Ya Like Jazz?

Percival Everett’s Zulus intervenes in the kind of social tensions that Jerry Seinfeld outlines in Bee Movie. More specifically, the poems exists in conversation with Bee Movie, suggesting the impossibility of liberty from our external realms.

In the world of Bee Movie (2007), bees receive their jobs as soon as they graduate from college. They are assigned niche roles in the honey-making factory, “Honex: A Division of Honesco:  A Part of the Hexagon Group” (Seinfeld 8). According to Trudy, who guides Barry and his friend, Adam, around the factory, “Most bee jobs are small ones. But bees know that every small job, if it’s done well, means a lot. There are over 3000 different bee occupations. But choose carefully, because you’ll stay in the job that you pick for the rest of your life” (Seinfeld 10). Barry panics when he realizes that he will be in the same job forever, questioning whether the Honex will “just work us to death,” to which Trudy cheerfully replies, “we’ll sure try” (Seinfeld 10). Continue reading “Ya Like Jazz?”

Witness

I’ll super, duper honest with you, I have no idea what I wanted to write about in this last blog post. I still have really NO idea what to write about. I am watching Longmire on Netflix as I type this and I have a sleeping cat whom is dreaming next to me as well. I’ve learned a lot from this English 203 class, I really have. This class was a lot of fun, and I will enjoy all of the memories from this semester, the good and the bad. I won’t get into the sappy, mushy stuff, but I made a good share of close friends in this class, they’ll know who they are if they read this. I have learned a lot about myself this semester, even this year. I have grown up as a person, I have matured over this past year, and man am I grateful to be able to say that.

While flipping through books for this class, it came into my mind. One thing that has kept me on track throughout this class, was being able to go to class, and learn something new and inspiring that Percival Everett did. Or maybe even read something by Percival Everett. There’s a poem that caught my eye in his re: f (gesture) book. The poem is in the first section, Zulus, “W is for word, for wall for standing witness, for wake. ‘Man, wird oft von einem Wort behext’” (Everett, 37) This poem spoke to me, on a personal level. Not everyone knows this, because I keep it under wraps, and hidden from the world. I’m a survivor of a Mental and Emotional relationship, from a guy that I thought loved me. It’s been 3 years since this has happened, and when I read this poem, I honestly, started to tear up.

Walls were witnesses of this abuse I endured. Those walls were powerless, and couldn’t do anything about it. I honestly don’t call myself a victim, I’ve learned not to call myself that because I don’t need pity. I call myself a survivor because I definitely did. I was strong enough one day to walk away. To walk away from the walls that were witnesses. For every waking hour, I never knew what the day would have in store for me, what HE would have in store me. I have words for this person every day, but I’ve grown up to know that he doesn’t deserve the satisfaction to know that I am hurt still to this day, to know that I cry to this day about it, and to know that relationships are still hard for me, to this day…

I am not writing this blog post for tears, don’t cry. I am not writing this post to be told, “Good for you.” I heard that a lot when I got out of the relationship. I’ve learned in the past couple years to not get attached to people so easily, to have my guard up at all times because the inevitable could happen. I am writing this blog post to show that you can do it too, I am writing this blog post to show men and women that you too can be strong, you too can stand tall on top of a hill and scream your lungs out saying “I DID IT!”. Yes, yes you did; and I am very proud of you. This blog is a voice, not just for me, but for everyone who has been a part of a abusive relationship, or who still may be. Know that I will help you, in any possible way I can. Because I didn’t when I was a part of this relationship, I didn’t when I left. Because I was so scared to anyone about the relationship, I was scared on what he might do to me, or to any of my friends.

Do know, I am a better person due to this relationship. Yes, it was a terrible and horrible relationship. But I grew once I left. I blossomed. I did cry, a lot. But I grew up and matured as a person. I’ve met a lot of amazing people throughout these past couple years, and I am grateful for them. I am grateful for myself because I am still here. I am still here BECAUSE I left. I am powerful, I am strong, I am a warrior in my own body and mind. Whatever I set my mind to; I will achieve it.

If you fall victim to ANY kind of abuse, please contact the abuse hotline at: 1-800-799-7233

Science or Love?

In my English 203 class one day, we had the chance to read re: f (gesture) by Percival Everett. We read the first section in class titled, Zulus. This section is in alphabetical order, which is an interesting thing to me for a poem section, hence my previous blog post. One of the poems caught my eye, and interested me. That poem is F poem. The part of the poem that caught my eye was the last couple lines. “F is for Frankenstein, who did not name his baby. Always name offspring. ‘De donde vienos, amor, mi ninos?’” (Everett, 20)

            I remember when I first read Frankenstein in my high school college level English class. I got the Monster and Frankenstein mixed up. I remember thinking that the Monsters name was Frankenstein, I thought that the whole book was written about a monster who went around killing people. Not a doctor who created a monster, that went around killing people for love. I think this was because there’s movies out there, that depict the monster as Frankenstein, but in reality, the Monster doesn’t have a name. Dr. Frankenstein doesn’t give him a name. When my class spoke about the book, it all made sense and was connecting in my head. I reread the book on my own, and I understood it so well, and even better. This past summer, I took a Western Humanities Course, I had the chance to read this book again, and I enjoyed it all over again.

