Slaves of Blood

When we talk about Southern literature we can think about Southern history, racism, sense of social class and the meaning of land, nevertheless, one of the most powerful ideas is the one which is connected to the significance of family.

In “Barn Burning”, written by the American author William Faulkner, we can see this concept, which at the same time is related to the idea of slavery, but why? 

Well, when we read "Barn Burning", it seems that for Snopes loyalty to family is a moral imperative. Thus, for him family loyalty is valued above all else. The family seems to exist outside of society and even outside the law, and their moral code is based on family loyalty instead of traditional notions of right or wrong.

Based on this, we could say that if anyone should lie to save his/her family from danger, he/she must do it despite the fact that he/she is breaking social codes. Actually this is what we see when Sarty is called up to testify against his father, and he knows he's going to have to lie and say his father didn't burn the barn, just because  Snopes tells him that he should remain loyal to his “blood,” or family, or he will find himself alone. 

In this sense, Sarty , who is being part of a society that breaks the code of his father,  is a simple slave of a tradition and social convention that draws him to lie. However, after Snopes once again plans to burn a barn, he understands that family loyalty comes at too great a cost and is too heavy a burden. He rejects family loyalty and instead betrays his father, warning de Spain that his barn is about to be burned. Only when Snopes is “killed”, he is free.

Changes in the Southern society

One of the topics of this unit that has caught my attention the most is how difficult is for the Southeners to adapt themselves to the changes of the society after the Civil War. 

Slavery had a crucial role in shaping the antebellum South society. This society was characterized by being stratified. The landowners with the biggest plantations and most slaves and the aristocrats were considered to be at the top of the society, whereas the slaves were at the very bottom. Besides, this was a patriarchal system, in which males were the primary authority figure in the social organization. They had a strong influence regarding politics, the control of property and in the families, in which the father hold authority over women and children. Even though women were clearly subordinated by men, they were idealized. Here it comes the idea of the Southern belle. 

Nevertheless, after Civil War, this structure is broken, changes are coming and in a way Southeners try to hold on a system that no longer works and William Faulkner portraits perfectly how the people reject these changes. 

I am going to focus my attention mainly in A Rose for Emily and Dry September.

In A Rose for Emily, we can see the main character Emily, an aristocrat woman, being idolized by the people, even though she has a unusual behavior. She has feelings of superiority and the other people were raised to look at her in that way. The changes in society are represented in the story when the sidewalk outside Emily's house is being paving, which from my point of view is a sign of modernity. Along with this, she meets Homer Barron, a man with whom she starts to have a sort of relationship. By doing this, Emily is trying to free herself from her father's past control and the tradition of being a proper lady. However, in this attemp to change because the society itself is changing, Emily fails, and this can be seen when she murders Homer and keeps his dead body in a locked room. In my view, this is a clear sign that in the end Emily refuses to change.

As for Dry September, this is a story of a rumor that Will Mayes, a black man, supposedly raped a white woman, Miss Minnie Cooper. What is interesting about this tale is basically that Mayes and Minnie Cooper are judged by the society based on irrational prejudices. In the case of Mayes, he is accused of having committed a crime even though there is no evidence about it, but just because he is a black man, most of the people believe that he is guilty and therefore, he is presumably murdered by a group of men just because of feelings of racism. Here we can see that the only one who leaves this prejudice behind is Hawkshaw. As for Minnie Cooper, some people believe her story just because she is a woman, and a white woman's word has to be acted upon as a truth, being this a traditional code of honor from the antebellum South society. While others do not believe her story because she is an old unmarried woman who is unreliable due to her lack of sexual experience, and has made up this crime just for attention. 

All in all, what I like the most about William Faulkner is his way of representing the Southern society after the Civil War and how difficult was for them to face the changes and try to get used to them, but telling the story using different techniques such as some features of the Southern Gothic, exaggeration, and so on.

Southern Gothic

I have decided to write about the Southern Gothic since it completely caught my attention in classes due to the fact that it is an entirely new topic for me as I related Gothic with architecture, painting and literature, but I wasn't aware of the existance of this subgenre in literature.

