Blog #15: Free as the Open Road?

I very much agreed with Leslie Marmon Silko’s view of the freedom of traveling in the US. I think that, as she said, the “wide open highway told us we were U.S. citizens; we were free....” As I don’t have my car with me here at school, I have really come to appreciate the freedom that the open road gives you. The ability to travel where you want, when you want is something that many of us take for granted, and remains one of our indelible rights as citizens of the US.

The thing that I did not agree with in this essay was Silko’s statement saying “It is the U.S. government that has continually attempted to sever contact between the tribal people north of the border and those to the south.” In my opinion, the US is not trying to maliciously separate people, they are simply enforcing laws that keep our country a lawful, organized and prosperous nation. Though one can definitely sympathize with illegals, who want to come to this country for a better life, the fact remains that they are in fact, breaking the law. There are completely viable and correct ways to enter the US as a legal citizen, and though it can be a difficult process, I don’t think condoning illegal immigration is an ok way around this. Though it may have been fine for people to migrate throughout the north and south of the western Americas in days long past, we are living in a contemporary society that must have regulations and laws in order to function smoothly. I also disagreed with Silko’s view that the term “immigration” has become synonymous with people of color. Though this is a common stereotype, I think that the majority of people realize that immigrants come from all over the world, and include people of almost every race. The term “immigrant” simply means someone who has come to America from a different country. I think that the only stigma associated with immigrants is the issue of illegal immigration. I do think that the tactics used by the officers in your article is out of line, and their blatant racial profiling is awful. If immigration laws are to be enforced, they must be done so with the utmost respect and honor for people’s inherent rights and dignity in mind. 

Blog #14: The Things I Would Carry

Questions like the prompt for this blog post always kind of stump me. This is mostly because I can never decide what I would choose if I were in a position like this. I always end up with a huge list and several more things in my mind that I want to have with me, but considering the limited amount of space the soldiers had for their personal belongings, I narrowed it down to a few things.

Besides all the necessary items for combat such as food, clothing, water, and weapons, I think the most important thing for me to have would be pictures of my friends and family. For me, it would be very important to have some kind of tangible memory to look at when times were rough, and pictures would help me escape to happier times. I would also bring a journal in which to chronicle my experiences and record my thoughts and feelings, which would serve as an outlet for emotions throughout the war. I also love to read, so I would definitely try to have some kind of book on me, preferably a nice long one to help me pass the time. A book or story always transports me to another place, and with that I could inhabit the universe of the story and escape the real world of the war, if only for a few minutes each day.

On a more intangible note, I think that I would be weighed down with thoughts about my loved ones back home, sort of like Jimmy Cross is consumed with thoughts about Martha. War is unpredictable, violent, and terrifying, and for me the fear of death would only be enhanced by the thought of not seeing my friends or family again. This would probably be the biggest weight I would carry, and as O’Brien says, “intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” I think that a lot of times it is the intangible things we carry with us, the emotional baggage that we live with every day that weighs us down more than anything, and as a soldier in Vietnam, I feel that I would certainly be stuggling under all those things I’d be carrying, both literal and emotional. 

Blog Post #13: Zitkala-Sa: Fighting for the American Dream

In the narrative The School Days of an Indian Girl, American Indian Zitkala-Sa chronicles her quest to achieve the American Dream as she obtains her education. To me, this narrative is a great example of someone determined to succeed in their own personal American dream, and also has the added and familiar element of oppression and discrimination on the road to success, which Zitkala-Sa fights her entire life. Throughout her schooling, Zitkala-Sa faces the obstacle of assimilating into a culture foreign to hers while trying to maintain her identity as a Native American. She seems to have everything against her: she barely understands English, she is separated from her family, and key parts of her identity are stolen, such as her long hair and traditional dress. This illustrated a familiar element of stories of the American Dream in that those in search of it often had to work their way up from the bottom of society, and were often also forced to assimilate into western culture. Zitkala-sa eventually finds her voice when she participates in an oratorical contest. Though she faces discrimination, the worst of which comes in the form of a flag emblazoned with “squaw,” she wins both of the contests she participates in. Against odds, Zitkala-Sa is on her way to achieving the American Dream, but is held back by the discrimination she faces. She acknowledges this, saying that “the little taste of victory did not satisfy the hunger in my heart.” No matter how hard she tries, at least in her time, Zitkala-Sa could not fully achieve the American Dream due to the prejudices that ran very deep in most people of her time. If achieving the American dream means having liberty and justice for all,

Zitkala-Sa is kept from fully achieving it because of the unjust prejudices held against her despite the fact that she obviously had the skill and talent to succeed.