            I had to write an essay on the final test of that course. In that essay I had to not only talk about the book Frankenstein, but also Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. “Frankl speaks about his basic concepts of logotherapy and how one can apply it to their own life, and to others in their life. Frankl argues against Freud’s Pleasure Principle of self-gratification, Frankl states that you must find meaning in life before anything else happens. Which is, meaning and responsibility to others, will bring contentedness, well-being, and as a by-product, happiness.” (Neeley, 1) Victor Frankenstein, the main character of the book Frankenstein, goes through this. He only cares about himself, he seeks only for the self-gratification of himself, he doesn’t care about anyone else but himself. He’s selfish. He’s more focused on his advances in his science career than anything else. “When he creates his Monster, this definitely shines straight through, and shows that he really only cares for his benefit, he only wants everything to himself, he doesn’t want to share. He’s like the kid on the playground that doesn’t want to share his Tonka Truck with anyone else.” (Neeley, 1) Victor doesn’t want to show love, he doesn’t want to show anything, he’s not happy with anything, he’s not even with his Monster, he doesn’t love his Monster. This is why he doesn’t name his monster, like Everett states, always name your offspring, Victor did not. “Victor created this Monster, meaning, Victor should care of this monster like a motherly/ fatherly figure. He should love his monster; he shouldn’t shut his monster out of his life.” (Neeley, 1) Victor is doing this to his Monster.

            The baby is Victor’s creation, his Monster. He didn’t name his creation, so, that dehumanizes his creation. It doesn’t give meaning to his Monster. Victor is “the one that made th Monster, and his creation is killing people, his family ironically, so the Monster can try to get Victor’s attention, but Victor does nothing, and stays out of it. He’s selfish enough that when the Monster asks him to create a friend, he does, but he drowns the female creation; so, the Monster can feel what Victor feels in loosing people, loosing people he cares about.” (Neeley, 1) Since Victor is so involved in his work, science, he shuts himself off of the world, and into his own. He ignores everything and everyone, including his creation, hence why he is killing everyone that Victor knows and loves. “The thing that MIGHT bring balance to Victor is for to love. For him to stop focusing on his work so much, and for him to love the Monster for who he is. According to Frankl, ‘Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but ought to be actualized.’ (Frankl, 111)” (Neeley, 1) Victor needs to love himself first, and become fully aware of himself before he can love another human being, or before he can love the Monster. When he starts to love the Monster, he will find out that the Monster isn’t as all bad as he thinks the Monster is. Since Victor doesn’t want another to do with his creation, he ends up killing his creation and fleeing, going crazy, and ending up in the cold North Pole. Talking about a big monster, aka his creation, ending up dying on a ship. Victor ends up going through all of this due to him not being able to love himself, and love his creation. “He found the meaning life, science, but he never connected with anything but science, he secluded himself and only took benefits for himself, and his science.” (Neeley, 2)

            We could learn a lot from Victor and his Monster. We learn not to take things for granted when they are put in front of us. To love everything, we are given and take in. To cherish the little things in live, and to take signs seriously. The Spanish quote that Everett mentions, “De donde vienos, amor, mi ninos?” It means, “Where do we come from, love, my children?” This is a beautiful quote, and it fits perfectly with the book Frankenstein. Frankenstein creates a Monster, that he is not able to love, that he is not able to look at. His Monster has to kill people to get his attention, and sadly, that fails. Where do we really come from? Are we an experiment that is going to be ignored for the rest of our life? Or are we just walking around aimlessly like a bunch of airheads look for love, have a couple kids in a nice farm house, and then pass away with our lover on the front porch with a beer and a cigar in hand… That’s the real question. I, myself, don’t even know the answer to that.

In Defense of Romanticism

Upon my first reading of Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier, I marked it down as another novel deconstructing the nature of cynicism and the absurdity of life. And perhaps, it can still be observed as a novel of that nature; by just reading of Not Sidney’s disposition to view the other characters around him in a sort of blasé, detached and uncaring manner, and how each event is passed over without much growth or weight to them, the theme of how life can be absurd is still certainly present—but I am not sure that the hard cynicism that I first observed is. Unlike other classical novels with strict structure and plot, I Am Not Sidney Poitier communicates its themes and lessons not through the weight of the events in the story, but by what Not Sidney absorbs as he moves through time, and the intertextuality that can be read through Everett’s implementation of films starring the real Sidney Poitier—such as The Defiant Ones and Lilies of the Field.

My idea for this blog post stemmed from a particular moment in I Am Not Sidney Poitier and the allusion to the film The Defiant Ones. On page 79 of I Am Not Sidney Poitier, this passage occurs:

Patrice pushed the jar towards me, but I waved it off. I watched them drink themselves unconscious, and I realized it didn’t matter where they were, they would never be going anywhere.

