On Monday, Professor McCoy allowed us to take a mini field trip around campus with the mission of finding as many “archives” as we could. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an “archive” as “a repository or collection especially of information.” As my group and I would soon discover, these repositories can be found in a variety of forms, from the library to a bulletin board to a tree. We even discussed how people could be regarded as archives as well; their brains act as a repository for all the memories and experiences they’ve had in their lifetime. I was keeping a record of all the examples we discovered, and I became a bit overwhelmed; I could barely keep up with the quickly lengthening list. As my group member Liz put it, “The world is your archive!”
Continue ReadingControl and Apathy
Professor McCoy commented on one of my previous posts, Mindfulness, suggesting that I consider an alternative interpretation of Percival Everett’s I am Not Sidney Poitier. While I had originally based that post on an interpretation of racism in the novel and its prevalence today, I thought more and more about how else this novel could be interpreted.
My mind drifts to the idea of control. I specifically link this term to Not Sidney’s life, his various life events are not choices made by him but are rather occurrences as a result of other people. As readers, we then do not get to see an emotionally invested protagonist, but rather a character who is unemotional and dry since his life’s direction is out of his control. Therefore, in controlling Not Sidney’s various life events, Everett portrays Not Sidney as a restrained individual.
The term control, as defined by Lexico, is “the power to influence or direct people’s behavior or the course of events.” In this case, through both his mother’s death as a child as well as through his arrest as a teenager, Not Sidney exemplifies the influence other people have on him and how this influence makes him more distant from readers.
The first instance in which control is exerted over Not Sidney is after his mother’s passing. While he was obviously very young at the time and at an age where he could not independently make his own decisions, he was controlled in the sense that he had to then live in Ted Turner’s house and pay ‘rent’ for living there. Even while living in Turner’s home, he establishes no emotional connection to him, which implies that during his upbringing, Not Sidney has a weak emotional support system. He does not learn how to express his emotions, how to feel emotions, or how to seek support to handle his emotions.
“Anyway, Turner showed up and, to the drop-jawed bewilderment of the neighborhood and city, took me away to live with him to Atlanta…. I lived at one of his houses and was left pretty much to my own unformed devices,” (Everett 8).
This example demonstrates that despite his youthful age, Not Sidney did not have a choice in his living situation. This forced living situation is then an example of how Not Sidney emotionally distances himself as a protagonist from his readers. This means that because he distances himself, he becomes more apathetic, where he shows less emotion for the different events and/or situations that occur in his life (Lexico).
For starters, his actual home is the one he is born in, which implies that he has no emotional connection to Ted Turner’s living space; he is quite simply temporarily living there.
Not Sidney specifically says, “to say that I lived with or was raised by Turner is misleading and simply or complexly untrue… I hardly ever saw Turner…” (Everett 8).
Had Not Sidney’s mother not passed away in his early youth and had he spent more time with her, he likely would have had more time to develop a more emotionally invested personality and/or self. In contrast to Turner, his mother made cookies while home, provided him company, and managed a motherly role. Turner, on the other hand, does not even call Not Sidney by his correct name and fulfills the role more of an acquaintance or an older friend rather than of a father. Due to this, Not Sidney’s emotional side stays undeveloped.
In addition to his living situation, Not Sidney’s arrest later in the novel depicts the idea of control. While he could have not been arrested and instead continued to Los Angeles on his trip, he gets arrested for his skin color and for the attitude he supposedly gives. This then became a turn of events in his life, where suddenly a cop’s authority over him dictates preceding events for him, such as being sentenced to work at a farm for a year.
“The troubling truth took the form of a flashing blue bubble atop a black-and-white county sheriff’s patrol car,” Not Sidney describes. He then questions the reason why he has been arrested. The cop then chuckles and says, “Well, fer one thang, sassin’ an officer of the law, which around her is the same as resistin’ arrest. Now, there’s speedin’ and failure to stop immediately when I turned on my light. And then there’s bein’ [African American]” (Everett 48).
