HUM LIT Blog Central

(Due at the start of class, Wednesday)

Choose four of the five questions below with which to work. For each, write a short essay (250-400 words) addressing the question. Please start each on a fresh page, beginning with the question number; print in a 12pt. font. You should do this work on your own, without any external research; but please do make reference to the novels and quote from them when appropriate. Please email me with any questions: sherwood at iup dot edu.

1. When we talk about identity, we usually end up talking up choice, will, and determinism. The theory of subjectivity holds that we are neither born as our “selves” nor do we assume an identity by simple, personal choice. Think about its claim that one’s subjectivity is comprised of a series of social roles that one takes up and works with like an actor (student, brother, mother, athlete, daughter of a salesman, Hispanic, worker, country-clubber, sorority sister, etc.). Choose one relevant scene from each novel in which you can see subject formation taking place. A character or narrator might be confronted with an appropriate role or compelled to shape his/her behavior to correspond. Describe the scene and compare/contrast the views the novels seem to take about subject formation.

2. Novels can be thought of as forms of entertainment, but authors sometimes have grander ideas about the significance or potential weight and writing. Both Silko’s Ceremony and Allende’s House of the Spirits feature characters and narrators for whom stories within the book have special significance. Discuss several examples of the role stories play in each of these, exploring such features as how stories come to be known, how they are viewed in general, and what uses the protagonists find for them.

3. Power is sometimes measured in terms of weaponry, brute force, the success with which events can be shaped to one’s will. Choose just one of the two novels, and discuss how it provides a counter-example. Can you find a view that power-as-brute-force is limited? Can you find dramatization of an alternate image of power? Be sure to describe specific incidents and characters in detail.

4. Reading a novel, we might imagine we are responding to an author’s intention; sometimes, it even comes to seem like a book is forcing us to submit to its authority, perhaps in ways we do not want to. Choose one, single example from just one of the novels for which you resist the author’s intent – i.e. where you don’t want to be seduced into seeing the world as the book does. Describe the instance, explain how the novel tries to exert a force upon you, and discuss whether or how one can continue reading but resist it.

5. One of the interesting things about reading a foreign novel is that it can open one’s eyes to a different culture. In Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits the “culture” of Chilean childhood is populated with spirits, myths and other fantastic elements. Write an essay in which you discuss how the narrator’s familiarity with the world of the imagination literally helps her face and survive terrors as an adult. What does this suggest the novel has to say about the power of the imagination?

Here’s a sample question:

While we sometimes think of novels as forms of entertainment, authors sometimes have grander ideas about the significance or potential weight and influence of literature.  Both Silko’s Ceremony and Allende’s House of the Spirits feature narrators for whom stories have significance. Write a 1 page essay in which you discuss several examples of the role stories play in each of these, exploring such features as how stories come to be known, how they are viewed in general, and what uses the protagonists find for them.

In groups, do some brainstorming by creating pairs or trios from the terms below, free-associating, then discuss possible open ended questions drawing the terms together based on the model above.  Make sure a note-taker captures your group’s ideas clearly and legibly for me.

1. literature, literariness, reading, the reader, story, author, authority, culture, way of life, subjectivity
2. Tayo, myth, sickness, drought, ceremony, witchery, we, cycle, connectedness, I
3. memory, Alba, Clara, power, authority, notebooks, civilizing, terror, mother

We’ll conclude our discussion of Allende today by considering the historical reference to Chile 1973 that brings the book to a close.

How does the novel lead up to this political moment? How does it shape our response, knowing the occasion for Alba’s flight and her need to remember a family past? Does the playfullness, magic, and absentmindedness of some characters take on a new light? What do you make of the explicit celebration of female power in the closing pages?

—- 

For Friday, I’ll ask you to post thoughts to the blog about power, culture, and the author in Allende. In class we’ll do some collective brainstorming and in-class writing for next week’s “take-home” mid-term.  The test will entail four medium-length essay questions (1 to 1-1/2 pages each) focusing on Allende and Silko. If you bring good ideas Friday, you may shape the exam (which will I’ll post over the weekend, and which will be due a week from today).