The train’s whistle blew. It was coming and I was the only one awake. I did not wake them. The locomotive passed, and I walked to the tracks. Just as Sis had said, the train was moving very slowly up the grade. I found an empty boxcar and easily climbed into it. Alone. I left them sleeping there where they belonged, with one another.

In comparison to the scene to which this passage is alluding to, that scene being from the 1958 film The Defiant Ones, the difference is polar opposite to what occurs here: instead of getting on the train and leaving his accomplice behind, Cullen, Not Sidney’s equivalent in the film, jumps off the train to stay with Joker, the equivalent to Patrice in the novel. There are other aspects that differ in the book and film alongside those, however I will not mention them here simply because they do not apply to the core of this post. Here I am questioning the use of romanticism versus cynicism in storytelling, and what little differs between the book and the film is, in this context, irrelevant.

As defined by The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, romanticism is “a broad and general term referring to a set of beliefs, attitudes, and values associated with… an emphasis on emotion, innovation, nature, the individual, and subjective experience.” Furthermore, romanticism can be defined as containing the belief that “emotions are more reliable than reason” and pertaining to a confidence in “the essential goodness of human beings.” In defining romanticism, I am reminded of simple optimism, and I suppose, in this blog post, romanticism can be likened to optimism; it is The Defiant Ones’ version of the events, the hope that there will be a happily ever after, and that the characters will grow to be better versions of themselves by the end of the story.

In contrast, cynicism can be defined as “a dark attitude toward the world, especially toward human beings… [the belief that] human beings are basically motivated by greed and self-interest; they are distrustful of others, usually very negative, and suspicious of sentimentality.” For the purpose of this blog post, I am posing cynicism as the opposite of literary romanticism; just as romanticism means the belief in the goodness of human beings, cynicism means the belief in the evilness of human beings. And just as romanticism can be likened to optimism, cynicism can be likened to pessimism. This is I Am Not Sidney Poitier’s version of the events, the apparent truth that Cullen should have remained on the train just as how Not Sidney got on the train by himself in the book, and the idea that what occurs in books should reflect what would most likely happen in real life.

To add a disclaimer, I consider myself a romantic. However, deconstructions of films such as The Defiant Ones in context of its time period, subject, and problematic aspects should not be dissuaded simply because “Oh, it’s just a movie, can’t there be a happy ending?” A film such as The Defiant Ones, which contains a subject concerning race and racism, should be deconstructed, because it is incredibly likely that the film glosses over how dire the problem of racism truly was. In short, it is absolutely not my intention to glorify the romanticism in The Defiant Ones. This because the romanticism in that film likely contributed to a skewed view of racism and a softening of a problem that should have been, and should still be, viewed and debated with the utmost care.

Instead, I would like to conclude this blog post with a return to the title: “In Defense of Romanticism.” To reiterate, I Am Not Sidney Poitier is a novel that does not follow the standard story structure and plot that many readers are accustomed to. Therefore, there is no need for romanticism; the novel can communicate its theme successfully without it. However, The Defiant Ones is a film that does follow the standard story structure (for example, the inciting incident is the prison bus’ crash at the beginning of the film), and therefore romanticism suits it well, because in this way it is able to communicate its own theme: an idea of friendship grown through hardship might not be able to beat the odds, but it might allow one to come to terms with their situation in life. In conclusion, I will defend romanticism when it is implemented in a standard story structure, however, I understand for novels such as I Am Not Sidney Poitier, romanticism is not necessary.

Structural Order

Numbers… The Alphabet…  These are things that keep us organized. These are the things that keep us in order. Order means many different things to us as humans. Like alphabetical order, the way we are introduced in a roster, or when we are called across the stage to get our diploma. Numerical order as well, the way the numbers are placed on pages in a book, or in hotels on plaques for room numbers (it bugs me like crazy when they don’t go in order on one side of the hallway). The first place you really learn about the alphabet and numbers are at school, and maybe even your parents as well. I’ve never put thought into this, but we’ve dealt with numbers and the alphabet our whole lives if you think about it. You have to deal with numbers with age and the date when you must date something, like a check. You have to deal with the alphabet when you write your name, and when you write a simple word.

When I went to look up Numerical and Alphabetical up in the Bedford, it’s not there. I suppose it wouldn’t be, but as I was flipping through, I noticed that just like any dictionary, the Bedford is in alphabetical order. When went into the look up the word Order, is wasn’t in there, so I looked up similar words to order. I came across one, structure. According to the Bedford, “Often equated with form, the arrangement in a work, that is, the ordering of its component parts or the design devised by the author to convey content and meaning.” (Bedford, 426) There are many things that are connected to the word structure. The Bedford mentions that structure can be used in a Poem, in the arrangement of images or ideas, in a play, it can also be shown in novels. For me, structure reminds me of organization, order of things. When I think of arrangement, I think of a center piece for Christmas time on a table. “Oh, that’s a nice arrangement there.” Structure, for me, reminds me of when someone comments on my papers in the past from High School. “You have a great structure, and you’ve built off of it.”

