laughing and winking to let me know it (26).

Throughout the first part of the story, many of the characters have developed their individual traits, from the rowdy McMurphy to the unstable Billy. Yet Chief, who is supposedly the main character, is shown to have very little defining characteristics other than the “big deaf Indian” that the others see and describe him as.

Although there are rarely any direct references to Chief as a character, from these little snippets of thoughts from Chief’s mind, the author is able to cleverly reveal Chief as an intelligent and insightful character. In the passage above, it is shown that Chief’s disabilities were “all an act”, a cover that allows him to observe the other patients and the on goings around him.

Kesey also focuses on very fine details in Chief’s narrations, such as the specific description of McMurphy’s “wine-colored scar” in the passage above. The fact that Kesey drops these subtle descriptions into random parts of the story really brings out the element of realism, and allows the audience to feel as if they are viewing these events through an living, breathing, person. 

Kesey’s use of unique perspective and fine details, aided by a somewhat warped imagination on Chief’s part, provides a fascinating narrative to the story.

Section 3: (In Class Response) 

Consider Bromden both as a character and a symbol. What conclusions can we come to at this point in the novel? Refer to specific circumstances in your response.

In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the character Chief is an intelligent and thoughtful character under the disguise of a “big deaf Indian”. He represents the loss of identity, like a blind man wandering through his mental fog, uncertain of where the line lies between reality and his own imagination. Similar to the other characters in the story, Chief is subjected to the control of Big Nurse in every aspect of his life, hiding in shadows on every occasion to avoid standing out among the other characters. ”And later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I’d take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was. There’d be my face in the mirror, dark and hard with big, high cheekbones like the cheek underneath them had been hacked out with a hatchet, eyes all black and hard and mean-looking, just like Papa’s eyes or the eyes of all those tough, mean-looking Indians you see on TV, and I’d think, That ain’t me, that ain’t my face. It wasn’t even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn’t even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever have been me. How can McMurphy be what he is (139)?” As time goes on, he is so used to fading in with the rest of the patients, he loses sense of his own identity and instead becomes what other want to see – a big deaf Indian. 

Writer's Log #9: Current News Analysis #4

Currently, there is an international conflict between the countries Ukraine and Russia, and Crimea is caught right between. Though Crimea has been recognized worldwide as part of Ukraine since 1954, when Soviet Union leader Nikita Krushchev “gave” it to the Ukrainians, it has always had strong cultural ties to the Russians.

Following the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian protestors of Crimea clashed in front of the parliament building of Crimea. Throughout the first week of March 2014, Ukraine and Russia’s issue escalates to potential war between the two nations. On March 6^th, the Crimean Parliament asks the Russian government for the region to be annexed as part of Russia and set up a ballot for the Crimean region, but Ukraine refused to acknowledge the request and referendum. On March 16^th, the Crimean Parliament releases a ballot that offers the choices of annexation with Russia or remaining with Ukraine. After 50 percent of the ballots were counted, it was shown that almost 95 percent of the voters have approved of joining Russia.

It is overwhelming to know that while we are carrying on with our daily lives, there are major events, like this one, happening on other parts of the world that will be read by a student from a history textbook or whatever fancy technology a hundred years from now. I found the idea that history is always revisited upon is incredibly fascinating, as we are living through an event that is documented and will be scrutinized and analyzed by complete strangers years later.

http://news.yahoo.com/crimeans-overwhelmingly-vote-secession-203613036.html