4.29.2008
Online Reader's Log Entry 1.
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Reader’s Log by Tim Walden
What is Chris McCandless/Alexander Supertram’s problem? I realize that he is on this journey of self-fulfillment, but I am 100% sure that he is just being straight up foolish now. Along his journey, he has found so many separate situations in which he could have easily lived a simple life with the companionship of others. Examples include with Jan, or Ron. All of these people opened up to him and made him feel welcome. It seems to me that he is avoiding relationships because he is so self-righteous on his quest to go to Alaska and only Alaska and live off of the land. I find it quite silly that he is so hell-bent on doing one specific thing with his life. He should go with the flow more. What makes this solitude so desirable for him? Is it because he hates society and considers people of America to be the ones responsible for society and therefore extensions of his hate? I just am curious as to the way that he acts with regard to connections. He keeps in contact with some people, but leaves them far too soon for my liking. I think that he should further enjoy the company and assistance of others. I for one could only hang out with myself all day for so long.
This last reading told me a lot about Chris. I always suspected that there wasn't really very much wrong with his family and that his journey wasn't a way to escape terrible memories. It wasn't that he had bad parents, but rather, "Chris just didn't like being told what to do- he had trouble with the whole idea of parents" (115).
Although is father had two families for a while, it was when Chris was young and it was resolved long before he knew about it. He wouldn't event confront his father about it. As a friend said, when he got upset "He internalized the dissapointment. He'd go off alone somewher and beat himself up" (112). The trip into the Alaskan wilderness may have been his way of running away from pain but, so far, it seems like pain he merely created and dramacized. I just don't buy that he'd been through more than most families have to go through. He just dealt with his problems in the wrong way.
These sections also eluded to more superiority and self-absorption. "He had a darker side as well (as a good side), characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption"(120). He also, in college "pulled back from his old friends and got more heavily into himself" (120). Chris seems to have been extremely sensitive to change and pain and when things went even a little wrong, he had to disappear.
While reading this book I feel as if its hard to get any “traction” on the message or its meaning. I feel like on the surface this book is such an easy read that its easy to read it merely on the surface level. In some ways this book really frustrates me because I feel like I keep asking myself, “what does he mean by writing this?” A lot of the things he puts in seem so completely random, but you have to assume they have some meaning.
Our group discussed one of the things that had been bothering me the most about the novel. We found that he always says, “So it Goes”, after he describes something bad that happens. Upon first noticing this I was a little puzzled at why he would think to do this. But after further thought it sort of makes sense. When he says, “And so it goes”, it sort of takes away from the impact of the horrible thing he’s just described. It makes it seem almost normal or something ordinary. This is a theme that has been running throughout the entire novel. This theme that war is glorified by movies and actors, and is romanticized to make us think it is something completely different then it truly is. This covers up the seriousness and the horror of war. This is sort of what he’s doing when he says and “So It Goes.” He’s making us forget about the terrible thing he just described, in someway “cushioning” the blow.
-Samantha Butters
I feel like I finally have a hold of this book. Our group decided a few days ago that it was hard to discuss this book chapter by chapter because the story itself isn’t very continuous. Many times things happen that aren’t logically congruent. Like in one quick chapter he has no job prospects and then he is suddenly asked to get in a car with a group of men and he is promised a position the likes of “Booker T. Washington”. Even with this implausible plot I have really started to get into the flow of the book. There is one aspect, however, that I haven’t been able to adjust to. Usually Invy seems like a well-controlled mellow tempered character. Randomly, however, Invy flips. For example, in the face of a very racist woman, Invy switches from his quiet timid self and yells, “ That’s enough out of you, you piece of yellow gone-to-waste” (329). Now, my surprise isn’t in his anger, I would be fully enraged if I was treated to such blatant racism, my surprise lies in the suddenness of his character change. When the main character completely changes his personality for only a paragraph every other chapter, it is hard to fully grasp the flow of the novel. The only answer I have at this point is Invy is losing his self-control. It is possible these bursts of outrage are windows into what he will be like in the future of the novel when he loses all self-restraint. We will see.
-- Jamie McLaughlin
For my journal entry, I’m going to focus on the first short story we read, “A Very Short Story,” by Earnest Hemmingway. To me, at first glance this story seems like a four-minute long YouTube video, made for pure, ironic entertainment. As a reader, I feel bad for the man, but then again he disregarded his friends and family for one girl who didn’t even truly love him back. The real question for me is what is the point? Can two lives be sifted into a couple paragraphs and an ironic ending? Its sad really, this guy seemed like a hero but then he was duped by a silly girl and contracted gonorrhea. I guess this probably teaches us to be careful with whom we have sex: we either might get a broken heart or an STD.
