A Bastard out of Carolina pt 2

I wasn’t sure how to bring up my thoughts on the rape scene with Glen and Bone because it’s such a hot topic. And I mean this in more of a way than just a social issue but because it can be interpreted in different ways.

From readings that I have done in the past of women being raped they sometimes loose their husbands because their husbands can’t handle it. That what happened to their wife shattered the very image they had of their wives. That they no longer can look at them the same because of the violence that happened, not it is in anyway the woman’s fault but I have read cases of that happening. To me I view that as the case with Anney and Bone, which the very image of Bone as this innocent, little girl was shattered and her mother could no longer look at her the same. Though she does try her “very best” to look out for her, you can tell that after the first beating’s and continued beatings and after the rape that each time she looked at her daughter differently. That she couldn’t see this image she had of her daughter anymore and that she is no longer innocent but she is in a sense older and strong than she used to be. That she no longer can be a picture of a life without problems or hardship and now she is a picture of torture.

I view the situation with Daddy Glen and Bone, as a power struggle. That Daddy Glen wants to be the little baby to Anney, instead of the husband. That he is jealous that once upon a time Anney loved Bone more than Glen, which she should since she is her child. I view it as though in the scene where Glen rapes Bone, as though an older sibling is beating up the younger sibling because the younger one gets more attention from mommy. Like all he wants is to be pictured as the innocent child that he is stripping away from Bone. Like every time he hits her he takes away her childhood and adds it to him. That with the rape they are switching who is the adult and who is the child, even though Bone is just a young girl the rape that will follow her for the rest of her life will from that moment forward make her an adult and will make Glenn this sad excuse of a man, who is only a child. When Anney picks Glenn over Bone, I really wasn’t surprised because that’s her character, she doesn’t want bad or tarnished things in her life, that just because he did the deed he was the one it happened to so he wasn’t the one who would be marked for the rest of his life.

The ending is sad of course, and it’s not the picture perfect ending but it is an ending. I take comfort in the idea that no longer would Bone have to worry, even though she had been raped and beaten for so long, she no longer has to worry and no longer has to worry if her mother will protect her or not. She is better off without either one of them.

A bastard out of carolina

When I first started to read “Bastard out of Carolina” I was sitting on the campus green with a few friends of mine and as I started to read it I joked to my friend Christina to look at the title because the book was about her. Out of line I know but she had a good laugh from it, just wanted to mention. Back to the book, as I started to read it I didn’t think I would enjoy it, seemed like a type of setting that I would not want to read about or have any interest in. However, after the first two pages I couldn’t put it down, it was the way the author wrote the characters that showed they have a long and very interesting history and that it was only going to get more interesting.

I love the way the family is written, not in too much detail to their appearance but enough for you to picture all the characters in your head and you can develop their special characteristics in your head. But what catches my attention the most is their obsession so to speak with hair color. They refer hair color to the color in their blood, and they refer to hair color as with age. But what draws my interest most is that they are not ashamed of age or the history so much but more so acknowledge it and accept it. Of course they dye their hair but at one point they’ll stop and accept their fate.

I feel they are the most down to earth people and I almost want to be around them. The family, the history and even though they all have their own problems in some way you wish you could be apart of it. It’s like though they have to work hard for the little they have but they do it for their family, they would do anything for those they love. Now I started to love this book, however I started to have a memory of this movie I saw a while back. In it had the daughter from the movie Step Mom in it, but I figured no I didn’t see the whole thing and don’t remember any character names except for one, Glen. Now when Glen came into the picture I didn’t make the connection. I though “aww so great she found someone who loves her and her kids, he seems like a great guy.” And even though everyone kept giving Anney all these warnings about Glen, such as her mother and her brother, but again didn’t make the connection. I keep reading, can’t put it down and it gets to the scene in the car with Glen holding Bone “close” and Anney is in labor. Well at the end of the chapter I through it across the room, jumped on the computer and saw that it was the movie I had only briefly watched. Might I also add I was a bit sad to see it was.

Overall the book is pretty good I enjoy reading it but just those parts that make it so sour and awful kind of ruin it for me, but again it’s a story and not all stories consist of G rated material.

Revelation Pt2

In one of my previous blogs I had already discussed Revelation by Flannery O’Connor, however after the class discussion today I was able to take another look at the work and come up with other ideas. When reading the short story I never took into account Mrs. Turpin’s southern manners and how she judges everyone and expects what she believes is proper or respectful.

