Feeling behind can be discouraging, but that is how I felt in the beginning of the semester. Transferring into the English major as a junior, and missing the first class did not help. I knew that I liked writing, but I also knew that there have been professors who don’t like my writing style. When the blog post project came up in discussion, I was nervous because of how public my writing would have to be. My confidence in sharing my work and ideas to other students in my class was low, and the thought of posting it online was almost unsettling. I was worried that my ideas wouldn’t be strong enough, my thinking would not be clear enough, and that my writing over all would not be good enough. In the beginning of the semester, I was stuck in a fixed mindset with low confidence, and struggled to see how I would be able to grow.
Rags, Bones, and New Apartments
A couple weeks ago I attended an informational talk about poverty in Rochester. The director of a homeless shelter called The House of Mercy, or Mercy House, came in along with Juan, one of the individuals who has used the shelter’s services to get back on his feet. Juan’s story of struggle and poverty reminded me of a section in Percival Everett’s poem Logic.
Vlepo as AI?
For this blog post I would like to introduce the idea of Vlepo in Percival Everett’s Frenzy as a form of artificial intelligence. I was reminded of this topic from Joe Moran’s chapter in Interdisciplinarity titled “Science, Space, and Nature” in which he briefly discussed the idea of cyborgs. In Frenzy, Dionysus is sure to explain to Vlepo that he was a creature of his own hand of creation. Dionysus more specifically describes Vlepo as “a parasite” rather than referring to him as a human being (Everett). This idea of creating a human being or any living thing has been played with throughout the history of literature and film. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example, or the 1982 and 2014 films Bladerunner and Ex Machina. Within these pieces lies the question of what is considered human.
Green Books- Guides to Safety
In class last week we briefly mentioned Green Books. Historically, Green Books are published guides of places and stops in which African Americans were safe to stay and rest while they were travelling (Andrews, 2017). In thinking about the content that we have read this semester, I realized that there were some areas into which these books would have been helpful to some characters. One in particular that I think would have benefited most is Not Sidney from Percival Everett’s I am Not Sidney Poitier.
Everett on Ignorance?
What I found the most interesting in the poem Zulus in Percival Everett’s book re: f (gesture) is the use and inclusion of a variety of languages. In some of the stanzas, Everett included lines of romance languages such as Spanish, French, and Latin. I personally was only able to decipher one of the lines, the Spanish, without using a translator. Being fluent in more than one language in this country is most commonly thought of as unnecessary. However I think that in this poem, Everett is trying to show us how ignorant American culture is when it comes to knowing and considering other people’s cultures and languages.
Another Look at Ecstasy
In my last post, I brought up the idea of ecstasy in the lives of human beings. For this post, I will focus more on ecstasy within literature. Ecstasy has a few definitions, one of which I talked about in my last post is a level of happiness, but another definition focuses on the sexual connotations of ecstasy. Where I noticed this the most was in The Bachhae, and specifically in the women under Dionysus’ control. However, the more I thought about how these women were being controlled, the more I began to think that maybe if they knew what was going on they wouldn’t mind it. Continue reading “Another Look at Ecstasy”
The Pursuit of Ecstasy
Some content in this blog post may be sensitive to some readers.
According to Emile Durkheim’s sociological theories of suicide, the level to which someone is integrated into society will determine their actions. For example in a small town like Geneseo, and specifically the student body of the college, people are not very integrated into the larger aspect of society. Durkheim says that this one of the reasons people look for a way out, something he calls egoistic suicide. Continue reading “The Pursuit of Ecstasy”
An Invisible World
Last week I went to a presentation where a man spoke about his life and struggles with mental health. This really emphasized to me how much more there is to a person than what is on the surface, and not everything will show itself in a physical form. Mental health for example is for the most part invisible, and can be a whole other world for a person that the rest of society cannot see because it is impossible to be inside of their heads. Percival Everett’s character Vlepo in Frenzy however has this additional power, but only if he could see into his own independently thinking mind could he be satisfied.
On on looking and looking on
When reading a book, we are the onlookers—we have control of our eyes running over the words on the pages. What’s startling is when we feel like we are being looked back at. I’m not a big fan of portrait paintings for this reason. It is much more enjoyable for me to be the onlooker hidden from view of the subject, instead Continue reading “On on looking and looking on”
Paratext
As this is my first post, I would like to start off with something I feel understand well enough to give a clear explanation of. I’d like to begin simply with the definitions of the terms that will be discussed here:
Paratext: Elements in a text that contribute and construct a meaning or context for what is being read. Paratext can be broken down into two categories: peritext and epitext.