At this moment, Not Sidney is both stopped and arrested both literally and figuratively. Literally, because he has handcuffs placed on him. Figuratively, because he was on his way to Los Angeles to escape the bitterness of Atlanta since he had just been sexually assaulted by his teacher and is judged in his county because of his skin color. This getaway trip for Not Sidney was his mechanism to go and connect with his inner self and reflect on the individual he is and/or would like to become. Instead, because of his arrest, he now has to be held as a prisoner and listen to patrol officers who arrest him for nonsensical reasons.
Both his mother’s death and post-living situation as well as his later arrest are two examples that demonstrate the control Not Sidney has been under and how this control has led him to be more apathetic rather than empathetic.
‘A Rich Man’s World’
Collaborated by: Leila Sassouni, Amanda Neri, Anthony Guttilla, Julia Yakowyna, and Lauren Silverman
Sidney Poitier’s 1963 film Lilies of the Field, draws on the relationship between five nuns and the main protagonist, Homer Smith, played by Sidney Poitier. While driving through an isolated town in Arizona, Smith comes across a small house, inhabited by nuns from Germany. These nuns are impoverished, yet express a deep faith in God. Specifically, they pray for God to send them someone to build them a chapel, and when Smith shows up, they claim that God sent him. They eventually convince Smith to build them a chapel. Everett’s goal in changing the names of the characters from the movie to the novel show the impact that names and money have on power dynamics.
Everett juxtaposes the mundane names of the nuns in Lilies of the Field by changing them to those of saints of the Catholic Church in his novel. The nuns in the film have typical German names such as Maria, Agnes, or Gertrude.While these names can refer to other Christian saints, the saints they refer to are patron saints, and have far less of an impact on their religion than others. This being said, each of the saints chosen by Everett was a recognized Christian author, historian, or scholar, all academics except for Irenaeus, who was known for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities (Britannica). Each of these men were academics or trusted leaders during a time when women were excluded from holding the same title, or participating in the same field.
Additionally, the nuns are not the most powerful people in the town. While Smith builds the chapel for the nuns, he realizes that he needs more materials in order to complete the building process. However, the nuns’ power is denied because they have no money in the bank in order to financially support the chapel-project process. Since Smith is building the chapel for the nuns, he essentially loses his own power, because he is constantly bossed around by Mother Maria who tries to exert more power than what she actually has. In order to also put Smith on their level, the nuns give him a new last name, Schmidt. While this may be a more convenient or more German sounding name for the women to pronounce, they basically call him a ‘worker’, undermining his power.
In Percival Everett’s novel I am Not Sidney Poitier, Not Sidney encounters five nuns as he drives through Alabama, just like in Lilies of the Field. The situation he is put in mirrors the situation of the protagonist Homer Smith from the film. In both the film and the novel, Homer Smith, and his parallel of Not Sidney, is coerced into helping these women. However, instead of building the chapel himself, like Smith did, Not Sidney urges the women to find an architect who could build the chapel, with his money.
While the nuns in the film appear to care less about their own money and power, the novel illustrates the opposite; the nuns care more about money because it gives them more power. In the novel, Not Sidney offers the money to build a church for the nuns who otherwise do not have the financial stability to support this project. He tells the nuns that he lacks the skills and knowledge to build a chapel, but that he has the money to finance the project. By telling them this, he shows that he is a man with the power to make their goal achievable, placing himself in a position of power above the nuns.
Everett changing the nuns names’ to those names of male saints is supposed to give them all the illusion of having more power in the novel; however, the nuns ultimately appear to have less power. An instance where Everett gives the nuns less power occurs when Not Sidney is sitting in a diner while in Alabama. The diner owner tells Not Sidney, “‘Those poor sisters,’ she said. ‘They come here from Montana or someplace because somebody left some land to their church’” (Everett, 182). Later, one of the customers, who hears Not Sidney discussing the idea of the nuns wanting to build a church, criticizes them as he says “‘Those crazies?’ he said. ‘Gonna build themselves a church. Out of what, is what I want to know,’” (184). By writing the nuns in as delusional and crazy, it shows the irony of giving these nuns powerful names.