She judges everyone and makes herself feel superior to them by making herself seem better. She acknowledges that she is overweight but justifies herself by saying at least she has good skin. She discusses how she is better then one person or another person because of technicalities and basically find a way that makes her appear better then most and everyone lower then dirt. It is as though race or status has nothing to do with her justification but that that mainly she thinks she is better then everyone just because she believes she is the picture of everything that is right.

Another thing I noticed was that she expects respect even when she doesn’t give it out. When she first walked into the doctors office she expect the boy in the chair to get up and give her his seat and even made her comments here and there about the boy giving up his seat. It’s a those she lives in a different world/ a different time that men gave up there seats, its kind of like she is trying to hold onto the proper ways and cannot grasp the future or let go of her pride. Especially after the adolescent through her book at her she says “What you got to say to me” almost demanding the girl to tell her out of respect what she has wrong with her, almost like everyone needs to tell her everything out of respect for her being a lady. I liked the class discussion brought some extra insight to a story that I already loved.

Presentation

I am not good at critiquing others, but I am good at disusing what I like. I think everyone has done such a great job and you can see the hours that everyone has put into it. I want to take sometime to discuss a group that I like the most, mainly because I have watched Driving Miss Daisy with my mom and its kind of nice to have some different perspectives about it.

Dorothy and Lisa did an excellent job at analyzing and researching Driving Miss Daisy. They used the movie very well with the points they were trying to make and I liked how they focused at the end on how the two main characters represented two people who are different from one another becoming friends. I liked how the discussed them getting older and needing each other to lean on, it really shows how the two different people can become friends. Something’s I learned from their presentation was that it was based off of a true story, I never knew that and that fact makes you really take a better look at the movie. I have watched the movie before and just thought of it as a very nice story but doesn’t seem like something that could be even close to a true life story. Now I know movies and plays that are based on true events are all true from beginning to end but this movie I never guessed was based on true events. And another thing was that I didn’t even know it was a play before it was a movie, another way it makes you look over the movie in your head again. Back to it being based on true events it makes me think about it in a different way because since its based on true events it kind of makes you mover some of my preconceived ideas of the south, which I believe was one of their points in their presentation. Overall, it was a very good presentation, held my attention, I learned a few things and it made very good points, points that I never really thought about that movie in particular.

Flanner O'Connor "Revelation"

I have to be honest and say that I love Flannery O’Connor. Each reading we have had for class I read my senior year of high school and remember all of our discussions on her short stories. “Revelation” is by far my favorite, mainly because the girl throws a book and tells the woman to “go back to hell from where you came from, you old wart hog”. Every time I read it I laugh and think to myself about the many times I have wanted to do that to someone in a waiting room.

What I love most about O’Connor’s short stories is that there is always a moment of truth that the main character experiences. A character by the end of the short story realizes something like a lightening bolt hitting them in the head and they have this moment when they see everything clearly. In this case Mrs. Turpin is seeing how the races will go off to heaven together, no matter what race or class they are.

In the beginning of the story you read how Mrs. Turpin talks up her life and makes herself look better then everyone in the room, by class, wealth or appearance. She seems like a character that needs praise and it appears that she may not get any attention at all and that maybe she gets her attention from herself. I mean this that it seems that instead of someone telling her she is better then everyone, has a great life or is has a better appearance, she tells herself this and seems to persuade her into believing no one is better. She appears to think that if her mouth is flapping she won’t have to listen to anyone else’s ideas that are not like her own. Mrs. Turpin is definitely talking a lot on how she hates black people but I found it hard to believe she truly felt that way. She appears more burden by having to fake smiling and bringing them water but she seems to not really have a reason to dislike them and in fact she may just be reciting what may have been installed in her since birth. I may be wrong but I didn’t get the feeling of hate from her conversations with others.

I like how O’Connors writing style allows you to take a good interest in the character. Right away you are walked into the scene and then there is a long series of thought from the main character. Because of this you get a better idea of the character and how she will make her way through the story. When the adolescent girl comes into play and is getting rather pissed off I, I understood her because it was probably frustrating to here people being so closed minded and talking as though they are better then every being. I can just imagine that girls expression of her face when she called her a wart hog, still makes me smile thinking about it.