First of all, Southern Gothic is a literary tradition which appeared in the early stage of the twentieth century and it is rooted in the Gothic style, meaning it is a subgenre of the gothic novel, with the particularity that it is exclusive of American literature. Albeit, as a subgenre, it shares similarities such as the use of ironic, bizarre and/or paranormal or supernatural events; it has several features that separates it from Gothic, owing to the fact that Southern Gothic uses those elements not only with the purpose of creating and setting a suspense or tensional atmosphere, but also to show and describe the socio-cultural nature of the south of America.

In addition to this, other features of Southern Gothic are the "grotesque", which has to do with going beyond the limits and distorting or altering them, meaning that something grotesque is between real and fiction  and at the same time linked with tragicomedy; the use of "deeply flawed" characters for the sake of spotting bitter aspects of the Southern culture; and, the attraction to describe the radical and antisocial behaviors which come up as a response to the social code. Some of the writers who explore in this subgenre are William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, among others. 

Moreover, as William Faulkner was one of the writers who explored this subgenre, we can find certain elements previously mentioned in his short story, A Rose for Emily, in the sense that the settings create this atmosphere of suspense with this old big mansion, the decadence of the character and that smell of putrefaction which suggests that something mysterious was happening there. Finally, we can also distinguish the damaged character, Emily, and her isolation due to the social code imposed which caused her mental instability, and afterwards the necrophilia, that led her to kill Homer and transgress the limits by sleeping with the corpse, turning into a symbolic and emblem Southern gothic heroine.

All in all, Southern Gothic was highly influential on Faulkner's writing, as we can notice in his short stories, making him one of the most representative authors of this subgenre, mixing the traditional aspects of Gothic with the socio-cultural critic to the South. 

A Rose For Emily

The story by Faulkner takes place in the fictitious Yoknapatawa, specifically in Jefferson.

Emily comes from an aristocratic and respected family. She lives under the yoke of his father. She lacks freedom and free will.

 When Emily’s father dies, she gets emotionally involved with a northerner. Which produced ambivalence among local people. They were happy that Emily was dating with someone, but at the same time they were quite angry about the fact that she was dating with a northerner that was not worthy enough for her.

 Homer was an alcoholic loud man that represented and depicted all the qualities that aristocratic people were not.

the fact that Emily was a bourgeois woman will prevent her from having normal relationships. What’s more, the fact that she started a relationship with that men in particular, will imply certain prices that she will have to pay. She becomes normal, she stops being considered as an extraordinary, exceptional and respected woman.

What amazed me about the story was the underlying meaning of it. On the one hand, we can see that on the whole, the story is not only about an obsessive 30 year-old woman who defies all the socially correct ways to behave, but it also  depicts the death of the old values of the south. The lost of all the traditional values, and the intrusion of the north into the south.

 All in all, the intrusion of the North will bring capitalization and industrialization into the south. That will expose the south to destruction. The south will try to survive and to endure the invasion of the north but all the attempts will be in vain.

By Maria Susana Cabrera R

Dry September

I decided to write about  "Dry September", one of the twelve collected stories of William Fauklner. This story caught my attention because it clearly shows the abominable breakdown of justice that prejudice can cause. What's more, the story rotates around the killing of Will Mayes, and what I caught is that the murder is omitted and I thought that it may be because Faulkner wanted us  to keep our attention focused on the causes of the violence, and on the mental and physical atmospheres that lead to situations with lot of cruelty.

Furthermore, "Dry September" mentioned many aspects of what the Teacher explained us about the "Southern culture". The "Southern culture" is referred to as the south of the USA, which is a different planet composed by aristocrats, so they do not have a democratic experience. Moreover they have an agricultural economy, and they were formed by a chain of beings which is a kind of structure of a person levels, in that sense they are different. The people from the South have a medieval conception of the universe. If you think about it, it's not so far from the reality. 

 What I found very interested is that Mayer was for me the only character who provoked my sympathy, and caught my attention, since he is described as a good person, uncapable of raping Miss Minnie Cooper. So, making a comparison of all the other characters, it's highly crippy to make a mental image of them. 