One thing that I found interesting when I was reading through the structure definition,

“Some critics such as those associated with the Chicago school, have distinguished between structure and form, arguing that form is the emotional force or shaping principle that gives rise to the mechanics of structure…Other critics, particularly the New Critics, have distinguished between structure and texture…structure to refer to the general intellectual content of a poem, that is, whatever can be paraphrased, and texture to refer to the surface details of a work, such as imagery, meter, and rhyme.” (Bedford, 426-427)

This is interesting to me because there are people who see a different meaning to the word Structure. It’s going back to my other blog posts where I’ve mentioned point of view. It all depends on how you view things. Structure reminds me of a foundation. A foundation that you start off with and work your way up the ladder of writing a paper, a poem, a book, or even a blog post. You start off with an idea (your foundation), and then you do some research, either by looking things up, or flipping through a couple of books. Your research will be the branches, and the walls to build off of that foundation.

Structure for me as well can be seen as an organization word. You need a good structure to organize anything, especially heavy things. I feel like too, that you need to have structure in life. For me, structure is what you want to do in your life. “Well do you have any structure?” Being structured in life, you have your whole life planned out, you know exactly what you want to do, and if that doesn’t work you, you have the whole alphabet, in order, worked up with plans. You go day by day, going by what your planner, or your phone calendar tells you; you’re structured.  

Identity, Creation, and Direction

Micha’el Leventhal said, “The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating.”

I am the creator of my own world. This means that the choices I make every single day of my life affect the outcome of my entire future. This means the choices I make can affect other people’s lives. This means that as an individual, I have way more control over my own life, and others’ lives too, than what I may perceive myself as having.

The term create, according to Lexico, means to “bring (something) into existence … Cause (something) to happen as a result of one’s own actions.” This term seems quite fitting for myself since the choices I make day-to-day can cause other things to occur.

If one, for example, I walk up the hill by Lauderdale Health Services in order to go to the library, I will likely end up eating at least two of my meals at Books n Bytes since it is the most convenient location for me to eat at. I chose to walk up the hill to ensure that I have a productive day at the library. With this decision, my course load work can be accomplished even more efficiently as I surround myself with students who are also striving to complete their work. With this decision, I am portraying myself to others as a student who cares about her future and wants to excel in her studies.

As a creator, this means that somehow, in some ways, the choices I make every day provide me with a direction. This direction can also be as simple as where I will choose to eat, which depends on where I feel like walking. This direction can be as complex as, what will I major in? That can affect my life’s career. Should I choose to do psychology so that I can become a therapist? This means I have to take such and such psychology courses. This means that if I choose to pursue psychology that I need to maintain such GPA and attend such and such years of graduate school. This means that I can make X amount of money when I am older. Each of my individual actions affects both the world I currently live in as well as my future world.  But what if I am unsure of my direction or if I quite simply had no direction?

When I ponder the question of not having a direction, I automatically think about my identity. In some ways, my identity is what gives me a direction. This direction can be as simple as where my name is in alphabetical order compared to my peers in a classroom. In Professor McCoy’s class once, our class discussed the idea of alphabetical order and what this specific order signifies. Our class first had to alphabetize ourselves by our last names, and then after, by our first names. We discussed the idea behind this organization and whether or not being alphabetized means anything, I said aloud that my last name is both a sign of my culture and my family’s heritage, as well as indicative of where my position is in an organized fashion compared to my peers’ last names.

An identity, according to Lexico, is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” This means that as an individual, I can define myself by my name and say my state of being is Leila and my last name Sassouni is what provides me with the direction or life path that I will follow.

In some ways, however, if I did not have a name, then I would be lost in the world. If I do not know my own name, then how can I expect to be able to further identify with myself as a human being? If I do not know my own name, how can I expect to follow some kind of direction if my name cannot even provide one for me? I would be lost without my identity.

This intervention between identity and direction leads me to speak about my own uncertainty. I will introduce my own uncertainty of direction, and its specific association to English courses. I am a current psychology major with a minor in English. I enjoy speaking to people about personal issues and can envision myself as a therapist one day working with adolescents. I also enjoy writing and editing and would like to write for a newspaper in the future. While I may seem to have an idea of my life’s direction, I did not used to. In the beginning of this semester, I encountered a struggle. My struggle was regarding whether or not I wanted to stay an English minor or if I should instead declare a communication minor. I internally lost my sense of identity, as I previously considered writing one of my biggest passions. I questioned if the Leila from freshman year of college was the same Leila in sophomore year. I questioned if the Leila who loved writing for the newspaper actually wanted to pursue some kind of journalistic field when she was older. I questioned, who is Leila without writing? The overall answer is that I was completely unsure of my path and felt as if I had no direction. I had no guidance. I found challenge in connecting to myself through writing as I had once been able to.

