Jack's Wondrous World

The beginning of Living gave us a view of Jack living without Ma. We know that Jack’s never been apart from Ma and from the incident before Ma’s interview, we know that Jack doesn’t enjoy being separated from Ma. So I was extremely surprised when I started reading Living. I saw Jack adapting pretty well to life without Ma. There are a few mementos of Ma that Jack still holds on to, such as her tooth, and Jack does get extremely excited when things from Room are brought to his new home. But during the majority of the chapter, he doesn’t seem to be constantly thinking about Ma and Room. Granted he has a lot of things he needs to learn, but for a kid experiencing the world for the first time, I think Jack is doing great.

In class we talked about how some things that seemed like trivial details were actually huge steps for Jack. One of my favorite moments in Living was when Jack makes his first “friend”, Walker. It was such a huge step, because Jack was finally connecting with another kid. But we’re quickly reminded about how foreign this is to Jack when he tries to hug Walker and knocks him down. And Jack’s reaction to being told that you don’t just hug strangers is so innocent. “‘I love that boy Walker.’ ‘Jack, you never saw him before in your life’” (288). This was just such a pure and adorable statement. And despite the small hitch of Jack knocking the kid over, he still managed to get along with another kid.

It was also refreshing to see Jack connecting with Grandma and Steppa. Grandma and Jack’s relationship really reflected a common grandma-to-grandson dynamic, even considering Jack’s different situation. Especially considering our first meeting with Grandma (when Ma is already annoyed by her), I think her connection to Jack really puts her in a better light. And every time that Grandma could explain things to Jack or resolve a problem, it happily surprised me that Jack was open to learning from people other than Ma. On the other hand, Jack and Steppa’s relationship were a lot more buddy-buddy, and I enjoyed getting to see Jack make his first true friend.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Room and getting to see Jack adapted to the outside world.

Jack as narrator

While reading Room, I found it really interesting seeing the world through Jack’s eyes. He was brought up seeing a very small window of the world, and believing that their life was normal. When I first started reading, I didn’t understand exactly why Jack capitalized certain nouns, until I realized it was because he’s only seen one. One Door, one Toothbrush, one Bed. But his mind is completely blown when he finally sees the ad for Ma’s medicine. That’s when he realizes that outside of Room is not completely separate from him.

Being inside Jack’s mind at this time was really eye-opening. We see the confusion and the questioning. “Dora is a drawing in TV but she’s my real friend, that’s confusing. Jeep is actually real, I can feel him with my fingers. Superman is just TV. Trees are TV but Plant is real, oh, I forgot to water her” (63). Jack’s constantly trying to fit his world together around him, and learning that there is more than just Room is pretty big. After the mind blowing revelation that there are other humans and things outside of his Room, Jack has to really turn his ideas about the world around. But this doesn’t just greatly impact Jack. The world that Ma’s painted for him comes crashing down. She can no longer protect Jack from learning about the terrible situation that they’re in and Jack soon learns about their traumatizing situation.  

I think that portraying the novel through the eyes of a five year old actually helps the reader see this story through two eyes. Ma’s thoughts are a lot easier to interpret through what we know (she was kidnapped and knows what they are being constrained by) and Jack’s observations. However, if we weren’t given Jack’s narration, I don’t think we would’ve been able to understand what he was going through. It would be extremely hard to believe that a child could be brought up, thinking that the room they live in was the only thing in the world. We wouldn’t have been able to see him slowly realize that they were imprisoned and that he was missing out on so much. Putting this novel in Jack’s eyes also emphasizes how terrible his situation is. Even though Jack doesn’t know that his life is not the norm, the reader does, and that just makes me sympathize for him so much more.

Violence shown through the eyes of Marji

In Persepolis there are many instances where Marjane is impacted by the revolution and she really reflects it but in a more toned down and child-like way. For example, she mimics torturing kids during her games and she gets jealous that other kid’s parents are heroes. These instances serve to show, that even though she’s growing up in a very dangerous time, she’s still a kid (something that I tend to forget because of the seriousness of her situation). Not only does her innocence give the reader a different viewpoint of this time, but I think it also exemplifies the violence to the reader because we’re not expecting a ten year old or six year old (or even 11 year old) to be exposed to it.

Marji’s depiction of violence shows us the effect that revolution and violence have on children. Her childhood is very different from anything we’ve ever experienced, yet we can still relate and see the child-like tendencies that she has. Children generally don’t come up with these violent thoughts or imagine cutting a person up into pieces, so the fact that Marji is already exposed to this, thinking about it, and using it in her games is pretty horrifying to me. Many of her depictions of this violence is just so similar to what we’re used to seeing (like in the playground scene on page 3), but it has a extremely dark twist.