I consider myself a person who has no shame of being around, talk, or share with people from other skin color. In fact, one of my best friend is from Africa, She was adopted by a wealth family from the USA and they started living in Santiago a few years ago because her father was sent there for business. When I first knew her it was weird because she was quite shy and she was used to be bullied in the USA. When she started to tell me about her experiences in Africa and then in USA I couldn't imagine, it was horrible. Since she is my friend, I decided to stop watching movies that are based on slaves, racism or violations. Now, I prefer to spend my time with her as much as possible considering she is leaving Santiago in two more weeks. At first I felt sorry about her, but then I learnt to treat it as she deserved and not looking into her eyes with pity.

All things considered, reading these stories were a little bit hard for me by cause of the things that I already mentioned above, but that doesn't mean that I can not be objective: "Dry september" is an exceptional story and I really appreciate it. 

Promising Future

Given the fact that the Industrial Revolution represented the imposition of new ways to do everything, Modern times were characterised by uncertainty. Consequently, some artists and authors decided to focus their efforts on the future, which was perceived as a panacea.

'Abstract Speed + Sound', by Giacomo Balla.

In the early 20^th century, a new artistic movement arose from the lands of Italy. Futurism (originally known as 'Futurismo') was the reaction from painters, designers, sculptors, musicians and architects (among others) who seeked to represent and applaud what they thought the future would be like. Usually, bigger cities, speed, energy, dynamism and technology in general were frequent topics reviewed by futurist artists.

 

Notable people from this movement include: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, Antonio Sant'Elia, Bruno Munari, Benedetta Cappa and Luigi Russolo. Although most famous futurists were Italian, Futurismo was also developed in Russia and England (not to mention most European countries).

From my point of view, in a gray world, colours and lights must have been attractive to artists who could not find meaning in present times. Not only was this style pictured in abstract landscapes but also in urban cities (specially by architects), which happened to be the centre of development during these times and for the next decades.

Futuristic Architecture by Antonio Sant'Elia.

It also worth mentioning that, through abstract scenes, futurist painters would also represent the imprecision and vageness from Modernity.

'Skyscrapers and Tunnels', by Fortunato Depero.

Once again, mankind is heavily influenced by technology and its penetration. The aforementioned fact makes me wonder who is really the subordinated element in the human relationship with technology.

By Diego Sánchez Rodríguez.

Sources of information:

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-futurism.htm

http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/222921/Futurism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

Paris, je t'aime...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81mJDgt-vYw

In Paris, you may find love almost in every corner of the city, under a bridge, under the Eiffel tower, in a café. I chose this film, in order to relate it with the magical way we see a city, the mysterious that it contains. Here, you will find some aspects that you may not know, the vision of the city from different points of view from different directors. All is related with love, happiness, longing, unexpected events, etc.

Modernist writers found in a city, an amazing metaphor in order to inspire them to write, an association between realities with fiction, (Cities) they were also often novel environments, carrying within themselves the complexity and tension of modern metropolitan life, which so deeply underlies modern consciousness and modern writing. (Bradbury, Malcolm, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890 – 1930)

The modernist style of writing conceptualized the idea of the city, in this case I am referring to London, a metropolitan city which was the center of the improvement and expansion of modernism, for instance the bohemian life, and the way that technology was developed (vehicles, infrastructure),…cities were more than accidental meeting places and crossing points. They were generative environments of the new arts, focal points of intellectual community, indeed of intellectual conflict and tension. (Malcolm Bradbury, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890 – 1930)

According to Bradbury, the city is moving fast, the historical importance that it takes as a center of significant events helps us to identify the way that metropolitan life is coming, the city as a phenomenon, in which is transformed ans conceptualized in a new aspect the city not as a male character, but a female one. 

The Fox, and its reaction on readers.

“The Fox”, one of the most famous Lawrence’s novels, has provoked strong reactions from people. So much so that it has received plenty of critics due to its, sometimes called, “obscenity” and implicit sexual content.

