To Build a Fire

In Jack London’s short story, “To Build a Fire”, I found that in the third paragraph of this story on page 629 was, “The trouble with this man was that he was without imagination.” This quote pretty much unpacks the text for me because of the fact that this leads me to believe his actions are done because he is foolish. He doesn’t take the time to really understand what the Yukon is like or how to even begin to listen on advice given to him about survival.

To explore this quote and connect it to personal events it reminds me of the time that my dad told me I had to get a job or I wouldn’t be able to survive. He told me that in life unexpected things happen and it’s important to have a savings account with money in it. Well this was obvious to me especially because I wanted to go to college. When my brother got this same talk he didn’t listen to a word my dad said, he had his goals all lined up and wasn’t listening to anyone’s advice. This made my dad frustrated and unknowing what to do next. My mom tried to also explain to my brother that money isn’t free and that he would have to get a job to pay for everything he wanted. The thing with my brother though was that he lived simply. He didn’t have to pay for all the things that girls have too (here's a quick video of the expenses between a man and a woman is for just their morning routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7jfCp8sKOE). He didn’t go out with his friends when they went to places that he would have to pay, other than going out to eat with them for a quick bite before going to a sporting event that he got in for FREE. I ended up getting a job when I was 14 and he got a job when he was 24 (that’s ten whole years difference!). I guess the difference between taking advice, and proving people wrong with what they tell you are completely different. Unfortunately, for this example my brother didn’t regret any of the decisions he made, he believes that it all worked out just the way he wanted it too. My point though, my brother was being foolish by not listening to our parents and believing he could prove them wrong. At one point he did prove them wrong, but one day he might take back a few of his smart comments he made.

“Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on I did not lead him to conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe.” This also adds to the quote above about how foolish he was without being educated on what he was putting himself into. Why would you go somewhere and not know more about what it’s like or have a feel of what you are about to experience. Then when he can’t light the fire later in the short story and he goes to take the dog’s life for his warmth? I don’t know about you but my dog is more than a dog—she’s like my sister that can’t talk, walks on four legs, and constantly needs to be helped to the bathroom. I find this to be very foolish because he has no idea what the wilderness has to hold, and he should’ve been more prepared.

When looking at a new way to view this, I guess the guy had to use whatever he could to try and save his own life, but he had to do so by being foolish. Maybe he didn’t have the technology we do now to be able to “search the web” and know what to expect. But as a person, I find that I pack for whatever obstacles may come my way. For example, when I go on vacation somewhere warm, I still bring a pair of pants. I may even research what the record cold is there for the duration of the time that I will be going. 

Race and the American Novel: Part Two

I hope you guys enjoy the next few blog posts that explore our novel, Beloved with the theme of motherhood.

Critical Commentary

The article that I read was, “Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Bodies Returned, Modernism Revisited,” by Cynthia Dobbs. This essay talks about Beloved and many of the ways that Morrison uses language to emphasize a characters personality and ways of using the language to let us know where the character is in time—past or present. The article summarized many different parts of the book and gave us more information to further understand it. The part that I found most interesting was the part in the article where it summarizes why Sethe uses different words and what they mean.

Dobbs states in the beginning of the article that “Toni Morrison’s Beloved presents the psychological and aesthetic difficulties, as well as the cultural and political importance, of narrating the stories and histories of slave bodies in pain. In doing so, the novel discloses and attacks one of the fundamental assumptions of slavery and, to some degree, of present-day racism…” She then continues to tell us that the novel is filled with the idea of modernism and the ways that she does a “great violence” by “breaking the back of words”. Here we are introduced to our favorite word—rememory.

“I used to think it was my rememory.” Dobbs tears this word apart giving us a better understanding of what it really means. “The prefix suggests the idea of memory as always already re-created: the memory is never a stable, singular calling up of the past, but rather a partially invented, subjectively selective narrative of the past.” With this being said, this is where Morrison brings the modernist meaning of memory being of Sethe’s wanting to, or desire to remember what has happened in the past. With using this word it was said that her memories are dangerous and a timeless space. The example given in the article from our book goes as follows:

"I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place- the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened."

When I think of how Sethe is talking to Denver this reminds me of when Sethe decided to kill Beloved. Her ‘rememory’ of that will never die. Going off of nothing ever dies, this is where the haunting of Beloved comes in at 124. This is also explained in the article by which Sethe is still in a denial mode that nothing ever changes because she is stuck in her ‘rememory’, her own memory at which nothing can be changed.