The name changes are significant from the film to the novel to demonstrate the impact of an individual’s identity. Changing the nuns’ names from common names to names of powerful Saints offers a power shift. Throughout the novel, we are able to see Not Sidney finding power over people through his money. While Not Sidney has his interview with Gladys Feet, he recognizes for the first time in the novel the extent of his advantage in life, “I realized that my scads of money gave me a considerable amount of power. A seemingly simple notion, but one that I had either been too stupid to acknowledge or too stubborn to accept” (83). He realizes that money brings power, which leads him to understand his potential for obtaining more power. Even later, when Sister Ireneus tries to steal 50,000 dollars from him, he illustrates his personal advantage as he still gives them the money for the chapel.
This entire sequence juxtaposing the film Lilies of the Field and the novel I am Not Sidney Poitier sums up one of the major themes of the novel in this way, as it is a condensed portion of the book that can represent the whole. Being financially stable demonstrates the way that both the chapel project and people’s lives depend so heavily on money. By comparing nuns in the novel versus the nuns in the film, there is a clear difference in power dynamics between both of the sets of nuns. This power dynamic is caused simply because of the change of names, and also the way Everett transforms them.
In the Eye of the Beholder
Point of view is everything. Life is all about on how you view things. This is connecting to the video created by Demi Adejuyigbe.; which we worked a group discussing this. He created a series of 4 videos on September 21st. These videos were a series dedicated to the song by Earth, Wind, and Fire song, “September”. He let’s the song play for a bit, and then enters the view of the video. He dances in each of the 4 videos he has, and he has done this skit each year on September 21st for the past 4 years. There really isn’t any difference in each video. The first video you could tell it was a random type of thing, he did plan it, so you can tell he rehearsed the video a couple times before doing it. The rest of the videos are well planned out, he started including props in the second video, and in the third and fourth (most recent video), he included, which was not just himself. In the most recent video, he got more creative. He let his audience question on if he was going to do a video this year, 2019, he did. His recent video in this series installment was like the 3 other videos he’s posted over the years on September 21st. Like Schiller stated in our group each video varies in its settings, and I built off of that and stated; each video also has a different concept. Each year, it’s like he adds a video to his mini-series, he’s continuing the show. It has a different plot, but has the same meaning.
When my group started to discuss the meaning behind all this, and the meaning about discussing these videos, if you as a person have watched these videos from Demi, then you know exactly what is going to happen when you hear the music. As I stated in our group, “It’s like watching a trailer of a movie/ tv show, or reading the back (or flap) of a book, to see if you like it, and would be interested. For example, when you go to a horror movie, you go to see the movie, expecting to see horror, you’re expecting to be scared. It’s rare that a horror movie could be funny, depending on if you are used to the horror movies, unlike myself. Like, if knows song, or even knows the movie when the suspense type music starts, you’re expecting someone to be hurt, or get killed. And same with the Earth, Wind, and Fire’s song ‘September’, if someone knows the song, they will know what will happen after the music in the beginning, depending on if it’s a remix of the song.” (Shelagh Neeley, 9/29/19) Demi’s videos are like the Christmas Hallmark movies, it’s ALWAYS the same; The same plot, the same story line, the same theme. This idea is formed from a tweet, a tweet from Joel Doubleyou, “The plot of every Hallmark movie is about a career woman who is too busy for love but she has to move to a small town where a handsome loyal bachelor teaches her about the true spirt of the holiday. It starts snowing, and they kiss. There is also a dog.” (Joel Doubleyou, Nov. 19, 2018) It’s all on how you view things, it’s the point of view. The viewing is the important thing. Also, connecting to the pants meme. It’s all on how you view something. With the pants, you see a face, but in reality, they are actually pants. Despite the angle you view, they will still be pants. With the Hallmark Movies, you see a Christmas movie, with the similar plot, you will always know that it’s a Hallmark Christmas movie. When you see a special video on Demi Adejuyigbe’s twitter page, on September 21st, you know that he will be dancing to, or doing something similar, to the song by Earth, Fire, & Wind, “September”.