Nevertheless, this novel has got something that definitely catches the reader’s attention. What is more, I found myself reading the whole novel in a single afternoon trying to get to know what happens to the characters. Furthermore, once commenting the novel with some classmates, we got to the conclusion that what made us being so interested in The Fox was the fact that we wanted to read whether the couple finally got to express their physical love.

Being caught by this sometimes brings about a sort of “forbidden” feeling. Therefore, it was curious to read that that feeling was the reason why The Fox was banned in some countries: it tries to make the reader see Lawrence’s vision regarding relationships as based on human touch behaviour (also called Haptic Communication).

All in all, through The Fox Lawrence makes the reader think that something is going to happen explicitly, however it never does. Besides, at the beginning the reader tends to think The Fox is a love story, but at the end it is understood that love is left apart as a second component for this novel.

The Four Ages of Man

The Four Ages of Man

He with body waged a fight,
But body won; it walks upright.

Then he struggled with the heart;
Innocence and peace depart.

Then he struggled with the mind;
His proud heart he left behind.

Now his wars on God begin;
At stroke of midnight God shall win.

W. B. Yeats

When I read this poem, it reminded me of the riddle asked by the Sphinx to travelers and passerby: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?". The poem and the riddle are both similar in that they depict the different stages men (humans) go through. Still they differ in the way they depict those stages as they are given different connotations.

In the riddle these stages appear to be something true, observable and logical. But in Yeats' poem the element of fate or inevitability is also portrayed because “At the stroke of midnight God shall win”, meaning that death cannot be avoided. This element appears also in Leda and the Swan as it was Leda's destiny and/or fate to be impregnated by Zeus, sealing also her children's fate. Said element can also be found in the certainty of the Second Coming.

I also want to point out that in the poem the man is constantly fighting and loses a bit of himself in every struggle, and at the end of the poem I got the feeling that everything he went through was pointless, that all his efforts were for nothing. It felt like his life was futile.

I also noticed that Yeats repeats “Then he struggled with” at the beginning of the second and third stanza. I don't know if it symbolizes that those two periods are of transition between the first and last age, or if it is to make a connection between heart and mind. The only thing I know for certain is that it has a hidden meaning, considering that in this poems, every choice of words is completely deliberate.

Even though I make a connection between the poem and the stages humans go through naturally, there are also some similarities to the four ages of Hinduism (ashramas) and the four ages of man depicted by Ovid.

A Deep-sworn Vow

A Deep-sworn Vow is my favorite poem from W. B. Yeats (at least from the ones I have read) and probably I like it because it shows a contrast between two states of mind, the conscious state that believes he has forgotten the loved one and the other state, the unconscious, that refuses to do so.

The unforgettable image of the person still remains somewhere deep within him, and the image is brought back “suddenly” from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind. As we know, this poem is related to the feelings of Yeats about a love affair that occurred many years ago, since other relationships have taken its place. Yeats met Maud Gonne when he was 23-year-old and he really fell in love of her because he proposed four times to Gonne, but she always rejected him. Gonne had such a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter (as we can see in this poem).

In A Deep-sworn Vow Yeats brings back to him the loved one's image in three instances. For example, “When I look death in the face” means that when he might be in great danger he unconsciously remembers the loved one. “When I clamber to the heights of sleep” (while sleeping the sub-conscious mind appears and he remembers in his dreams the loved one) and “when I grow excited with wine” in trivial moments when he is in company he still remembers the loved one.

I personally believe that in this few lines Yeats expresses this personal and intimate feelings to the reader, and he creates a deep relationship among readers and himself becoming his personal and utterly feelings of a love affair into beautiful lines that can be individualized for each reader.

animal instinct

Animal instinct

you are hungry,you eat
you are thirsty  ,you drink water
you are cold,you find for shelter
and so on...

These animal instinct that we all share
as animals,and that we all answer to
are elements very present in the novel
The Fox by D.H Lawrence.
In my personal opinion he wants to highlight
the fact that the human being escaped from the countryside
during the modern era,they  arrived to the cosmopolitan cities, and they
forgot the relationship with the animal that they have inside of them,
forgetting  the relationship between  them and and nature.
But there is something that they could not forget; their animal
instinc .