To overcome this uncertainty and further reconnect with my identity and myself as a creator of my own direction, I pursued English. I enrolled in my first English minor class ENGL 203. I chose to do this because I needed to test the waters for myself, and to further identify whether or not I, Leila Sassouni, was meant to pursue English and get a degree in the field. Taking this class was one step that would either help me create a stronger foundation for my future world or would make me change my future path if I chose instead to declare communication as a minor. I chose to stay in the field, as I allowed myself to get passionately lost in the writing I produced in my blog posts. I wrote write about discussions I had in class with peers when reading different texts. I blogged about my thoughts of literary works and I would somehow form a strong connection with other disciplines; I finally felt reconnected with my identity, which gave me a direction.

This leads me to Percival Everett’s novel I am Not Sidney Poitier. As evidently noticed through the novel’s title as well as through the course of Not Sidney Poitier’s experience as an adolescent to his later adult life, his actual name starts with the word “Not”.

As defined by Lexico, a definition for the term “not” is “exclude[s] a person or part of a group.”

Not Sidney, which is just his first name, essentially has no identity. He is known as “Not” being someone. This lack of identity plays into his life’s journey as his life becomes an adventure since he is given no specific direction to follow. In other words, his name reflects his path: there is none. While his upbringing includes him being raised by his mother for a short time, and then being raised in Ted Turner’s house, his entire journey takes a spin as he suddenly becomes arrested, he becomes a prisoner, and then he helps random nuns who he encounters while driving on a road. He had absolutely no direction; therefore, he was not even the creator of his own world.

This links similarly to a previous blog post I wrote where I demonstrated that throughout his life, Not Sidney did not make choices for himself. He was arrested because of his skin color; he became a prisoner because of the fact that he was arrested. Neither of these were his decisions nor were they in his control; they were decisions made by a third party. This is similar because of the fact that his name means he is not part of a group, which means that he is an outlier. He is alone by himself, while all other people who have a name are part of an in group and can identify by their names. Since others have names that do not include the word “not”, they have a direction to follow because of the fact that they can identify with themselves. This is the opposite for Not Sidney since he cannot even identify with his own name. Therefore, this lack of a connection causes him to lose control over creating his own world.

Overall, both my experience in the English disciplinary field as well as my interaction with the text I am Not Sidney Poitier illustrate how crucial an identity is to set a concrete foundation and/or a direction in life. If Not Sidney had a name without the term “not”, he would have been better able to create his own world. Without my identity, I could not become a creator of my own world.

Am I Not Sidney Poitier?

In every good novel, there will always be that one blurb or sentence that is going to be remembered. In this case from the novel I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett, there is also a line that I find myself being able to connect to it in some way or another. That line was also the last in the novel which was, “…I AM NOT MYSELF TODAY” (234). Having written about the same quote in many of my previous blog posts such as, That Was DeepNot Quite DifferentThe Number 7, it just makes me realize that there must be something about this quote that is so intriguing. 

I find that maybe in some way that I can relate to this quote. This quote is relatable to me in the way of starting college. College is more than just moving up in a year of school, instead, it feels like I was transiting into another world. For example, in my high school English classes when we would have an essay, we would have a structured prompt. I knew exactly what I had to base my essay on and what materials I had to use to support my claims. Now I feel that we have more freedom, instead of having a structured prompt we have more of a guideline. College forces you to branch out a bit and start relying on yourself then the prompt itself. What I mean by that is that as the writer you have to think hard about really what connects and somehow makes sense of it. Just like Not Sidney, it took me a little bit to find my purpose starting with a completely different environment I was unfamiliar with. 

There is going to be the time where you come into realization of what has to be done and really what the purpose is. For me personality, I feel as I came to the point when I had to write my blog posts. When I was starting them, I was still getting the feel for how to do them, so I wasn’t the best, I felt like Not Sidney when he said that he wasn’t himself. I was starting something I was unsure about and it was weird, I had to find my purpose and find a way to work around the whole situation.

When I began the process of writing then it just felt so different as it would be because I am not used to writing in that style. At first, I thought my writing would be different in a way because I didn’t have such a structured guideline but as the process went on, I found myself in my writing. I realized that when it came time to write a post, I would have so many ideas and when I start writing about them, I think of a completely different one that made it even better. 

Not Sidney made a speech about his life and talking about how he got where he was at that moment. He ended with that quote showing that he knows what he has to do to change to become himself. At the beginning of the novel, he knew he was different than everyone else in some way. He was the son of the women everyone thought was going crazy because she has been pregnant for “One hundred and four” (4) weeks. Not Sidney started off being in those situations where he was always different, especially at the beginning of the novel. It wasn’t till the end was near that he started standing up for himself and started to make his own decisions. 

Not all realizations are the same, especially because there are different situations to the realization. Not Sidney came to his realization when he stood in front of the crowd of people having to tell a speech he didn’t prepare. It was like it all rushed to him and when he stood staring at these people who thought he was someone he wasn’t. He knew at the moment he was telling the speech that there was something off, which was him not pursuing his purpose. 