--Annie O'Leary
Though Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” consists of very little text, there is a lot of interesting commentary on life in general and on World War I. The name itself, I thought, was a play on words in a sense. Instead of the common “well it’s a long story,” Hemingway makes a point of calling his short story “a very short story” in order to show that life is in fact very simple when you come down to it. The story really doesn’t give us enough time to understand or evaluate the characters, but it gives a concise account of the life of an unknown American during World War I. The American man has an affair with a nurse who later leaves him for an Italian Major. I though that this showed the immaturity and fledgling nature of America as a whole during the world war, and the fact that the man the American is left for is Italian shows the nature of the European- American relationship. Overall, I though that the short nature of the story itself showed the short nature of life and the irony of life as a whole.
During our last in class discussion, my group looked at the book’s criticism of American society and war. I found this to be extremely apparent in the last chapter where these sentiments are expressed in the writings of the controversial Howard W. Campbell, Jr. The thing I found most interesting about this excerpt was his discussion of the rich and poor in our country. I found what he was saying so obvious in a way but also something that so many people tend to ignore. Our country is built upon the ideals that every person has the opportunity to make a life for them self if they work hard. Although this has helped our country achieve great success, it has also suppressed many individuals and started a cycle of poverty. This is described in the passage, “Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves” (129). While it may be true that every American has the freedoms needed to move higher in life, this cycle of blame prohibits them from doing so and makes the wealthy exceedingly powerful. Not only because money allows them to control political and social groups, but asi becasey “this inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately.” The rich feel like the poor is less of their responsibility here than in other countries because they blame the poor (and the poor blame themselves) for not doing enough to make money. The poor are thought to be poor for their own fault and not for the fault of society. It is not a community problem but rather is up to the individual.
-Steph Shelton
In chapter twelve of Invisible Man, our nameless protagonist arrives in Harlem and meets Mary, a woman who offers him a place to stay. She constantly stresses to him the importance of “being somebody” and “remembering to take the lead”. He disagrees with Mary saying “Everybody worth his salt has his hard times, and when you git to be somebody you’ll see these here very same hard times helped you a heap” (258). He has lost his identity and is struggling to define himself, framing the very ideals of the novel. He is, for the first time, stricken with the idea of his invisibility in the world, and he realizes it. Like he said at the beginning of the novel, to not know your form is to live a death. However, now that he realizes his invisibility, he can now begin to work against it, to attempt to define himself. When he goes to visit Men’s House, however, we are exposed to a side of the character that seems almost crazy and psychopathic. He states “somehow in losing my place in Bledsoe’s world I had betrayed them... I saw it as they looked at my overalls” (257). He then goes crazy, spilling water on who he thought was Bledsoe but who really was a preacher. This likens back to chapter eleven, when he asked the doctors “Do you know him.. Mr Norton!” (248). He seems to be having trouble with people’s identities blending together and becoming incomprehensible from each other. This is much like his identity used to be, he juxtaposed himself with the self that Bledsoe and the trustees wanted to see. Thankfully he now recognizes his own true identity.
So far my favorite parts of the book have come from Billy’s interaction with the aliens from Tralfamadore. In chapter five I thought it was really funny how while with these aliens Billy lives in a zoo like setting and is admired constantly by thousands of the aliens for even the most ordinary tasks. My favorite quote was, “Billy got off his lounge chair now, went into the bathroom and took a leak. The crowd went wild” (143). Although these Tralfamadores are funny they are also very important characters in the book, and at many times help us learn much about Billy. Its interesting how calm he is around such creatures, almost as if he had previously known them. The idea of free will again comes up when Billy brings up the topic of war with the aliens, a subject that he had never heard mentioned by them. The aliens tell him that they know when the universe will end and how it will be destroyed, but that they cannot prevent it. “The moment is structured that way” (149) states an alien. Billy may be stuck in a past that haunts him and that is extremely hard to deal with, but from the Tralfamordians he learns to ignore the unpleasant moments, and as the alien said, “spend eternity looking at he pleasant moment” (150). After his interactions with the aliens he is able to travel to much nicer moments in his life, such as his wedding night with Valencia Merble.
Lucy Litman
What you Pawn: Readers Log
Short stories are used most frequently to convey a message- a meaning that is described in under twenty pages. However, after reading What you Pawn, I was perplexed by the message that was being conveyed. Stereotypically, we are told that we must work hard to achieve things. In the case of this anecdote, the main character is trying to earn money to buy back a relic that once belonged to his grandmother. However, despite elements of luck when he stumbles on some money, he never does work hard to achieve money to purchase it back. Countless times he uses his money to buy alcohol, “Thinking hard we huddles in an alley beneath the Alaska Way Viaduct and finished off those bottles- one, two, and three”. Later, we see the character use money he has earned from selling papers, or money that has been given to him to help by back the relic – for food and more alcohol for people he doesn’t know. The author does alert us that the character is an alcoholic- he is not portrayed in a sympathetic way. He is described as being “ Nearly blind with alcohol” and not remembering large portions of his night. In the end however, the character does in fact attain the relic- but he never gets the money-nor does he make any valid attempt to collect the money. What is this story supposed to say? If we get drunk- we get what we want in the end? The author hints at some sort of faith in the world. When the cop gives the man 30 dollars towards buying back his grandmothers possession he states that, “ I’m giving it to you because I believe in what you believe in.” What is this belief however? A theme of hope is portrayed through the Indians waiting at the wharf- they wait for a boat to take them somewhere, yet they all somehow wish to return. They are portrayed as lost characters- not only are they lost in their direction of life, but they are consumed by their loss of something else- the land, or a family member, “ They were lonesome for the cold and snow. I was lonesome for everything”. In the end however, the main character is shown to have found a part of himself- a part of his past and a part of his culture to which he seems to be withdrawn from. After he is given his relic- he walks into the middle of an intersection and observes that, “ Pedestrians stopped. Cars stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my grandmother. I was my grandmother dancing.” There is an obvious contrast to this last scene in the story to one of the original descriptions of invisibility, “Homeless Indians…we’re common and boring, and you walk right on by us…”. For this character the relic completes him- and draws attention to him. We see him being noticed and participating in the world now, rather then being someone who was on the sidelines and ignored by society- the last image of him is in the center of the city- with everything stopped to look at him dancing.