However in the recent reading Marji said that she saw violence for the first time. That image was very different from her other depictions of violence. Even though it wasn’t exactly the most graphic image, it wasn’t at all like Marji deciding to torture her friends if they lost in a game or her images of torturing prisoners with an iron. The facial expression on page 76 was of true fear and pain which is so different from the cartoonish drawing of the man cut up into pieces and getting burned with an iron on page 52. I think that Marji having finally witnessed violence really changes the way she depicted violence. She no longer always sees violence as heroic actions, and she begins to see the protesting as it actually is.

Thoughts on Grant

While reading the novel, Grant has always seemed interesting me. I mean he is the narrator of this novel, but as we get later into the book, his insights were just so profound and well thought out that I almost couldn’t compare him to the beginning of the novel when he was like a teenager. In the last few chapters that we’ve read, Grant describes the cycle that they are all stuck in with such powerful words, that I was blown away.

“So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle—which he never does. Because even though he wants to change it, and maybe even tries to change it, it is too heavy a burden because of all the others who have run away and left their burdens behind. So he, too, must run away if he is to hold on to his sanity and have a life of his own” (167).

Grant shows the endless struggle that he and many others are stuck in, and this idea is what sticks with and inspires Jefferson to “become a man”, and Jefferson begins to consciously stand up against white supremacy in his final days. This revelation is a huge contrast to before Grant starts to visit Jefferson.

Before Grant goes to meet with Jefferson in jail, he basically doesn’t care about anything. I think that he does know about the cycle in a sense, but instead of trying to fix it or push against it, he just tries to run. “‘You want to leave from here tonight?’ I asked her. ‘You want to go home and pack your clothes and get the children and leave from here tonight?’” (28-29). And it just shows a very teenager-like mentality of not facing your problems head on. So when Grant goes to see Jefferson, there are a lot of similarities between them in that they are both embodying some sort of teenager mentality. (I don’t want to take away from Jefferson’s reason for his actions or anything, because being put on death row is something that we can never really understand how it feels, but just from a standpoint of Miss Emma wanting him to be a man…) Jefferson’s reaction is very cold and he cuts off from the rest of the community. This could be seen as Jefferson not being able to handle the emotional aspect of those meetings, or wanting to make it easier when he is finally killed, but overall, he seems to be only considering his own feelings and not Miss Emma’s or the greater good that his actions could impact the community. And Grant doesn’t come to the conclusion of the role that Jefferson can have on the cycle, until after he meets with Jefferson.

Both Grant and Jefferson have made huge changes in their character from when Jefferson was first convicted to now, and I’m really interested in seeing how Jefferson handles his last day.

Thought's on Anse

Throughout most of the novel I was pretty sympathetic to Anse. Even though he seemed to have brought most of his sufferings and inadequacies on himself, I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. It seemed like at the beginning that he really was doing this huge journey for Addie. And the main reason he was pretty much useless by the time Addie died and they had to journey to Jefferson was because of Anse’s illness (whether it was real or not). “He tells people that if he ever sweats, he will die. I suppose he believes it” (17). And this is what limits Anse from being any physical help to his family. So I thought, that at least he was trying to do one last thing for Addie, even if he wasn’t physically capable of doing it himself.

I couldn’t help but feel sort of sorry for this guy. He’s pretty pathetic, and his kids even dismiss him. Even Vardaman refers to Anse as a shadow, “Pa walks around. His shadow walks around, over Cash going up and down above the saw, at the bleeding plank” (65). And it’s really enforced throughout the novel that Anse is really no help to his kids in helping with Addie’s death other than reminding them that they have to get to Jefferson.

But then we get to the end of the novel where Anse reveals that he’s got a new wife, then my reaction to this whole journey becomes pretty similar to the moment when Anse is smoothing out Addie’s quilt. Like the tender moment when Anse awkwardly tries to smooth out Addie’s quilt, the whole journey in this novel is pushed forward by Anse saying that it was Addie’s wish. He’s doing it for his love for Addie. So I thought of him as the loving husband (though pretty bad at displaying those emotions). But when Anse brings out the new Mrs. Bundren, it felt like the similar disappointment that I felt when Anse suddenly brings up his plan to get new teeth after Addie’s death. He ruined such a tender moment and the basically the whole journey.

After this, I lost a lot of the sympathy I originally had for Anse. All of his family members got pretty messed up after their journey, and Anse’s intentions didn’t really seem like they were trying to honor Addie in any way. And it’s not like I’m outraged that Addie’s memory was so dismissed, because she probably wouldn’t care that much about it, but I lost any of the respect I had left for Anse at that moment.

Anse's Teeth

In As I Lay Dying, story is told by multiple narrators. I’ve read books before that had maybe 2-3 narrators that switched per chapter, but in As I Lay Dying there are 15 different narrators throughout the entire novel. Even though this gets confusing at times, I think it’s really a refreshing and stark difference from the Odyssey, where we see basically one narrator and their one opinion.