Percival Everett had to have his reason for ending his novel with his main character saying this important line. Not Sidney had all the power in him and right in front of him at that moment to say whatever he wanted. He decided to not only tell the people the truth but to tell them something he needed to hear for himself. Doing as he did, Everett was showing the readers that even if it seemed like Not Sidney was small and powerless, that he had it in him all along it just took a little to bring it out in him. 

Relating the assumption to myself and the blog posts, when I started, I felt small like I didn’t know how to do it and wondering if I was doing it right. It took a little bit, but I found my voice and started to get the hang of the posts themselves. I feel as I was so intrigued by this quote, “…I AM NOT MYSELF TODAY” (234), because I could relate to it in a way I didn’t even know; just like Not Sidney could relate to his own words before even using them. I was moved by Not Sidney’s words even if it took me a little to realize that I am kind of like him in away. 

Gatsbarriers

In the novel The Great Gatsby, the titular character, Jay Gatsby, is obsessed with earning the affections of a wealthy woman, Daisy Buchanan, he had met five years before the beginning of the novel. He therefore adopted a luxurious lifestyle after having met and become infatuated with Daisy. Gatsby’s futile quest to be romantically involved with Daisy is also a quest to legitimize his wealth. Conversely, Not Sidney Poitier chooses to be romantically involved with Maggie Larkin without telling her that he is wealthy; however, she uses him to distance herself from her family because he does not appear wealthy and well-connected to her due to his skin color and lack of relations.

Jay Gatsby’s desire for Daisy, a wealthy woman he had met five years before the beginning of the novel, is based on her status. She grew up in money and privilege, and experienced what she refers to as her “beautiful white” girlhood (Fitzgerald 22). Daisy is therefore the perfect example of a woman from a family with  “old money.” Members of families with “old money” tend to marry one another in order to consolidate their wealth and power. Tom and Daisy Buchanan “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 191). Gatsby is white, so he is capable of dealing with bootleggers and gamblers in order to become a relatively renowned member of the Nouveau Riche. However, wealth and racial privilege are not satisfactory. He wants to become a full member of the Vieux Riche (Old Money), the people with the greatest social and political capital. However, “Old Money” must be passed through generations, and “his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people” (Fitzgerald 105). Hence, he throws elaborate parties for Daisy, a symbol of money that he believes will attract her. However, it becomes clear that Gatsby’s infatuation is one-sided. Gatsby watches the light at the end of Daisy’s dock each night (Fitzgerald 99). Daisy, however, does not even attend one of Gatsby’s parties. She only meets with Gatsby when Nick, a well-established member of her well-established family, invites her to tea at his home without mentioning Gatsby’s presence (Fitzgerald 86). Jay Gatsby is ultimately drawn in by the prospect of being a part, even an elicit part, of a family that would provide him with the status he so craved. He is rejected for the same reason that he is attracted to this dream, because he can’t feign his own status in the face of Tom Buchanan, who values antiquated ideas of “purity” that help him to maintain his “elite” status that cannot be worked into. He publicly lashes out against Gatsby, claiming that “nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white” (Fitzgerald 138-139). While Gatsby might be able to feign a position as a member of the Vieux Riche, his race and lack of established family members make his dream an impossibility.

Contrastingly, Maggie’s parents assume that he is not good enough for their daughter upon first being introduced to Not Sidney. Maggie uses the notion that Not Sidney is of improper social status in order to push herself away from her wealthy, well established family. However, Not Sidney is actually more established than Maggie is, as he possesses a large portion of his wealthy and well-known connection, Ted Turner’s fortune. Not Sidney is wealthy: wealthy enough for Maggie’s parents to want her to be with him once they find out about his wealth (Everett 145). While they had made racially charged comments about Not Sidney, calling his name “ghetto nonsense” (Everett 131), and had made passive aggressive comments toward Not Sidney about his race. In order to establish dominance over Not Sidney, Ward responds to Not Sidney’s comment that “[he] thinks hunting is stupid” with “hunting is a demonstration of man’s primacy in the order of nature” (Everett 132). In spite of not having the hunting experience he would need to claim this “primacy” for himself, Ward manages to posit the fact that he has never hunted as proof of his racial supremacy, slyly mentioning that “[he has] no desire to visit Africa,” and then asking if Not Sidney does (Everett 133). However, when Ward and Ruby find out that Not Sidney is rich, they decide to appeal to him so that he will continue to date Maggie. Ward tells Agnes that he “wants [her] to be nice to that boy upstairs” (Everett 145). Although Ward wishes to reap the benefits of Not Sidney’s wealth and social connections, his use of the demeaning and racially charged term “boy” in reference to Not Sidney indicates that he still views Not Sidney as an inferior. Although Not Sidney is wealthy and has valuable social connections, his skin color is still a societal barrier, especially when he interacts with those who don’t know of his financial status.