Plot Twist
When Dr. McCoy instructed the class to produce an aspect of the novel, I Am Not Sidney Poiter, by Percival Everett, to unpack one chilly, October afternoon, I immediately thought about my frustration with the aimless format of the satire. I Am Not Sidney Poiter evades a traditional plotline with each event happening seemingly for no reason and in no particular order.
I Am Not Sidney Poiter begins with an odd introduction for its main character, Not Sidney, where he hilariously explains his mother’s 24-month-long pregnancy in first-person narration, “I am the ill-starred fruit of a hysterical pregnancy…” (Everett, 3). Although unusual, I was able to follow this introduction. However, the novel continues with a quick plot twist where Not Sidney’s mother dies of a mysterious illness by page seven and Not Sidney moves in with Ted Turner, a TV company-owner (not to be confused with the real-life Ted Turner of the same name/occupation). Different adventures ensue from there for Not Sidney, all of which happen in a random order and in arbitrary timelines.
An example of one such adventure is when Not Sidney tries to leave Ted Turner’s place in Atlanta, and promptly gets arrested, leading to a side plot that mirrors the plot of the 1958 film, The Defiant Ones. This quirky transition caught me off-guard while reading. I understand that part of the comical element in this novel is Not Sidney experiencing the same events as the real Sidney Poiter’s roles in his movies, but I feel that the arrest came out of nowhere, distracting the reader from Not Sidney’s personal plot line.
My discomfort with Everett’s choice of structure may be because I’m not as familiar with it. We read about a more common way of formatting a novel in the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Freytag’s Pyramid is a typical structure for plays that can also be applied to novels. This pyramid was constructed by German writer Gustav Freytag in his book, Die Technik des Dramas, in 1863. The Pyramid’s format consists of an “introduction…rising action, climax, falling action, and catastrophe” (Murfin and Ray, 166). While I didn’t know what it was called, the format of Freytag’s Pyramid is easily recognizable to me. Its design can be seen in many classic Disney movies like Cinderella, where the princess is introduced, is distressed, must do something grand, then lives happily ever after with her prince. It’s satisfying, isn’t it? When you read a book or watch a movie knowing exactly what to expect? I suppose it is a bit juvenile but I still enjoy the predictability of this format.
Unfortunately, real life events hardly follow this clear-cut pyramid’s path. Perhaps Everett is perhaps trying to say something about this fact with his non-traditional format of I Am Not Sidney Poiter.
One theory I’ve developed is that Everett is trying to capture the irony of real-life events. He utilizes an irrational plotline to portray events in the novel like they are happening in real-time. If I go back to when Not Sidney is arrested, it provides further evidence for my idea. When he’s arrested, its at an inconvenient time for the plot, and isn’t that how arrests are in life? They disrupt the life of whoever’s getting arrested and throws him or her off from whatever “plot” he or she is living. Hence, this a perfect example of the contingent plot line lending itself to depicting real life events.
If Everett is, in fact, attempting to demonstrate how real life works through this novel, it allows me as the reader to relate to what Not Sidney is going through more. In my own life, there is certainly no format guide. For instance, when I graduated from high school ending that chapter of my education, it felt like a resolution where a book or movie would end. Except, here I am, continuing my life by beginning a new experience here at college! These seemingly never-ending expeditions in my own life are akin to the way Everett tells Not Sidney’s story. So, even though I am not found of it, the randomly-timed plotline does help me better understand Not Sidney’s life.
Everett’s format adds a layer of complexity to the novel that may not be there in a traditional novel using Freytag’s Pyramid. From outward appearance, the novel seems to be goofy, ironic, and entertaining. However, when given a closer look, the text has a deeper meaning. If Everett uses character names from real people and a plot line that reflects how events happen in real life, then maybe he is trying to say something about life with this bizarre tale. He could want the reader to see Not Sidney’s life compared to young black teens in America today. As Not Sidney was basically arrested just for the fact that he’s black, Everett might be hinting at America’s withstanding unfair treatment of black people. This is speculation on my part, yet, the fact that I was able to interpret the novel this way proves that there are deeper themes in this book than meets the eye.