“The Physical domain of the country had its counterpart in me. The trails I made led outward into the hills and swamps, but they led inward also” John Haines (127).
From what I’ve read it is clear that Chris is clearly looking for something. I feel like he turns to nature for one of two reasons, although I’m not sure exactly which reason motivates him. It appears that Chris, like John Haines, wants to find himself through the journeys he takes. This would make sense because Chris always is going beyond the normal standard. One example is with the problems in Africa. Instead of going through channels he’d push his friend to go there and fight, “ Come on, Eric, we can raise enough money to go to south Africa on our own, right now” (113). By always pushing himself he is always learning. The more he travels the more he understands.
The other idea that isn’t as directed by the text but would explain his obsession with the wild is that unlike Haines he can’t find himself. I feel like he is disturbed and feels insignificant and thus travels away from society where he is everything.
Jack Barnes
Near the end of the novel something very chaotic happened. Lennie accidentally engages with a woman and he ends up murdering her to which the ranch turns into frenzy. Everyone is looking for Lennie and George knows exactly what happened. Immediately George feels extremely silent and very contemplative. He seems as if he knew what he had to do, George knows he must kill Lennie, before someone else gets to him in cold blood. It left me wondering why. Why does George kill his best and only friend? I thought about it for a while until I came to a sound conclusion. If someone were to kill him, if his life should be taken away, it should be by the hand of his best friend, a man who understands his complex and lived with him through thick and thin. In a way it probably made George feel a lot better because he ended his best friends final chapter. There is a complexity though because George treats Lennie like that of a pet. This made the act extremely difficult however, I understand that George should and would want to be the one to end his life, instead of a random angry mob of people.
-George
Greg Gorence- Slaughter-House-Five
The first thing that struck me as odd about Billy Pilgrim is that he has become a bystander of his own life. Billy is so passive and inactive, he has completely let go of his own actions. Billy is content with watching his life go by as an onlooker, most likely because he has become "unstuck" in time and thus knows the end and the beginning to his own story, no matter his actions in between. In his interactions with Tralfamadorians, he knows of their concept of time and their concepts of life and death. Since the Tralfamadorian interpretation of "death" is not in fact death but life in a fourth dimension, Billy no longer cares for or is concerned about his life on earth, in his mind what happens will happen and life will go on. His daughter's endless fretting and worrying is of no concern to Billy, as her concerns with the moment and time are completely irrelevant to Tralfamadorian time. Billy still looks back on his past in a nostalgic sense when he is zooed on Tralfamador. This gives me a sense that Billy Pilgrim no longer is concerned for his past yet knows that it has shaped him as a human being unstuck in time. Billy can see how his past, the bombing of Dresden, his marriage, all affected his future. This is a gift most humans would take advantage of, yet Billy accepts what has happened and what will happen.
When Invi is about to leave Mary’s apartment, he discovers a questionable figurine. It is a “cast-iron figure of a very black, red lipped and wide-mouthed Negro, whose white eyes stared up at [him] from the floor,” (319). This description reminds me of the “black-face” characters of the early 20s; white performers that mocked black stereotypes and black performers who were paid to mimic a stereotype of their own race. A horrible enforcer of racism, I wondered as Invi did what this exaggerated and racist figure’s place had in Mary’s household. It turns out that the figurine is a bank, and he describes that it “was choking, filled to the throat with coins” (319). Since we do not yet know what Invi’s role in the brotherhood will be, I believe that this could be foreshadowing to how he may interact with the brotherhood. Ultimately, he will find himself “performing” something that is most likely an uncomfortable act, but he will remain with the brotherhood anyway because the position pays so well – causing him to “choke” on the coins just like the bank. It reminds me of when he first interacted with the brotherhood and they asked him to sing and dance – simply because of the associations they had made with his race. He has no choice to be polite because of the amount of money he is offered for the job. Again, just as he did at the university, he doesn’t speak out against the racism because he feels it is not his place.
- Lindsay Strand
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