Sympathy for Lee

The beginning of Libra contains a very interesting depiction of a relatively young Lee Oswald. The opening chapters of the book try to depict Lee in a somewhat sympathetic light, but he retains characteristics which are off-putting. Many of Lee’s characteristics which are described showcase his apparent lack of ability to understand or empathize with other people’s points of view. One of the aforementioned characteristic is that he thinks that he is always right and that he is better than other people because he seeks an alternative education using large, dusty books that he finds in the back of the library. In addition, he only likes the books because they give him a sense of superiority in terms of allowing him to talk about subject matter than none of his peers care about or understand and being difficult to comprehend. He doesn’t even fully understand the subject matter he uses to justify his greatness and superiority, and this adds a level of complexity to how Lee is viewed. Lee thinks that others will think of him in a “better” light if he does show that he is smarter by reading these old, dusty books, but we know that he doesn’t fully understand what the books are talking about. This creates a conflicting view for the reader. In some ways, we admire the amount of effort he is putting in trying to get people to think he is smart, but on the other hand it would be smarter of him to actually educate himself in things that could advance his life more readily. Lee seems smart at first glance, and if he decided to apply himself to a field of study other than Marxist literature, he may have been extremely successful in the rest of his life. We know that Lee doesn’t really have anyone in his life that could tell him this, which again plays up the sympathy in the reader’s view, and in the way the book currently presents the plot, it would seem like Lee would basically be being used by the agents to get back at Cuba. If we chose to view Lee in a sympathetic light we have to be careful about what action we condone and what actions we oppose. Most of his service in the military seems innocuous until he decides to start giving out American intelligence and shoots himself in the arm to make sure that he doesn’t need to continue to tour with the rest of his troop.

The duality of sympathy and disdain for Lee’s actions seems to be a major component of the story so far and it will be interesting to see if this continues. If we get a depiction of Lee’s thought process in shooting the president, it will be interesting to see if we sympathize with him or if we are completely against his actions. If understanding Lee’s thought process allows us to sympathize with him more than we expect for a seemingly calculating individual, we may be able to understand how other murderers go through and justify themselves as well as how earlier moments in their life affected their actions.

Society in Rufus and Dana's relationship

The relationship between Rufus and Dana becomes more convoluted as the novel progresses. An astounding number of factors go into determining how their relationship plays out, but one of the most largest factors in their relationship is the development of Rufus into a seemingly stereotypical slave master.

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Dana tries to counteract the societal factors that play into Rufus being a stereotypical slave master. She tries to educate him and have him develop some respect for black people and for women and she thinks that she is somewhat successful as Rufus is a fairly nice boy who dislikes his father’s way of doing things in some respects.  Together, Dana and Rufus align themselves against Tom Weylin’s way of doing things and as Rufus grows up he begins to stray from his father’s way of looking at the world.

A large strain is put on the relationship between Dana and Rufus when he pulls a gun on her and Kevin as they are trying to leave because of his abandonment issues. Dana knows that the Rufus she taught would never do something like that and she is extremely distraught by how much he has changed during the time she has been gone. One of the reasons that Rufus has changes after Dana leave is because of society telling him that he can have anything he wants. As the heir to a plantation, he will at some point own many slaves and he can do whatever he wants with those slaves and no other people around him will care. Society would act as if he was abnormal if he didn’t control, and maybe even abuse, the black people who he ends up owning. Along with this societal pressure to be normal and use his power, he believes in the example his father set him. This example again shows Rufus that he can have anything he wants, including other people’s lives, and that he can treat them any way he wants to without fear of repercussion. In fact, when Rufus does act against his father’s example, he gets beat. As such he has more motivation to act normal in this context because he thinks the only way he will be reprimanded is if he acts abnormally.

These societal factors outweigh the small amount of influence that Dana thinks she has over the outcome of Rufus’ development. Dana thinks that the small amount of education that she gives Rufus will change the way he views society and allow him to act differently, but the social backlash that he would induce upon himself far outweighs the risk in his mind. Dana does have some influence on how Rufus thinks, as in the case of how he feels towards Alice and her sway in getting him to lie about who he was beaten by, but she is not able to challenge the amount of cultural influence which makes Rufus so despicable in some of his actions. We find that Rufus is not able to really grow out of a childhood state of mind where he throws a tantrum if he doesn’t get what he wants because that is completely normal in the society where he lives.

Overall, the development of Rufus’ character has a large strain on the relationship between him and Dana. Dana tries, unsuccessfully, to change how Rufus will turn out as an adult, but the societal factors influence him in such a way that he does not need to change to live a fulfilling life, and if he does change and go against the status quo, he may be reprimanded by society.