My annoyance at Everett’s choice of format is what started my thinking towards these profound ideas located in the novel. This shows that every choice an author makes can send a reader in a certain direction. I believe that Everett’s choice was purposeful, intended for further analysis by readers like me.
The Death of the Author
Roland Barthes, both a structuralist and a poststructuralist over the course of his career, was one of the first to strip the author of a unique role accorded by Western culture and traditional literary criticism. In “The Death of the Author” (1967), Barthes characterized the author not as an original and creative master manipulator of the linguistic system but, rather, as one of its primary vehicles, an agent through which it works out new permutations and combinations. —The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms on “Postructuralism”
They [contemporary semioticians] are especially indebted to Barthes, who in works such as “La mort de l’auteur” (“The Death of the Author”) (1967) and S/Z (1970) pronounced the death of the author; emphasized the role of the reader (or, more precisely, lecture, or reading); and differentiated the lisible (readerly) text (one that provides readers with a world replete with fixed meanings) from more open, scriptible (writerly) text (one that invites readers to create meaning). —The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms on “Structuralist criticism”
At the end of my last blog post titled “Dionysos the Author and Vlepo the Reader,” I spoke briefly about the possible representation of the actual occurrence of an author’s death at the end of Percival Everett’s Frenzy. Throughout that blog post I argued that, in the text, Dionysos shares many traits with an “author” archetype—and, additionally, Vlepo shares many traits with a “reader” archetype. If this analogy stands, I argued that Dionysos’ death by Vlepo’s hand at the end of Frenzy can be viewed as the literal death of the author. And, like the reader finally finishing the novel Frenzy, Vlepo is left alone to do what he will with the knowledge he’s gained. There is no Dionysos to guide him, just like there is no author to guide the reader—what matters, in the end, is the reader’s own interpretation of what they have read, and not what the author’s original intentions might have been.
In this blog post, however, I would like to thoroughly analyze what the Death of the Author theory means by defining, discussing, and citing relevant examples—and, in so doing, I might arrive at a deeper understanding of how a reader can interact with a piece of text. Before I unpack that, however, I would like to clarify some details of the Death of the Author historically. The theory was first mentioned in Roland Barthes’ essay of the same name (in French, “La mort de l’auteur,” published in 1967). From there, it developed as a facet of structuralist criticism. Structuralism, as defined by The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, is the “theory of humankind whose proponents attempt to show systematically, even scientifically, that all elements of human culture, including literature, may be understood as a system of signs.” Because the Death of the Author emphasizes the separation of the author’s intention from their work in favor of the reader’s interpretation, it refutes the connectedness of structuralist ideas.
To define Death of the Author more simply, it is the theory that the author’s intention regarding their work before, during, and after writing holds no more weight than any other factor when a reader determines an interpretation of that work. Whether it was intentional or unintentional by the author, what a reader interprets cannot be wrong, even if it does not align with what the author’s idea originally was. Books are ultimately meant to be read, not written, so the ways readers form interpretations are as important and “real” as the author’s intention. However, the Death of the Author is a theory that continues to develop to this day—as media changes and evolves, what the Death of the Author means when it comes to intention and interpretation also changes.
How Death of the Author can be interpreted in the works of Percial Everett, however, is a different matter. In my previous blog post I spoke about Dionysos and Vlepo in Frenzy, but Everett introduces a very different element that may be important to the Death of the Author theory in his book I Am Not Sidney Poitier. In this novel, instead of presenting the blasé, humorous character of Dionysos, he introduces himself as a character—the Professor Percival Everett. While I may do an entirely separate blog post on what Everett is trying to communicate by having “himself” as a character in his novel, for now I will only lightly dissect it as it pertains to the Death of the Author theory.