"she felt him invisibly master her spirit"

No matter how March made up the fences of the farm,the fox
came in and carry off the hens and chickens.The fox was a demon.
The fox was the animal instinct of March that wants to escape from her,
but March fights against it and she tries to repress  all those feelings.
Everytime that March was thinking and following the fox with ther thoughts,
Banford suddenly appears like a ghost and call her back.
Althogh it was too late,March was totally possessed by him
in soul and body. He knows her spirit.
The fox cames over her like a spell, always controlling
her thoughts and feelings.
Consequently,sooner or later she will give up, and
she will  be domesticated by the fox.

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.

Do I dare?

If I say: Do I dare? I suppose that most of you can imagine what I am going to talk about. If not, here it is. I am going to talk about The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The reasons why I chose this poem have to do with J. Alfred Prufrock totally caught my attention, and "do I dare?" after being a whole week in my head it became in my favorite verse.

When we analyze a poem, firstly, we go over the author's biography so as to try to understand what moment in his life inspired him to write the poem and then we can interpret it. However, in my personal opinion, this poem makes sense to us not because we know about Elliot's life but because we all have a J. Alfred Prufrock inside.
.
Just as Prufrock wonders "do I dare disturb the universe?", we all have "moments" in our lives when we wonder about the consequences of doing or not something, when we wonder if we should being part of the crowd or follow our beliefs even though they do not reflect the common thought. We always have two options regardless the situation. So, what is your decision?

Gender roles in D.H. Lawrence's The Fox

If I had to pick just one text from the ones covered in this first unit, I would totally choose The Fox by D.H. Lawrence.


This novella has caught my attention since those days in which the teacher was introducing the texts that we are supposed to read during this course. What I found interesting about this story is that it was centered in a man who arrives to a farm owned by two women that supposedly had a kind of relationship. Even though in the novella is never said in an explicit way the sort of relationship they had, the topic and its development caught my attention considering the period of time in which it was written and how strong were the gender roles in society.
If we go back to The Fox, Bandford is described as a small, thin, delicate thing, and March as more robust, and also it says that she had learned carpentry. Considering this features, we can easily say that Bandford was the female and March the male of the relationship. However, if we look into the personalities of both of them, Bandford was the principal investor of the farm and the one that was in charge of making decisions, whereas March was more introverted and had a submissive attitude. The fact that they run a farm, live together and even sleep in the same bed, was something completely normal in their own world, the farm. Nevertheless, when Henry arrives and sees all of this, it is like he does not conceive the idea of the two girls' lifestyles, and he develops a fixation towards March and all he wanted to do was marry her.
In Henry we can see a strong patriarchy role, because when he meets the girls, he feels that if he marry March, he would make her free of her reality and by making March his, she would feel like a real women, and Henry like a real man. March would stop doing man work, and would have the female role that she is supposed to have as she is a woman. So, we can say that Henry arrives to the farm in order to disrupts the reality existing there, that was completely different as the typical one existing in the modernism era.
All things gathered, I am really interested in going deeper through this novella and the different meanings behind it, since I am really into know more about how are gender roles portrayed in literature.

The Young Ladies of Avignon

The Young Ladies of Avignon (or Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) is one of the greatest expression of modernism. Picasso changed all the canons people had about painting and it is a landmark that caused huge impact in the artistic circle in the twentieth century becoming the symbol of modern art.

The painting shows a group of naked women standing straight and who are directly looking at us, it is said that they were a group of Spanish prostitutes who worked in a brothel I suppose Picasso came across. No painter had attempted to create such painting before, by that time painters used to create sober painting (such as Da Vinci´s work) and nobody would have imagined a group of prostitutes in a room printed.

Moreover, what caught my attention is what is beyond the painting, what did Picasso intent to make us feel and believed throughout this piece of art? Perhaps he wanted to make us feel like the clients of these prostitutes, which caused such a controversy at the time or perhaps trying to express the feminine power by showing this girls standing naked and in a way offering themselves to us.