Time travel in Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s use of science fiction in Slaughterhouse Five is perplexing. It seems to limit the reliability of Billy, but also provides an interesting way to reflect on events that have transpired. Without the aliens, we would not get the whole part of the story about Billy’s life on the Tralfamadorian planet, and the story may seem less impossible.The science fiction elements explain how Billy can jump around in time, but could the same effect be present without the little green men and spaceships?

Without time travel, I believe that the only way Vonnegut could use the same style of story where he jumps around would be calling the story a collection of memories from after the fact. Jumping between memories is not foreign in any way, it happens to most people, and the drastic jumping around that Billy would need to go through could be explained by postwar stress or trauma. Some parts of the story may not be able to exist, but I think that the effect could be similar. However, the time travel aspect does introduce multiple major points to the story.

Billy would most likely not be thought of as crazy by his daughter if he didn’t talk about time travel and the Tralfamadorians, and he would not have the “so it goes” outlook on life. Billy mentions not knowing where he is going to jump to next, but if these were just memories then the same thing could occur. He may not know how his memories connect, but we could see some connections as we see in how his time travels connect. One aspect of the story that time travel introduces in the story is Billy’s own thoughts about how his life is connected. Billy has memories of events that take place in the future which he isn’t able to apply to change the situation because of the nature of his time travel. These memories allow Billy to find interesting connects in his life, such as with the barbershop quartet connecting to the war. It also makes Billy not seem worried about his situation in the war as much. Throughout the book we don’t really see Billy complaining excessively about his situation in the war because he knows he will make it out the war alive. Even after being captured by the Tralfamadorians, Billy starts to warm up to his situation and he accepts it knowing that it won't affect his death.

The Tralfamadorians also introduce Billy to the idea that if you can see all of time at once, you only focus on the positive things. Billy seems to take this advice or outlook at life and applies it to his own life. He is able to come to terms with his eventual death using this philosophy, and he also views most events through this light. He know that he can’t change what happens, but instead of taking that in a negative light, Billy has a sort of optimism in the way he says, “So it goes.”

Overall, I think that Vonnegut would be able to create a novel with a similar effect to it without the time travel aspect, but it would lose a significant amount of philosophical implications as well as some plot. If Vonnegut didn’t want to use time travel, he could pull the idea of this novel off, but the themes would change significantly.

Rap and Jes Grew

In class this week we discussed what the modern form of Jes Grew would be. I believe that we can find the answer to this question in rap music and more generally in hip-hop culture. The idea of an anti-establishment american art form that has many african roots aligns perfectly with the beginnings of rap and the development throughout the later part of the last century and the early 2000s.

The roots and development of rap also seem to parallel Jes Grew. The beginnings of rap music start with African music, usually in the form of drum beats from places like Jamaica. This influence allows rap to be connected back to Africa is the way Jes Grew is supposed to be. In addition, modern rap samples everything from spirituals to rock-and-roll. By sampling so many different types of music, it invariably samples many traditionally black forms of music, such as jazz and blues, which is an aspect that also aligns rap with Jes Grew. The idea of sampling other art forms also seems to align with Jes Grew’s pervasiveness. As Jes Grew is supposed to be in every living thing, rap takes elements of many different styles and combines them to express something different than each part.

Hip-hop culture also has a long tradition of associated with dancing in the form of break dancing. Similar to Jes Grew,  modern rap is often associated with party and club music automatically associating itself with dance culture as well as the idea of sweeping the nation with dancing. It is listened to by people of all races and seems to have swept the nation like Jes Grew. Jes Grew is said to have have infected all people even though the roots were in African culture, and rap fills a similar role. Although the genre grew in predominantly poor, black neighborhoods, nowadays the genre is extremely accessible to listeners and creators of all races.

The subject matter also deals with similar ideas that Jes Grew and the movement surrounding it were dealing with. During the movement, the idea of western culture taking significant cultural artifacts and parading them in museums is attacked. In a similar way, rap attacks the racial, cultural, and socioeconomic stereotypes that are issues in past and present society. Much of rap is targeted and provocative, simultaneously trying to educate outsiders using an inside perspective as well as attacking the offending party, which in many cases is some form of the government. Whatever rap decides to target, it makes a socially relevant point and tries to spark some sort of change. Jes Grew also has a similar function in which it is trying to change the status quo. A large amount of earlier rap targets police and gang warfare as the main villains in the lives of poor, black children. This idea remains relevant today, but the music and the movement has had some effect on the social climate of the country, similar to Jes Grew’s effect.