Should we take what the character Percival Everett says as what the author Percival Everett says? Is not the entire book I Am Not Sidney Poitier “what” Percival Everett is saying, or what he has said, because he was the one to write those words down? This I do not dispute—the book is Percival Everett’s, but how does this relate to the Death of the Author? If the author’s intention does not matter any more than the reader’s own interpretation, does that change if the author inserts themselves into their novel as a character, who shares their name and their personality? All of these questions are highly situational, and may change depending on what book you are reading, but it is an interesting question to ask—and it is a question that Everett may or may not have intended to present by including himself as a character in I Am Not Sidney Poitier.
In the end, the Death of the Author can be defined as the theory that the author’s original intention for their work and that author’s background matter no more than the reader’s own interpretation of that work. What matters is what the reader gains from the story. Before I conclude this blog post, I suggest reading Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” essay for more information. It clearly clarifies how one can separate the text from the author, and provides the best example of the beginnings of the theory. Going forward, I do wish to pay attention to how Percival Everett includes the theory of Death of the Author in his work, but for now I am satisfied with my analysis of both Frenzy and I Am Not Sidney Poitier.
Realism, Intertextuality, and Picaresque Novels Oh My
In reading I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett, I took notice of the obvious intertextuality between the book and Sidney Poitier movies. For those who don’t know, intertextuality is defined as, “The web of interrelationships among texts of various times and contexts, including indebtedness to earlier plots, common metaphors, idioms, and other literary figures, and other influences,” by Celena Kusch’s Literary Analysis the basics. Basically, this is how texts relate to each other. Some believe that text refers solely to written works, but according to The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, “Other critics include nonwritten material, such as images or music, in the designation text, as long as that material has been isolated for analysis.” This would include the Sidney Poitier movies, such as The Defiant Ones and Lilies of the Field. The whole novel is a string of references similar to these. This leads me to my biggest pet peeve of this novel.
My biggest pet peeve about this book is that the author strung together movies and put a slight twist on them. This frustrates me for many reasons one of which is that we, as writers, get penalized for plagiarism, yet Everett does just that throughout this book. In
After the escape, Not Sidney goes back to his everyday life in Atlanta. It is like nothing ever happened, which to me seems unrealistic. How can one go from on the run to living life in a mansion only slightly embarrassed that you failed to set out on your
For those of you who don’t know, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and
As I said before, Everett tried to use intertextuality to put a realistic twist on Sidney Poitier movies. In his attempts, however, he only made them more unrealistic to me. From the way The Defiant
Mindfulness
In communications, there is a term called “self-monitoring”. Self-monitoring means that an individual pays more attention to his or her behavior in a situation. For example, if an individual is speaking to her ex-best friend, she may take more notice of how tense she feels during the interaction. However, if she is speaking to her best friend, she will be more mindful of how relaxed and content she feels while in the friend’s presence. Through this process, the individual can choose to change their behavior if they feel the need to better fit in with the social scene (Adler, Rosenfeld, & Proctor, 2018).
This term came to mind because of an exchange in Percival Everett’s novel I am Not Sidney Poitier. The conversation occurred between Violet and Not Sidney. Violet is an African American woman who has a lighter skin tone than Not Sidney. She is also the Larkin family’s housekeeper. At the time where they are conversing, Violet is in the kitchen preparing a Thanksgiving meal for the family. Not Sidney questions her about her opinion of skin color, commenting, “Most of the people in this house seem a bit crazy. You might be one of them. So, here it is. Do you have a problem with my skin color?” (Everett 154).
Not Sidney says “Violet, you and I are pretty much the same color”. To which she responds, “No, we’re not’ she snapped. ‘I’m milk chocolate and you’re dark cocoa, dark as Satan’” (Everett 155).
While a guest in their home, Not Sidney feels targeted as a considerably darker African American man and finds his darker skin tone often the topic of conversation. Even while they are both African American, Violet makes Not Sidney aware of the physical differences between their complexions.