All in all, I really love this painting since it changed the prototypical cannon that existed at that age; it turned the role of the viewer, therefore the centre of this relation is not focused in the painting but in the spectator. 

Marionettes, Inc. in the 21st century

When I read "The Ilustrated Man", by Ray Bradbury, there was a chapter that called my attention. Its name was "Marionettes, Inc.". To make the long story short, the chapter was about a company that produced robots that resembled the costumer and could be activated to fulfill all the tasks and actions that one would carry out during the day or, at night. The story narrates the case of a man that acquired this service and used it to cover that he always goes out at night. He even goes on a trip, leaving the robot at home pretending to be him and his wife does not even notice it. One day, when he returns from the trip, he is preparing to go out again, turns the robot on (in the explicit sense, not the dirty one) but this time, the robot does not want to be stored by dawn. During the time the husband was out, the robot grown to care for the wife, and he wants to stay awake. I'm not spoiling the end.

I would like to relate this story with the concept of "dehumanization". First, it was the mass production in the big cities that restricted the human being to an object-wise role in society, everyone is expendable and no one is really important, everyone uses the same mask to resemble each other, in order not to differentiate from others. Relations tend to be weak, insignificant. Before the advent of the industrial revolution it was not like that. However, the future came so fast that people did not even realise that they were living it already. Same has happened to us. We used to watch "The Jetsons" "skyping" thinking that it was a far future, but here we are, many more futuristic things other than Skype have been invented so far. It will not be long before the stories of Bradbury come true. When we no longer care much about establishing real relationships, when being human is almost a forgotten concept. We will be wandering the world just like J. Alfred Prufrock, with a mask on and being afraid to show the rest that we are different, that we still care about face-to-face relationships in a world that has given in to the meaninglessness, to the vast nothing of emptiness.

When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

Sorrow, despair and spite seem to be the source of modernist poetry.

I can be due to the vision of life, of the moments they were living (world Wars and dramatic and quick changes) that they were able to cover all the aspects that you can imagine now at a personal and even universal level.

It strongly calls my attention that, from the three poets we studied, the one that shows more spite in his poems and the one that most openly “speaks” about women is Yeats and, obviously, his devious relationship with Maud Gonne plays an important role and influences his writings. In the case of When You are Old we can appreciate  a sort of sequel of the Deep-sworn Vow. This time the author has a more relaxed stand towards his loved one. However, as we read the poem we can notice a bit of spite in his words when he says “but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face” after naming the ones who loved her only at her bright moments and despite that, the whole poem transmits the feeling that he is still in love and he will be in love with her when they both grow old, and although maybe she never gave him a chance, he is the one that have always truly loved her.

By Yanareth Cerda.

A Drinking Song - William Butler Yeats

I would like to share with you all one of my favorite poems of William Butler Yeats. 

This is a short love poem . We know about Yeats and Maud Gonne and how this love for her has influence his poems. This short- read is one of those.

At first, by reading the whole poem  I could actually picture myself drinking and looking at my significant other, but couldn't but feel sad.

After analyzing the poem, I realize a comparison that Yeats is making between wine and love, as both “comes in” (enters your body) although from different senses, wine "comes in" by taste and loves "comes in" by sight. The next verses tell you that this is a fact, and it will remain as such until you die "That's all we shall know for truth".

The two ending verses begins with “I”, but to whom does this “I” refers to? Does it refers to Yeats or the reader? Then we also have the “I look at you, and I sigh”.Notice the comma, as it gives a more strong intonation to “And I sigh” therefore a stronger connotation in the poem, a more strong sigh, a strong reflection of sorrow or sadness that might be due to not having the one “I” love. 

However this is just my analysis of the poem,therefore, I invite you to give your personal opinion about the poem.

While I was searching material for this topic I stumbled on this parody of the poem. I think is quite funny.

Eating Song

Lunch comes in at the mouth,

And weight goes onto the thighs,

And all we learned in our youth

Is hatred of exercise.

I lift my fork to my mouth,

While reaching for the fries.

-Jay Scott.

Cheers!