I would have to agree with Dobbs points on this because Sethe never seems to see what is really happening when she knows who Beloved really is. She wants everything to go back to the way it was, which can’t happen because she is dead. While Sethe is dreaming of this Beloved is busy trying to see herself in Sethe’s body. We got to read a couple of pages of what was happening there on pages 254 and 255. As the novel continues they “thin” and as the novel comes to an end we see that the chain they have created has to be broken and they become their “own best thing”.

I believe that the article is a great tool to have an explanation to certain pieces of the text. Dobbs does a great job of showing and telling us about what Sethe and other character’s language means as a whole and the modernist twist that Morrison put on some of the characters. I found this article to be an easy flowing article filled with a lot of great information. 

Contemporary Connections

When searching through what kind of racial issues that exist in American culture in 2017 it was clear that there was SO much. Just recently we found more out about the gender pay gap, many people right now are on Trump because of what the people believe he is discriminating against specific groups, and segregation is still happening today without it being clearly pointed out. Personally I wouldn’t call it segregation, but instead diversity. When being different than the peers you are surrounded by people tend to follow where they feel comfortable and safe, rather than mixing in with everyone.

In the first article I read by Jamal Eric Watson, he stated lots of observations and pointed out lots of the work that Dr. Kay McClenney did to collect and analyze data about students at community colleges. One of McClenny’s visits to a community college disheartened her because they talked about the gap between two different races of students at the school and address social inequality that impact the institution itself. This was just the opening of what McClenny wanted readers to know. As the article continued she talks about what is happening in the racial community and also brings up privileges that many of us are born with and the way that we take advantage of those aspects. Dr. Kay McClenny also talks about what her roll at the community colleges is and we learn more about what she has done to improve the situations between our races here in America. At her community college she went on to put an entry into the community college movement and is still continuing to advocate for different races in the community college.

The most obvious connection that you can see physically between the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved is that different races are being split or segregated. When reading the books we can see that in UTC that it was written to abolish slavery—to make the situation better for everyone else. This I see McClenny doing for the Blacks and Hispanics at community colleges to help them grow and be in the charts like all the other students who were privileged. “We need to continue to push courageously and to examine what is being done unintentionally to perpetuate disadvantaged outcomes and white privilege." When this is said I find her looking for ways to find equality for the students in the college. In Beloved we don’t really see a bunch of segregation, but we see that Sethe as a mother is trying to make sure that her children are safe and living the life that privileged people live. This is done by living at 124.

The next article I read also touches on race and the effects that it has on the presidency. The struggles that were raced were rough because of the many groups that we as American’s are put into; white males, white woman, minorities, privileged groups, oppressed groups, Native Americans, Blacks, and so on. The segregation will never end it seems like because when we go to vote even the people who are running for president count on “The minority votes to boost their numbers.” From the article it states that, “In trying to win over entrenched Republicans, Obama lost his base: women, people of colour, minorities, progressive affluents, and most importantly the young.” This is still grouping people together to make them a whole.

When reading the books we can see that for slavery we had blacks and whites and owners versus slaves. These were “simple” groups they were broken into. Unfortunately, with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved those are really the only two races or two groups that are shown. When digging into each group they are further separated—mother and children and male workers. The two books definitely focus on the mothers and the roles that each of them play. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin the mother’s overall were supposed to be strong Christian believers while the men did the hardcore labor. In Beloved we were leaned towards Sethe being a mother to Denver and later finding out of her motherly duties she did to protect her daughter Beloved. That whole portion is hard to grasp when we mix the ideas of motherhood with both the books. We learned that Susan, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, clearly wanted what was best for Emmeline, but let God lead her to where she was to go. In Beloved, Sethe didn’t let God do his duties and do what was best for Beloved; Sethe put that into her own hands to take care of. Unfortunately, in 2017, presidents can’t just let God do all the work because everything is a competition between the groups that are segregated. It was only a few years ago that Obama made history of being the first black president, and now we are back to what people consider the norms of our society. Once again, we are segregating race, gender, and class.

I believe that as 2017 comes and goes we will still struggle to see the light that men and women, no matter what race, were created as equals. In class when we talked about these two books we saw lots of racial connections, along with the position at which they were at in the books; Whether they were privileged or being taken advantage of. Slavery was a big part of our history and I would hate to see us go backwards because of the way we label each other today. After reading these two short articles it was definitely eye opening that lots of things have changed since our book, but the thing that has stayed the same is that we are still grouping each other into groups not only based on race, but gender too. 