"A Street Car Named Desire"

My immediate reaction to the play when I finished was, “uh that was not what I was expecting.” When I was reading the play and started to focus more attention to the character Blanche, I saw some main points taking place. One point was the idea of love, like in “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, the person you love is not what is expected. In one example Stanley and Stella, their attraction for each other is mainly lust, it appears they have nothing in common other then themselves. They fight and bicker but always come back to each other because of their sexual desire for one another, that is an attraction but that does not mean love. Even Stella points out that it is something you have to do to survive and that nothing is ever what you expected. Its kind of implying the old southern ways where woman married men because either their families set it up or it was a way to survive, love is not an option. However, Blanche and her past she did believe to have found love but was lost when she found out he was a homosexual and committed suicide. I believe that Blanche was once upon a time did step out of the southern norm of relationships and marriage and surprised herself with her young marriage to a man she thought she actually loved. When it turned out not to be what love was supposed to be, I believe she suffered mentally and retreated back to those old fashioned ways, that maybe those ways were the only way to survive. Like her past and the younger boy, they mentioned earlier that her family’s discrepancies brought down their plantation and maybe she thought that maybe if you can’t be them, join them.

I truly believed that Mitch and Blanche were perfect for each other and that they could have found love between them, but her past and her southern attitude got in the way but I do not believe any of those reasons should have been the reason for Stanley to rape her. It truly upset me reading this because it really showed how this man who really is nothing and has nothing but his manhood, trying his dear best to take away Blanches last bit of self worth. I hate that they made her become insane after what happened to her, and then her own sister not believing her it just disgusts me. Her sister was supposed to understand her, and from what I remember from stories we have read in the south that if situations arose they were not outwardly shown. When Stella says that she wasn’t sure if she could believe Blanche because if she was really raped she wouldn’t have continued to live there. But if Stella really loved her sister and knew her sister why would she continue to be with a man that raped her sister? Stella should know how sexually aggressive Stanley is and he is violent, Blanche may embellish her stories but she never made up stories of violence. Blanche made up stories that made her look good, why would she make up a story that made her look bad? Stella should have known and maybe she is the one who turns a blind eye to everything, she does it with Stanley when he hits her, and she is doing it now, if she doesn’t want to believe something bad is true, she won’t.

Overall I liked the play but parts of it makes me angry, maybe that is what it is supposed to do. Unlike its character Stella maybe the play wants you to react and not believe that everything is good in the world and that everyone has their faults and that nothing is what you expect it to be.

Overall take on My Eyes Were Watching God

Our class discussion on Monday really helped me to take a better look at Their Eyes Were Watching God. I want to say first is that I thought that reading this book was a lot better then the last book we have read. It was easier to read but I also liked how in the book the main character Janie’s character is developed and you can see her personality. In the beginning her relationship with Nanny doesn’t appear odd to lifestyle of this time. Being in part forced to marry a man you don’t love out of money and security was the norm of this time. However, what was not the norm of this time is having a woman who was outspoken and said “No I don’t like this” was not ordinary. It made Janie a more interesting character to read about because she not of the common norm of her society.

In the book you see her speak her mind and let the man in her life know that she has a mind of her own. Even though she is verbally & physically put down, she finds her own way to over come it and let herself shine through. Like with her second husband who would put her down, force her to cover her hair and made her self esteem shrink, she couldn’t at the time fight back to the point that women in today’s world can. Mainly because it was a general acceptance that men would control women, however when he aged she let him know it and let him know what she felt about what kind of man he is. Her relationship with Tea cake is that of a freeing relationship and tapping into untouched feeling, letting her know she is a human being who can feel every emotion including love. I think the part where he hits her is significant because it a part where you are shocked because he doesn’t seem like that, but I am not completely taken back. I believe he wanted to feel more like a man that’s why he slapped her around but I think she had her control and was as what was said in class, she was humoring him, letting him feel like a man, since afterwards she hung all over him. I think she hung all over him because she knew on the inside what she was doing and was trying to show that she understand that this was the only way he could gain control. Maybe it wasn’t even her that he was trying to gain control, it appears that it had no control of his own life and maybe for a moment he lost his confidence and needed to be reminded he is a man and a man always has confidence if he has control.

Overall I liked the book and the characters that were in it. I like how it showed a woman with confidence defying society and being proud of herself.