Jay Gatsby is rejected from the Vieux Riche once it is revealed that he does not have valuable social connections attached to his wealth, while Not Sidney is assumed to be low on the socio-economic ladder until it is proven otherwise. Both characters will never be fully accepted due to the narrow definition of “elite” used to keep very specific members of society in this “elite” role. However, Not Sidney’s race is more visible than Jay Gatsby’s lack of established family. While Gatsby can throw parties when various members of the Nouveau and Vieux Riche, Not Sidney’s race put him in increased danger of assault and discrimination outside his niche social circle.

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The World of Art

Plagiarism….Plagiarism is something that is frowned upon in writing. It’s also frowned upon in Art as well. In the past year, I have learned about copying and plagiarizing someone else’s artwork, basically stealing it and making a profit off of it. When I looked up the word Plagiarism in the Bedford, it led to me to the word Pastiche. The definition of this is as follows, “A literary, musical, or artistic work that imitates another’s recognizable style or pieces together a medley of often incongruous elements from a number of existing works. Pastiche may have humorous, satirical or serious intent or may simply serve as an exercise in technique.” (Bedford, 316) The Bedford also states not to confuse the two words, they are nothing alike. The Bedford states that, “Plagiarism is characterized by deceptive intent; pastiche involves open imitation or borrowing and often pays homage to its sources.” (Bedford, 316) I was surprised when I read this in the Bedford. It is splitting up the two words, making them and giving them 2 different meanings. Plagiarism and art are linked together, something that I never really thought of being linked together until last year in my Art class.

I’ve known about plagiarism, ever since I started writing papers for school. They shoved down our throats at school to “CITE! CITE! CITE!”, and the teacher would usually state that if we didn’t cite correctly, or took someone else’s words and passed them off as our own, we would be in big trouble, specially in college. This is the same thing in the art world as well. I remember when I first started talking about it in my art class, I found it, interesting. I know some artists, digital artists, that have had their art copied, traced, and sold off as someone else’s work. It is sad to see someone else’s work, art form and written form. Whenever someone copies, or traces someone else’s work, it’s not broadcasted all over the news, even though it should. Whenever this happens to one of my friends, one of my good friends blasts it on social media in an Art Awareness group, for those whom have bought digital art from this person, and who are planning on buying art from this person. It’s also just to keep an eye out for this person. Once this happens, the person whom is getting accused of course gets defensive. If you’re learning, great, trace away, copy away, just don’t sell it, and pawn it off as your own. Give credit to the original artist.

I am personally apart of the group, and I find the group very effective in the art world for my group of friends. They may not be famous artists, but they are famous to me. I have purchased some pieces from my friends whom are digital artists, I have also watched my friends go through battles with these people. They have filed court cases, and WON; go them. I enjoy looking at art myself, I find it peaceful to look at.

The reason I am on this topic because we had to do a Plagiarism workshop in class one day. This idea popped right into my head and the ball started to roll. I wrote a paper about Stolen Art at GCC, I sadly do not have the paper any more, I should’ve kept it, I made some solid points in that paper; I also had a lot of fun writing it. I personally feel that writing is an art in itself. It’s an amazing thing. It’s beautiful on how some people can word their sentences, like authors, I find that amazing on how some can express their ideas, fully. It’s like you are given a blank canvas, paper, and you are expressing yourself in writing, or even painting. Art comes in many, many forms; music, writing, painting, drawing, even talking is an art form. I listen to podcasts sometimes and those art forms in themselves. It’s a whole story, you have figure out what in the world you’re going to talk about.

Now, back to Pastiche… From what I gather from this definition on pastiche is that you are taking someone else’s idea, and you are modeling it, and forming it into your own. You are using someone else’s idea as a foundation only, and you are building up from there with your own ideas. You are citing your foundation of your idea, and then branching off from that, to cite yourself; you created it after all. I have never honestly heard of pastiche until it came up in class. I like this word for some reason, it’s satisfying to me. It’s satisfying because I now know it, I know what it means, I know what the basis of it is. I now know, that it’s not plagiarism, it’s not stealing someone else’s idea, and doing NOTHING to it. You’re taking someone else’s idea, and molding it into your own, making it unique. We could learn a lot from the word Pastiche.

Intertextuality in “Zulus”

In English 203, we’ve discussed several ways to analyze literature. Two methods we explored thoroughly are intertextuality and New Criticism. Both methods have positive and negative elements, but I have found intertextuality to be particularly helpful when examining Percival Everett’s collection of poems entitled “Zulus”. I would like to delve into New Criticism and intertextuality to see why I find intertextuality more applicable for these poems.

New Criticism, according to the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms and the handout from Dr. McCoy, is derived from a group of Southern intellectuals called the Fugitives who began meeting around 1920 as a poetry workshop. As a response to the political and social climate around them, the Fugitives developed the New Criticism technique for analyzing literature, especially poetry. New Criticism operates under the idea that literature is self-contained and therefore should be studied “within the text rather than on external factors.” These external factors that New Criticism avoids include the author’s perspective, historical context, and the reader’s feelings/own interpretations while reading. Although it may seem unlikely that any piece of text is not influenced by at least one of these factors, the New Criticism method advocates that the text at hand should be observed on its own, aesthetically and structurally.