After this conversation with Violet, Not Sidney finds himself looking at the complexion of a few of the arriving Thanksgiving guests. He begins to categorize each of the guests. Categorization “is the act of sorting and organizing things according to group, class, or, as you might expect, category”, which plays well into Not Sidney Poitier’s sudden categorization of skin colors (Vocabulary). He begins to categorize himself and the guests by the darkness or lightness of their complexion. This is an example of both categorization and self-monitoring since he is aware of his behavior in distinguishing between the guests’ skin tones.
Not Sidney says, “I nodded to each one in turn and was sickened that I had been so influenced by my experience in this household that I caught myself gauging the skin tones of the guests. Large Reverend Golightly was the color of coffee with a generous helping of cream. Slightly more cream had been added to Mrs. Golightly” (Everett 155).
Both his interaction with Violet as well as his sudden behavior are ironic since he is typically an individual who is classified on the basis of being African American.
Irony, according to Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray’s The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, is “a contradiction or incongruity between appearance or expectation and reality… A discrepancy may exist between what someone says and what he or she actually means, between what someone expects to happen and what really happens, or between what appears to be true and what actually is true” (217).
This occurrence is especially ironic for two reasons. The first, as mentioned, is that typically he is the one who is classified by his skin color. In so many of his encounters, Not Sidney is belittled or is judged by the color of his skin. For instance, earlier in the novel when he and a man named Patrice, a prisoner, are escaping a bus full of prisoners, Not Sidney and Patrice converse about why each of them got arrested in the first place.
Patrice, a Caucasian man, explains that he stole a car and drove the car into his girlfriend’s living room because she was cheating on him. Then, he asks why Not Sidney was arrested.
“Apparently it’s illegal to be black in Peckerwood County,” Not Sidney says. To which Patrice responds, “If it ain’t, it oughta be” (Everett 55).
Especially in this example, Not Sidney’s arrest exemplifies that he faces obstacles because of the color of his skin. He, as an African American man, is categorized by that under the law and is therefore punished solely because of his skin color.
Additionally, it is ironic since Not Sidney is now the one who is mindful of his categorization of African American people on the basis of the light or darkness of their complexion. When he first meets the Larkins, an African American family, he observes their light skin, which is already one observation. Then, while he is in the kitchen with Violet, he comments on her skin tone. And last, when he is meeting the guests who have come for a Thanksgiving meal, he internally describes and compares each of their complexions to each other before actually conversing with any of them.
As written in my most recent blog post, The Prevalence of Racism, racism is still an issue in society. In applying each of these terms, self-monitoring, categorization, and irony, Everett implies that often times, people of different skin colors and/or ethnicities often perceive others in that sense. Without having had engaged in a real discussion with Violet, Not Sidney could sense that there was an existing issue already because his skin tone was darker than hers, which led him to categorize himself and others. Without having met the guests, Not Sidney used a self-monitoring process to become aware of his mental process in categorizing the guests by their complexions. Without having actually done anything, Not Sidney knew he was arrested quite simply because of his color.
“Baaaa” – Conforming to the Herd and its Rules
In Percival Everett’s I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett (the character) warns Not Sidney, “‘Don’t be a sheep, Mr. Poitier'” (90). The professor cautions against joining the herd; it seems he thinks people should be their own person, not just blindly follow the crowd. In my opinion, the novel attempts to evoke a conversation about conformity and its dangers; what are the repercussions when people try to fit in with the herd–with the status quo? I would like to explore this within the novel as well as in regards to our discussions about literature and film in class.
continue readingThe Prevalence of Racism
Percival Everett’s novel entitled I am Not Sidney Poitier, contains a lack of temporality in the context of the novel. Being that this novel is strongly focused surrounding the issue of racism, I initially assumed, as seen in my third post, that the contextual time period was likely before 1954. I assumed this because of the Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954 that declared segregation as unconstitutional. However, after closer analysis, I discovered that Everett does not provide a specific year to base his novel on. As a reader, I followed closely to see that in the year of 1970, Not Sidney was two years old, but as mentioned, racism was declared unconstitutional in 1954. After discussing my observations with Claire about the confusion of years, she helped me arrive at the interpretation that perhaps Everett’s intention in including the uncertainty of years is to show the prevalence of racism. Perhaps he wants to convey that racism, even though it was declared unconstitutional in 1954, is still a prevalent issue in today’s society.