Rap also functions as the text for the hip-hop culture. Because rap can be thought of as poetry put to music, the idea of is being the text fits. Although, there is an extremely large amount of variation in the topics and styles of rap, each song contributes something to the cultural movement. Overall, throughout rap and hip-hop’s history and development, is seems to align itself almost perfectly with Jes Grew.  

A Postmodern History

In class, the question of how a postmodern history would be constructed came up. One idea that was thrown out was that the history would be constructed of only primary sources. An even more extreme version might contain only data about events that people know for sure happened.

The issue that comes up when dealing with primary sources is that humans still wrote them. If the object of the postmodern history is to completely eliminate the human aspect of history to make sure that it is completely separate from fiction, even primary sources would have to be questioned. Primary sources are often the best that we currently have to understand history, but the primary sources were written from memory, and memory is a very fickle thing. If the writers of these primary sources were planned to record what they saw immediately, then the record would probably be accurate enough. However, if the authors of the primary sources were only writing about events after they had occurred, even with just a day time difference, could the memories of these authors be trusted? Humans biologically focus more on things like moving objects, so would we really be getting the complete picture from these authors?

If we take primary sources as unreliable, then data seems to be the answer to what we use as the source of a postmodern history. Data about events hopefully has no human element which can invalidate it, barring the obvious fact that humans probably had to write it down. Most importantly, data has no interpretation by the authors. If we use data as the basis for a version of history, I believe that we would come up with an extremely dry set of texts that would be fairly barren in terms of the amount of history that they cover. Without any human interpretation of the events, we would lose a large amount of history as well as any themes that can be drawn. A large amount of the usefulness of history comes from determining the causes for events. Without the cause and effect relationship, we would not be able to use history to prevent further tragedies. By using data as the base for history, we would not have any analysis and therefore could not apply lessons learned from history.

Keeping the criticisms of a primary source based and/or data based history, I believe that the best course of action would be to simply understand how human error and inaccuracies would affect the reliability and validity of the sources. The analysis of data that is present in primary and secondary sources is extremely beneficial to understanding and applying history. If we take the history that we learn today and, in addition, we understand the sources that the history comes from, I think both our understanding of the history would improve as well as the reliability of the history we learn.

Coalhouse's retaliation

In Ragtime, Coalhouse’s defiance to the volunteer fireman is seen as a good action that is worthy of praise. In general, the firemen can be viewed as “bad” in terms of their harassment of Coalhouse who hasn’t done anything wrong by driving on the road. Coalhouse is easy to sympathise with because of his fairly innocuous character as well as the obvious racism that he

has to deal with. However, there is another side to the issue. Coalhouse’s defiance can be seen as idealistic and naive in a way. Instead of resisting the the harassment of the firemen, Coalhouse could have simply put his head down, paid the fine and went on his way. In the text, we are told that this option didn’t cross Coalhouse’s mind, but would the situation be better if he did just succumb to the racism.

The answer to the question comes down to whether Coalhouse is okay with taking discrimination or if he wants to fight for his rights. The African-American experience in terms of discrimination is often filled with this dilemma. The beginning of Ellison’s Invisible Man contains a scene where a black narrator who is currently a high schooler is made to fight in a boxing ring with other high schoolers before he can give a speech and accept a reward for his abilities as a student before he goes on to college. In Invisible Man, the narrator pretty much just hangs his head and goes with the flow of racism at the current time. He does this to get the best chance at making a better life for himself, but even when he does follow the directives he thinks he is supposed to, he doesn’t really get the life he originally wants. In Native Son, Bigger doesn’t really attempt to fight against the racism he faces. One of the main themes of the book is that all of his actions were caused by the situation in which his family lives as well as the effect institutionalized racism has on people’s actions.

By giving Coalhouse the ability to retaliate against the racism he faces, Doctorow is moving away from earlier depictions of the African-American experience. Coalhouse does not need to retaliate against the firemen, but him doing so might represent a shift in the culture that Doctorow is trying to represent. Coalhouse can still be seen as naive for not just hanging his head, but by choosing the course of action to not pay the fine we can see the beginnings of people fighting against racism and not just going with the flow.

An aspect of Coalhouse’s retaliation that may also be attributed to his idealism is his course of action after deciding to retaliate. Coalhouse deciding that bombing the firehouse and killing multiple men to send a message may have been too much. He may have thought that making such a big deal out of his revenge would spark some interest in his cause, but it really just scared away a lot of other African-Americans.

Coalhouse’s decision to retaliate may have been naive on his part but also could show a shift in terms of sparking more retaliation against institutionalized racism. He also may have gone a little bit too far in enacting his revenge.