But with all of this extra information, it’s hard for me to come up with a solid opinion about any of the characters.

For Anse this is especially the case, because his motives are not completely clear to me. In class we talked about the (tender) moment when Anse goes to Addie right after she dies, and even though he’s super awkward, he’s still trying to convey some emotion. And in a sense he’s reaching out to her which we didn’t see when she was alive. But something that ruins this moment, is right afterwards Anse goes: “Now I can get them teeth” (52). This made me think that Addie’s death wasn’t even as important as getting his teeth.

At first, I thought this was super disappointing, but in last night's reading there was another reference to those great teeth that Anse was looking forward to: “But now I can get them teeth. That will be comfort. It will” (111). So this sort of made me question whether I’d jumped to conclusions on Anse. In that quote, Anse seems to be looking to new teeth as a comfort because his wife died. All of the Bundren family seems to be grieving in different ways, whether it be immersing yourself in work as Cash did, or convincing yourself that your mother was a fish, as Vardaman did. To me, it seems like (at this current moment) that getting new teeth is almost like Anse’s way of grieving.

There are definitely other ways to interpret this and since we don’t really know the Anse before Addie’s illness, it’s kind of hard to judge, but at the moment with all of this information we are given, this is sort of my take on Anse’s teeth issue.

Poker Face

When Odysseus went back to Ithaca he manages to withhold his emotions to such an extreme level. After 20 years of not seeing his home and family, he manages to put off that intense emotion that goes with the classic homecoming story.

Something that struck me, was that throughout the rest of the Odyssey, Odysseus is seen showing tons of emotion. He’s constantly crying: when he hears the bard telling his story at the feast with the Phaeacians or even when we first meet Odysseus, weeping on Calypso’s island. So we can see from the majority of the books that Odysseus is very in tune with his emotions and he’s obviously been through a lot, that hiding those emotions gets pretty hard.

But when Odysseus enters Ithaca, he suddenly changes. The most emotion he really shows is when he sheds a tear when he is reunited with his loyal dog, Argos. And even that, which, as we talked about in class, was a very iconic homecoming moment, Odysseus couldn’t really savor. At this point I realized that I probably didn’t give Odysseus enough credit on his mental strength. In general, I was sort of disappointed with Odysseus. Before reading the Odyssey, I thought Odysseus was going to be the stereotypical hero, with almost no faults. But as we progressed through the books, my opinion of him has slowly gone down.

But this huge contrast of his emotional crying during his wanderings to his stoic homecoming, made me rethink my opinion of him. To me this first took away from his humanity. Even when he first learned about being in Ithaca, I was surprised that he was able to keep such a cool face. Maybe it was the fact that it's been so long, and he couldn't believe that he was finally home, but I just couldn't believe it. Granted, when Odysseus was reunited with Telemachus, he was crying plenty. But as his strategic plan of taking his home back continued, I realized that his mental strength must've been insanely strong if he was able to walk into his home, 20 years later, able to suppress all that excitement. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still think that Odysseus is not morally just and has plenty of faults. But his extreme strengths, physically and emotionally,  is notable.

Just Listen

In The Memory of Running, Smithy comes off as the least hero-y hero there is. And at the start of reading this, I had no idea how Smithy would fit into the hero mold. The thing that really bothered me the most (at first) was how passive he was ALL the time. Sometimes while reading, I’d just want to yell at the people he interacted with because of how much they misunderstood him or mistreated him. I thought of this while writing my essay, where I realized that what made Smithy into a hero was his passivity. And this passivity is what set him apart from all the other hero’s we know of.

Something I found really interesting was that there is almost no way that Smithy would’ve met all the different kinds of people he did and heard all of his stories if he’d been any more aggressive. He managed to connect with people on a different level, and learn about their pains and suffering, all because of one thing. He listened.

My favorite part was when he met the old artist lady in Washington Park in New York. First of all, she (what seemed to me like a rude thing to say) addressed Smithy as “fat boy.” Even on Smithy’s behalf, I immediately felt offended. You don’t just call a stranger by the name of “fat boy.” But Smithy didn’t seem to mind, and even complimented her work immediately after she said that. She then tells him the heartbreaking and captivating stories about her life, and he gets to learn so much about a stranger in New York. I also noticed that in the majority of their interaction, even though Smithy is the main character and is narrating the entire novel, the dialogue is almost entirely from the artist.

Now I’m not sure if this is just something this lady does all the time, but Smithy seems to have this quality about him that makes people open up to him in the most intimate ways possible. This is seen in almost every single meaningful interaction he has in the novel. And that’s something I’m truly impressed by. He gets to learn about the dark secrets in these people's lives, and he learns that it’s not just his life that has its complications.