Racism, according to Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray’s The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, is defined as, “the destructive devaluation of one cultural group by another based on supposed (but in fact nonexistent or insignificant) differences” (365). This term applies to the idea of this novel in general, being that the main protagonist is African American and experiences racism.
Not Sidney, the novel’s main protagonist, grows up in Atlanta, Georgia. The only time he mentions a calendar year is at the mention of being two years old as he says, “When I was two, in 1970…” (Everett 6). Upon encountering this specified year, I felt both confused yet somewhat understanding. I felt confused since I know background information about the Brown vs Board of Education case in 1954 and its decision, but I also somewhat understood that there must be purpose in including the year 1970. Without considering possible interpretations of these mixed messages and also of his birth year, I asked myself a range of questions: had Not Sidney just started to experience racism? Was Not Sidney experiencing the lasting effects of racism? Had any higher officials, like the President of the United States, acknowledged the issue of racism previously?
Everett specifically omits the mention of years because he intends for readers to perceive racism as an ongoing issue. At a later, unspecified date, Not Sidney decides to leave Atlanta, and in the beginning stage of his travels he is pulled over. The officer, using racist language, says, “Y’all done heard me na, boy! Move na! Move yo black ass. Na, git out chere, raght na!” (Everett 47). At this point in the novel, all I know is that Not Sidney is almost at the legal age to drive; he is not yet able to though, according to the law. He uses a “fake” license (Everett 45). With the uncertainty of his age at the time he starts driving, as well as the occurrence of being racially profiled, Everett deliberately leaves me baffled in my attempt to decipher between how many years have passed since Not Sidney was a young boy.
I find it challenging to grapple with the duration of time that Not Sidney has had to experience racism. Not Sidney, since his early childhood, has been both exposed to and confronted with racism. In his early childhood, when Betty first introduced him to the concept of racial distinctions as she said, “the devil is white”, Not Sidney has both known and has had to accept that the treatment he receives is incomparable to the treatment of Caucasians (Everett 10). He begins to learn and understand that because of the unequal treatment that many African Americans face, those whom have achieved successful, stable jobs, have had to work tirelessly since members of society who have more racist attitudes have tried to keep them “down” (Everett 128).
When Not Sidney is meeting his girlfriend Maggie’s African American family during their school’s Thanksgiving break, she describes to him the politics that her mother is involved in, assuring Not Sidney that he should feel comfortable while at her home. She explains her mother’s job as she says, “My mother testifies before Congress and goes on television all the time talking about conservative issues. She’s trying to get rid of the welfare system because it keeps black people down and to stop gay rights because it endangers the family structure and keeps black people down and to abolish affirmative action because it teaches special preference and that keeps black people down. That sort of stuff” (Everett 128). Her mother’s job is relevant to today’s society since African American people are still being kept “down” (Everett 128). Today still, many African Americans are still discriminated against and are not given equal financial opportunities in comparison to Caucasians. According to a statistical wealth gap produced by American Progress, “In 2016, the median wealth for black and Hispanic families was $17,600 and $20,700, respectively, compared with white families’ median wealth of $171,000.”https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/
Additionally, while in the car with Maggie after meeting her father, Maggie tells Not Sidney about her father’s background. She says, “My father has gone through a lot to get where he is. From dirt poor Alabama to Yale… It’s very impressive. My father is one of the biggest and most successful lawyers in D.C.” (Everett 137-138). While there are some people in society who have racist attitudes regarding African Americans, Maggie’s father defeats this stereotype as he exemplifies that the color of his skin cannot prevent him from seeking out an education. Despite the continuum of racist mindsets, he emphasizes that success is possible for minority groups that are still being discriminated against.
Even though the Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954 declared segregation as unconstitutional, individuals both in the novel and in today’s society are complicit in perpetuating the unchanging, arguably racist attitudes towards African American people.