Surprise!... Not So Happy After All.

Charles Chesnutt in both the stories that we read for Tuesday: “The Wife of His Youth” and “The Passing of Grandison”, but leave the reader hanging, with surprises I didn’t expect. The first I think was particularly surprising because it built on the mystery of this man, who seemed a life long bachelor until he met Mrs. Dixon. The life that Mr. Ryder as created for himself is beyond what he left when he ran away from slavery. His goals in life as to further profess in lightening this tree line. He also seems to be an inspiration for the Blue Veins, with his intelligence and learned diction.

            Of course the right thing for him to do was to acknowledge the wife that has been seeking him for 20 years, and the room of course speaks as one’s conscious might, even young Mrs. Dixon who is suppose to be his future wife would not let him, or the person in the story walk away from his past, in the form of a long lost love. But with this dynamite change it seems like acknowledging their slave marriage would not bring him happiness. I say this not because she is darker than he, thus making their tree darker instead of lighter, but he has evolved over the past 20 years, and the wife has remain the woman that he married… So yes, pity should be taken, he should not shun the woman who has been searching for him for 20 years, but how can he practically take her in, and be married to a woman who he has long forgotten?

            In “The Passing of Grandison”, the shock of course is when Grandison returns only to free all of his friends and family from slavery, after he himself has become the token slave for the South: life is better for slaves with masters right? Even Grandison didn’t really think so. So what I wonder is when did he make his plot to freedom, did he already know when he left he should be planning to free everyone? Did he start planning with the first abolitionist?  There is however, no doubt that he had help since he and his family made their way to freedom through the Underground Railroad. 

Dialects They Be

Was it just me or did this dialect seem harder than dialects we have read before? Perhaps it’s because these works were longer than ones we’ve read before with thick African American dialect, perhaps I’m crazy, or perhaps it’s because the thick dialects we read before I think were all written by Mark Twain; as phenomenal as he is with all the dialects maybe having been written by someone who was part African American. Though most assuredly he didn’t speak that way, it seem like based on what we learned about him that he spent a lot of time around African Americans. As I said, this time it seemed more difficult to read and require a fair amount of focus to not get lost in all the apostrophes and different vowels, but I made it through and it was most assuredly easier to read than Middle-English.

Reading this much heavy dialect made me interested in a quick trial of my own accord to see if my version could even come near the perfection of those who actually lived among those with this dialect. Here goes nothing but a few lines (try not to laugh):

Ma sista saw ma ma’ tod’y, but mi ma’ neva’ cal’d mi, so th’n I sad, but lata she cal me to’, so then I ain’t got nothin’ to ‘plain ‘bout, since she wuz thinkin’ o’ me.

OMG that was so hard, the hardest part was trying to find ways to miss spell words that you can still sound out! I’m so impressed—seriously even if you’re around the dialect, Twain how did you know how to spell everything?! 

In case you were wondering here is a breakdown of the current dialects of the States

And another less specific

Power and Mystery

The four stories that we’ve just read by Freeman all seem to revolve around the power and will of the main female character. Every woman has her unique qualities, but they all have power in ways that are unexpected to the audience.

Not strong like her...

But like her!

The Long Arm and The Revolt of the ‘Mother’ were perhaps my favorite of the four, though I think it is easy to point out that in both of these stories it ends shockingly, and very satisfyingly. What made The Long Arm most interesting to me was the following of the mystery. All my life I have LOVED mystery movies and shows, when I was young I’d wake up early on Saturday mornings just to watch Murder She Wrote. In the course of my Murder She Wrote phase I eventually picked up on accurate picks for who actually was the murderer, and do you know who it always is on those shows?? The one seemingly least likely! Occasionally I’d give in to the obvious suspect, but ALWAYS regret it, because in these stories it’s never the character who is obvious to the audience!

Seriously, guys, I freaking love Angela Lansbury!
 This is one of her 'ah ha' moments!

It seems remarkable to me that while I enjoy mystery in movie and show form, I have not taken much to the books, however, once of the few books I loved as a child was a mystery book. Anyway, I had apparently just forgotten this genre until I read The Long Arm, and do you know what?! I forgot my well learned technique of picking who I think the murderer was, because I didn’t guess right!! Honestly I wasn’t sure who it was, but I definitely didn’t think it was the neighbor! The plot is always like an onion we don’t get to peal until the end though. The only indicator that things were fishy was the neighbor asking if the dad had talked to anyway, while she knew that she had, and Maria’s intense reaction—WHICH was inexplicable since we couldn’t see the other layers of the onion!

Clearly I enjoyed it.

Those Crazies

You guys, prior to reading Emily Dickensen’s poems, I knew nothing about her. Perhaps it was a flaw in my education, or my individual studies, but for realz, nothing, nada, everything we talked about in class surprised me.

Which brings me to, THOSE CRAZIES. Do you have to be crazy to write good poetry?

I can’t even imagine living Emily’s life, but also I view her life from a completely different context. Of course living in a time when women’s only job was to be home maker and not a intellect could make it easy for a writer like Emily to be a recluse.

More importantly if she wasn’t a crazy would her poetry be as genius as it is?? I say no. My evidence to support his claim is… name a poet who isn’t crazy!

This is how I imagine crazy writers.

Part of being a crazy poet I think just lends to the theme of death in said poetry, which there is plenty of in her poetry. What interests me most is her first and last poems in out collection, 39/49 and 1773/1772… incidentally the first and the last seem to me to be saying the same thing… having come close to death twice but never made it. In her last it makes sense that she is further speaking to her third experience with death: “if Immortality unveil/ A third event to me” (91).  Her focus on the next encounter with death is much different than her first account of the first two, when she feels robbed having been twice so close, but never reaching heaven: “Angels- twice descending/ Reimbursed my store-/ Burglar! Banker – Father!/ I am poor once more!” (78).

These quotes bring me to my final thought, GOD I WISH I COULD THROW MY DASHES AROUND LIKE HER. Dashes are so brilliant but aren’t used enough! I was so thrilled to find a writer who likes them, seemingly, as much as I do! 

He looks so happy being a dash! ... That's because they're awesome.

Not So Big

I was thoroughly amused by all of Twain's stories, I think my favorite story so far of his has been: Letters From The Earth. This story was my favorite I think because the perspective that he took was very surprising. It feels like during this time there wouldn’t be many writers who describe Earth as being a speck in the universe, instead of the center of their lives. It’s a rare thought to imagine ourselves as seemingly minute, and nothing to the outside, but in this story it is exactly how Satan describes Earth’s existence.

Earth looks so big and beautiful...

I had never thought about the general perception of heaven, though it is quite evident even in the media and the movies that it is imagined to be light, fluffy and full of music. Satan makes it clear the hilarity of this classical image of heaven.

Perfect heaven, cause everyone is making music.

Heaven is just one of the several pieces of his Earth “break-down” that is hilarious. Satan really finds everything ridiculous about the human race. Which makes this seemingly satirical story all the better. Every part of our religious culture taken from a seemingly outside perspective and thrown the microscope makes me think of every other part of our society that could be broken down and made hilarious. If only there were a series of stories, where the main plot line was: “people are weird”—I would read it!

Twain’s story I felt just exemplified that we’re not so big after all.

Of course Twain as it seems is a professional at making jokes at the expense of everything that not in line with himself and his beliefs. Beginning with his “Whittier Birthday Speech”, and then later the hilarious “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences”.

Hey look! There we are!

Jokes at the expensive of everyone else are pretty entertaining—though apparently not to all those present at Whitter’s birthday dinner, ooops Twain. ;)