Reader Response

While scrolling through Goodreads.com it was obvious that many people didn’t think of Beloved in the same ways—which is bound to happen because everyone has their own opinion. The ratings went between five stars and one star. This kind of fit what our class decided on because the book had a love/hate relationship as we asked each other. One of the responses on Goodreads.com was as follows:

“I hate this book. But I guess I should say why. Some might say that I was too young to read this book since I read it when I was 15 but I'm a few years older now and I still hate it with seething anger. I heard that Toni Morrison was a good writer so when we had to pick a book from this long list I decided to read it. BIG MISTAKE! 

I didn't like any of the character -at all-or the plot. I know the book is supposed to give you a view on the cruel treatment of slaves but after I finished I actually less sympathetic for them. How exactly am I supposed to feel sympathetic to people who screw cows -that is just disturbing on so many levels- and kill their own babies. Paul D even admitted that the male slaves usually rape the girls. Beloved (the character) is supposed to give the book more depth but she was just confusing and quite annoying, so is the mom by the way.

The writing of the book was good and believe me its painful for me to give any praise whatsoever to this book. There are metaphors, similes, symbols, personification, and basically everything that is an English teachers dream. But that does not mean it was a good book in the least. I like a decent metaphor as much as the next person but that is not what I think makes a good book. You know how your supposed to feel all deep and intelligent after you read classic book. Nope didn't happen.”

Since I would rate this book a 4.5 out of 5 starts I have to disagree with this person. For one, just because it really wasn’t that horrible of a book; yes, some of the things that were written were hard to understand, but that built the characters to who they are. It was hard to understand Beloved because she was a baby when she died, so naturally when she came back, she wasn’t going to be as wise as a 80 year old.

Overall the ratings on Amazon were 4.1 out of 5 stars. The majority of the ones that I read were five stars. The one that I mostly agreed with is as follows:

“I found that I needed to understand the genuine horrors of slavery before I could understand this book. You have to know why Sethe does what she does before you can grasp her actions. Toni Morrison makes that difficult to do . . . maybe she doesn't want anyone to read it who isn't prepared to give their souls to it. So be prepared not to read in your usual way. They aren't just words to be taken in at your normal pace. You'll read, and re-read, and break it down, accept it, then go back and read it again. We all should be changed by this book.”

With this book review I agree almost 100%. I did a lot of rereading to understand what was happening and asked thousands of questions to classmates. There was very few comments that I read and they either were right on and shared positive responses to the reviews or they were just the opposite with nasty comments following how the author of the comments opinions were wrong. I don’t find this right to do, but if you disagree you could clearly just state, “I disagree” and continue on with what you interpreted it as instead of telling the other person they are wrong.

Barnes and Noble’s website was interesting to read through because a majority of the reviews were just like Goodreads. I found many of the reviews to be true because the book definitely has to grow on you and you have to be able to put yourself in Sethe’s situation. On Barnes and Noble the average reviews were four stars. The one that I found that was interesting is as follows:

“A child is a gift which cannot be compared to any in the world, but when a child is murdered for the mother's survival, its spirit lingers on in the thoughts and nightmares of the family. Beloved by Toni Morrison is a haunting novel of a mother and daughter, their struggles to survive the shadows of their past, and the secrets that hold them back in irrefutable ways. The deeply troubled main characters and bone chilling plot takes place in a haunting setting which keeps the pages turning and the reader wanting more, even after the novel has ended. Morrison wrote this novel with spell bounding emotion that can hardly be compared to any work of fiction I have ever read. Morrison's brilliant masterpiece transposes the mind of the reader into the time of the Civil War, where escaped slaves are continuously disturbed by their precedent.”

This one pretty much speaks for itself, I agree with this on so many levels. I like how it comes out and says that it’s a mother and daughter’s story of what has happened because my theme is motherhood. When I read books that’s usually the one thing that I really look at because of the relationship that I have with my mother and it’s always interesting to see what other people make their character’s relationship to be. On this website they don’t have comments, just a share button with a thumb up or down. This reviewer rated the book four stars and I believe supports that very well. 

Literary Analysis

When reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved at first it was hard to see that motherhood was a prominent theme in both of them, but as I picked motherhood for UTC it was more eye opening on what mothers really do in our lives. Then, when reading Beloved my whole thought process on motherhood was turned around. It was hard to grasp at first what was really happening. Without the stereotypes of mothers that we know today, some of the pieces of this story wouldn’t hold strong beliefs towards the way mothers acted throughout both of the books.

For Uncle Tom’s Cabin within the first few chapters we learn about Harry and Eliza. How Harry is Eliza’s only living son and she would do absolutely anything for him. The fact that Eliza overheard the Shelby’s talking about selling Harry, she did what any mother would do—protect their child from danger.

“It is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate and forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Tom's cabin…But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and, in an indifferent case, she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp, as she went rapidly forward (Stowe 45).”