Despite New Criticism losing some of its influence since the early twentieth century, the practice of close-reading is still a helpful tool for literary analysis today. To perform a close-reading of a text, one must center the analysis on observable patterns within the text’s language and structure. This means the reader should look for literary devices like rhythm, repetition, and the format of the piece.

Using close-reading as a tool, I can evaluate “Zulus”. At first glance, I notice that the poems are structured in alphabetical order with each poem beginning with a letter and the word it stands for in the poem, “A is for Achtiophel.” Because New Criticism preaches that a work of literature’s meaning cannot be divorced from its structure, noting the poems’ organization is crucial in understanding the poems’ meaning. However, it is difficult to produce a developed theory about the poems’ significance without any other context outside of the poem itself. Hence, this is the predicament with New Criticism. In my opinion, this aspect of New Criticism can be constricting in the study of literature. While I believe it is vital to assess structure and format when reading a work of literature, I think that the reader should take all aspects of the piece into account in order to achieve the best possible analysis.

Intertextuality is a tool I can use with this kind of detailed investigation. Intertextuality explained in the Bedford is “interconnectedness among texts.” In this way, intertextuality is the idea that all texts can be connected through “allusion, quotation, genre, style…” and that no text is completely without the influence of another. This method is vastly different from New Criticism as it encourages looking outside of a text at other texts and information to fully understand the text in examination.

Returning to my earlier analysis of “Zulus”, I can use intertextuality to build a more in-depth analysis. In terms of structure, I can use previous knowledge on author, Percival Everett to possibly deduce why he may have formatted the poems this way. My experiences with reading Everett’s other works have led me to believe he writes to get his readers to think. Most of what he writes consists of more meaning than what can be seen at surface value. With this in mind, I can infer that he positioned the poems this way to make a statement about human organization. Perhaps he wanted to draw attention to the arbitrary nature of the alphabet’s order. He may have intended to show that the alphabet’s order is necessary for humans to be able to communicate, even though the order itself is meaningless. While I can never know Everett’s intentions by just reading his poems, I can make a confident inference about his ideas behind the structure with intertextuality.

Intertextuality is helpful to uncover other potential ideas in “Zulus” besides structure. Each poem in “Zulus” is brimming with references to other texts. For instance, in the poem centering around the letter I, the words ichor, Indian Reorganization Act, and Isaiah are included. Not knowing these terms off-hand, I researched each word. Ichor is from Greek mythology and it refers to the fluid that flows like blood in the vies of the gods. Isaiah is the name of the Hebrew prophet who the Book of Isaiah is named after in the Bible. Finally, the Indian Reorganization Act is an important historical event that promised the return of some land lost to Native Americans. My understanding of the poem increased through the process of intertextuality.

With more intertextual research as demonstrated above with poem “I”, I have been able to generate even more ideas behind Everett’s intended meaning for the collection of poems in “Zulus”. I have found strong evidence behind the idea that Everett wrote “Zulus” to create a commentary about genocide. Beginning with the title, “Zulus”, I’ve discovered that the Zulus are a South African tribe especially known for their brutal war tactics. This is notably evident under the rule of Shaka Zulu, who expanded the rule of the Zulu tribe over large parts of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Shaka is actually mentioned in poem “S”. Shaka Zulu’s armies aimed for their enemy’s complete destruction in war, so much so that they are responsible for 1-2 million deaths during that time. This period of expansion is of many African peoples from the Zulu tribe. If Everett named his poems after this tribe, perhaps he is insinuating themes of genocide. There are other poems that exhibit a similar theme. One example is with the poem “P”. “P” begins with the word peace, suggesting Everett is against killing and genocide. “P” continues with “P is for population and the density therein affected.” Here, Everett could be talking about population losses due to genocidal acts. Other poems have words that imply a similar meaning as in poem “P” such as “orphans”, “killing”, and “slaves”. I can also find more evidence pointing to genocide in poem “R”, where Maximilien Robespierre is discussed. Robespierre is a prominent figure of the French Revolution who was known for his role as execution during the Reign of Terror. Being responsible for numerous executions, Robespierre contributed to a national genocide. Finally, I return to poem “I” to see another reference to genocide. As I mentioned earlier, “I” includes the Indian Reorganization Act. While this act itself is not considered a genocide, many believe that the colonization of early America by white settlers lead to a genocide of the Native American people. When settlers came from Europe to the Americas, they killed the Native Americans in battle and gave them diseases that decimated large numbers of their population. With this textual evidence, I interpret “Zulus” to be a message about the harsh effects of genocide, a warning against it.

While New Criticism can give the reader a way to analyze a text closely and attentively, intertextuality allows for a deeper analysis of the themes and references covered in the poems. I used intertextuality to uncover a potential theme about the horrors of genocide. Intertextuality proves to be a more rewarding method for me as I explore the content in “Zulus”.