Let’s build on our conversation of Wednesday (during which we had begun to discuss “Clara” as wife) by thinking about the way characters in the novel are taught and perform their gender roles.   What are the ideals for male or woman held by various characters at key points? Are they familiar or strange? Does the novel encourage us to validate or question these roles? We might think about whether the novel sometimes reverses conventional ideas about strength and weakness.

For Wednesday, we’ll conclude our discussion of the novel’s final chapters. Then we’ll move on to a discussion of Garcia Lorca’s play “Blood Wedding” — which you can print out from the class reserve page using your student password.

As House of the Spirits moves towards its close, the conflicts between some of the characters and the events/values of the world in which they live intensify. It’s hard for Esteban to deal with change — but let’s focus for today on some of the minor characters:
Chapter seven devotes much description to the contrast of the two brothers, who respond to their upbringing and priviledge very differently. Discuss how their characters differ, and how these ironic differences lead them both to be disappointing to their father, now Senator Trueba.

Chapter nine describes the atmosphere within which Alba is raised. How would you describe this upbringing? Does she seem prepared to deal with the difficulties of life?
How do you see her personality being formed?

We’ve discussed how power plays out within the hacienda system and some of Esteban’s particular habits — as the super-masculine patron.  Let’s think about changes in chapter six, in particular:

• the symbolic magic of Esteban’s shrinking (181 et al)
• the importance  of Count Satignay’s class and name (182)
• how can a culture or worldview change (or can’t it?) (191, 192)
• what do we make of Pedro Segundo’s decision to leave (202)

If time permits we can look at a few clips from the Hollywood film.

Homework: We should be able to talk about the final chapters by next class. If there were to be a quiz, it would span chapters 11-end

Culture can be defined as a whole way of life, the practices and habits and values that characterize a group. As such it is the horizon or field upon which subjects act and sets the terms for whether they receive praise or blame. We take up our roles as subjects within a culture by internalizing the structures of praise and blame: structures which are informed by and communicated through literature.

Let’s look at several sections in chapters 4 and 5.

1. The meeting of Blanca and Pedro Tercero (104); Pedro’s education (138-141); and their coming of age (146-147)
2. Pedro’s becoming a singer (154-5);discussion with his father over the law of God (163)
3. Clara on change (168); and acceptance (170); and Pedro Segundo’s pride ( 175)

Be ready to discuss (or perhaps be quizzed) on chapters 6-9 for Monday.

Don’t forget to assemble your Blog Portfolio for monday; printed versions of all your posts (and any comments you have made). Please paste this into word rather than giving me a skinny column of text 100 pages long!

In chapter four, related tensions are explored in the encounter between Blanca and Pedro (104), Ferula’s ideas about civilization and the “country” (107, 108) , the Patron system vs. the whore’s cooperative (118), and the tension between “Darwinian” capitalism and communist “social justice” (137, 141).

Choose one of these passages and ask yourself hwo the novel is talking you through it. Whose position is being articulated (see circle of authors/ readers above) and are you ready to submit to it as a reader?

Last week, we discussed the relationship between the author and authority over a text’s meaning. Today we’ll look at Chapters 2 and 3, asking similar questions. But first we need to form a picture of the different circles of authority and the various narrators/readers we encounter:

Human “nature” / power / gender / civilization vs. barbarism
Class: How does House of the Spirits convey its complicated ideas about these inter-related themes? Let’s look at Esteban’s treatment of Pancha and his tenents (54-60). Whose views are we encountering? Do we submit to the authority of the speaker here?

Groups: Desire, sexuality, free expression and repression become issues at key points in chapters 3 and 4. One picture offered is that there’s a conflict between nature and civilization, that forces pull one towards “barbarism” and civility or even human values are maintained only by discipline (whether self-directed or inflicted by others).

Look at the following passages and discuss in your groups:

A, B: Ferula’s service in the tenements (87)

C, D: Esteban’s growing “barbarism” (55)

E, F: Equal rights and “nature” (67)

G, H: Marital relations and “posession” (96)