This is the first quote that I find really explains and gives us a good feeling of what the author wanted us to know about Eliza. She was a mother first, and then a slave in the eyes of Harriet Beecher Stowe. With the stereotypes we have with women in today’s world Eliza meets the “requirements” that we pin on the women who are mothers around us. When we discussed this in class I remember many people said that they believed Eliza did the right thing as a mother to save Harry from the bad guys. Even throughout the book their story helps people who are proslavery, see some of the negatives of slavery. After all, this book was written for the purpose of abolishing slavery.

The first thing that comes to my head from the examples with their story being passed on as their journey is happening to the north is with Senator Bird and his wife, Mrs. Bird. Mrs. Bird was also a mother in the book, as we learn through a quote, “Her husband and children were her entire world, and in these she ruled more y entreaty and persuasion than by command or argument. There was only one thing that was capable of arousing her, and that provocation came in on the side of her unusually gentle and sympathetic nature;--anything in the shape of cruelty would throw her into a passion, which was the more alarming and inexplicable in proportion to the general softness of her nature (Stowe 72).” The stereotype of motherhood we also see here with Mrs. Bird—gentle and sympathetic nature. This is just the beginning of what we know about Mrs. Bird, but also helps us understand why she brings up to Mr. Bird what he really thinks of the Fugitive Slave Law after he hears Eliza’s story and why she is running with her boy, Harry.

Some of you may ask what is the Fugitive Slave Law? Well, according to History.com,  the Fugitive Slave Laws were laws passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. This is an important piece where the Birds come in because Mr. Bird is a senator who was said to sign a part of the laws to be passed without knowing what was really going on. How would he know what was going on though? He wasn’t a slave. He later feels guilty of doing and feeling the way he does once his wife points out what is happening and hearing Eliza’s story.

In the book Beloved we get a totally different feel for motherhood. Our hearts are jabbed out with horror of what happens and we know that the stereotype of motherhood does not match what we see Sethe do throughout the book. But without Sethe being Beloved’s mother, we wouldn’t have the book we do. So, for this, I believed that motherhood was the most important theme. This is also because the book is completely about the life of Beloved, which is Sethe’s daughter, and Sethe’s story through the hardships of slavery.

As we know, Sethe had a lot of decisions she had to make as a mother. When trying to escape with her three children from slavery and got caught she thought she didn’t have much choice but to kill them to save them. Now, we know that this seems really harsh to say the least, but maybe necessary in that situation? We don’t really know individually what the right choice would’ve been at that time, although many of us have strong opinions on what is right because of the stereotypes for mothers and women today.

Even Paul D. had some very strong opinions that we saw in the book. For example we have a conversation that happens on the bottom of page 193, “Your love is too thick”. “Too thick?” she replies, “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” We all know that love cannot be “too think”, that love is love. Yes, you can love somebody a lot—with everything you’ve got, but then you have a love for your own blood child that no one could ever take from you. What we saw Sethe do was for her child, but as we look deeper into what has happened we can see that this isn’t what we expect a mother to do now a days. We only see the soft, gentle side of mother’s like Mrs. Bird versus the one’s that would do anything for their child whether it be the unthinkable or not. This just isn’t the motherhood that we are used too, and that is probably why it shocks us all so much. It was so apparent that Sethe wasn’t about to let her children live through the horror of slavery alone, and she sure wasn’t going to give up her motherhood to anyone who was out there to do so.

From these two books there are far more examples to find and discuss, but I’ll leave that to the rest of you if you decide to look at motherhood as the theme. I don’t want to give all of the good motherhood moments in these books away. 

Works Cited and other links

Dobbs, Cynthia. “Toni Morrison's Beloved: Bodies Returned, Modernism Revisited.” African American Review, vol. 32, no. 4, 1998, pp. 563–578., www.jstor.org/stable/2901237.

History.com Staff. "Fugitive Slave Acts." History.com. N.p., 2009. Web. 4 May 2017.<http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts>.

"Local Life." Reform Magazine, Dec. 2010, p. 45. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.uwc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,cpid&custid=s5805083&db=a9h&AN=56532472&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 2010. Print

Watson, Jamal Eric. "Diversity Champion." Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, vol. 34, no. 6, 20 Apr. 2017, pp. 12-15. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.uwc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,cpid&custid=s5805083&db=a9h&AN=122578062&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Links that I got my reviews from for the readers response:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6149.Beloved?from_search=true#other_reviews

https://www.amazon.com/Beloved-Toni-Morrison/dp/1400033411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493724434&sr=8-1&keywords=beloved+toni+morrison#customerReviews

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beloved-toni-morrison/1001875673?ean=9781400033416