Blog #11: Response to Mimi Heald

I also noticed many of the same parallels that you pointed out in “As the Lord Lives, He is one of Our Mother’s Children” and “If We Must Die.” As you said, both of these readings involve the concept of a “noble death.” The idea that African Americans had so little right and respect in society that they sometimes couldn’t even hope for a peaceful and dignified death is a very disturbing thought. I too made the connection between the “mad hungry dogs” in “If We Must Die” and the raucous and vicious crowd present at Jones’s lynching. I think that the imagery and descriptions in both readings show the dehumanization of African Americans on a new level. One thing I noticed was that the behavior of the whites served to dehumanize them as well. Through their vicious actions and lack of ethics and morals concerning human dignity and life, they lose their humanity and are therefore reduced to animalistic, mindless and savage dogs, which is made clear through the vivid imagery used in “If We Must Die.”

Blog Post #10: Knowledge is Power

After reading Harper’s “Learning to Read” and Chestnutt’s “The Wife of His Youth,” my “aha!” moment came when I realized that the key source of power for characters in both of the readings was the knowledge. In class, we have talked about how slaves were further suppressed often by being forbidden to learn to read or write. After reading the poem and the short story, I immediately thought back to Frederick Douglas’s Narrative, in which he described learning to read as a very liberating experience. The knowledge he acquired opened the door for him to learn more about abolition, and led to his quest and eventual attainment of freedom.

            In “The Wife of His Youth,” Sam Taylor used knowledge to climb his way from the bottom of society as a lowly mulatto slave to being the head of a prestigious society, the Blue Veins. This transformation by knowledge was so significant that it effectively made him a new person, and he even takes a new name, becoming the elite, refined gentleman Mr. Ryder. When the wife of his youth, Liza Jane comes back into his life, he is so changed that she doesn’t even recognize him. In a way, Liza stands as a foil to Mr. Ryder; he shows the picture of a man transformed by knowledge, while she remains a picture of what he would have been without it. Mr. Ryder uses knowledge to become better than himself, transforming his image and entire character drastically.

            “Learning to Read” also reflects this idea that knowledge transforms a person. One specific point made about gaining literacy is the feeling of independence that comes with the skill. The slaves view literacy as a gift, and though the Southerners scoff at their thirst for knowledge, the slaves see what their masters do not: with knowledge comes power to learn and change oneself, to become independent and self sufficient, just as we see in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and in “The Wife of His Youth.”

Journal #8: Response to Catherine Roe

I really enjoyed reading Catherine’s post comparing and contrasting Jefferson Davis and Henry Garnet. It is so interesting to see the two juxtaposed side by side, considering they both have such entirely different backgrounds, arguments and views. What really struck me about Catherine’s blog was the idea that the two vastly different men used the same idea of their rights being violated as justification for their individual causes. As Catherine said, Davis’s reasons for the South’s secession from the Union cite a violation of what he believes to be American’s right to own slaves, while Garnet argues that slavery violates the rights of those enslaved as humans. It is very interesting to see how they each interpret the idea of American rights to fit their own agendas in accordance with what each man thinks are the correct views.

Imagery in Frances E. W. Harper's "The Slave Mother"

After reading Frances E. W. Harpers poem, “The Slave Mother,” I noticed that one of the main techniques she used in her work was very vivid imagery.  In telling the story of a child of a slave being taken from his mother, Harper employs words and phrases that evoke the intense pain and suffering of the slave mother. The continuing images of pain, suffering and terrible sadness come across very clearly in the poem. In the first stanza, we hear the screams of the mother, which “rose wildly in the air,” conveying the uncontrollable grief shown in the poem. Harper describes the mother in detail as having “hands so sadly clasped/The bowed and feeble head/The shuddering of that fragile form/That grief and dread?” By using these many descriptive adjectives, Harper paints a terribly sad portrait of a woman almost destroyed and crippled by the grief of losing her child. This image is used to generate sympathy for the mother from the readers who are shown how deep and tragic the woman’s sadness is. Harper is appealing to the readers’ emotions of pity, and possibly hoping to have readers who might be mothers themselves identify with the plight of a mother being separated from her child.