Obsessed

            In Fun Home Alison Bechdel’s description of the house and garden represents the father’s obsession with outward appearances. 

            The father can control exactly the way the house looks.  It is a way of keeping up with appearances.  The father wants the house to appear to be something it is not, which is an ultimate representation of him.  “He was an alchemist of appearance, a savant of surface, a Daedalus of décor (6).  On the outside the father appeared to be a normal functioning member of society.  He was a husband, father, and an English teacher on the outside.  On the contrast the inside was hiding this desire for men and teenage boys.  The father did not want his inside self to be seen so he tried so hard to keep up appearances.

            The obsession with appearances did not just end with the house, but the garden also.  The garden is an extension of the house.  The garden is something else that his father can control.  Even though he has the kids to help him with the garden and the housework, he uses the time not to further build his relationship, but to use the kids as slaves.  “I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture” (14).  Even at a young age Alison recognizes the disconnection that her father has.  When Alison asked her father, “What’s the point of making something that’s so hard to dust?” (15).  His response to her was “It’s Beautiful” (15).  She ends up developing, ” a contempt for useless ornament” (16), which develops into a greater contempt for her father.  

         

Dogwood Tree

            The father would even go “dogwood-napping” in the woods to replant in his own garden.  At one point the son even asks the father, “Isn’t this illegal?”(93). The father does not directly answer that question, but he continues on with the napping.  He is obsessed with getting this particular tree into his garden.  Bechdel describes the lilac as, “A tragic botanical specimen, invariably beginning to fade even before reaching its peak” (92).  This sentence is making a direct reference to the father.  The father is the tragic specimen that fades before reaching his peak, because of this obsession that the father has with outward appearances instead of focusing on the inward, the inward being his sexual desires.  The reference of “fading before reaching its peak” is a reference to the father’s untimely death.  The father “fades away” by putting so much time and effort in his house and garden instead of into his family, and then he dies.  He never really gets to make everything right with his family, which is also a tragedy. 

            Even with the father’s obsession with outward appearances that leads to a disconnect with his family Bechdel says they “were a family, and we really did live in those period rooms” (17).  With all the drama going on they really were a family.  They may have had more difficulties but a family none the less on the inside of those rooms.             

Steal.Kill.Destroy.

Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?  and  No Face by Junot Diaz are both cautionary stories about the dangers of evil in society, that tries to keep one from finding their identiy.

In Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? the evil is represented by Arnold Friend.  The reader’s first impression of Arnold from the start in this story is a negative one.

He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin.  Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn’t help glancing back and there he was, still watching her.  He wagged a finger and laughed and said, “Gonna get you, baby,“ and Connie turns away again without Eddie noticing anything. (9)

On one hand there is foreshadowing there for further on in the story, but on the other hand, that is also creepy.   Out of all the pick up lines or things he could have said to Connie, he wanted his first statement to her to be “Gonna get you baby.”  This shows his true intent, that he wants to get her, not that he wants to know her.  Evil always tries to get you.

            Arnold’s description later on in the story also identifies him as evil.  He wears reflective sunglasses, which represents a mask. 

“His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face but had forgotten about his throat.” (106)

Arnold was wearing a mask because he did not want Connie to know who he really was, which was a man, not a teenage boy as he was trying to represent himself as.  Evil always tries to represent itself as something that it is not.  It always tries to trick you.  In this story the evil of Arnold Friend represents the predators of society who prey on the unsuspecting members of society.  Connie was just a fifteen year old girl trying to discover her identity in this world, and evil comes out to destroy that. 

            In No Face the protagonist Ysrael fights back against the evil in his society that tries to make him feel less than.  In the story when four boys tackle him, and the one fat boy sits on him, Arnold says “Strength and the fat boy flies off him”(156).  “He has the power of Invisibility and no one can touch him.” (155) 

“He runs past the water hose and the pasture, and then he says Flight and jumps up and his shadow knifes over the tops of the trees…” (153)

Ysrael uses his Invisibility, Strength, and Flight as an identity to help him fight the evil that continues to try and keep him down.  Even though Ysrael is actively using his identity, evil keeps actively coming at him.  At the end of the story when his brother asked him where he has been all day, Ysrael’s response is “I’ve been fighting evil.” (160) 

            These stories indicate that there is evil out there and we have to be prepared.  The question is will we be like Connie and let evil draw us out of our identity, or will we be like Ysrael and use our identity to fight against evil. 

Victor's Reconnection

Sherman Alexie’s idea throughout This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona is that stories are meant to be told for the reconnection of past and future generations.  Some may reject it and some may not, but it does not matter as long as the stories continue to get told (72). 

The beginning of This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona starts out with a disconnection, the death of Victor’s father. The disconnection of his community is seen by his move to Phoenix, Arizona and also because he has not spoken to his son in a few years, and when they did talk it was on the phone (59). Victor’s father can also represent the past, while Victor represents the future.

Another representation of disconnection in this story is the tribal counsel.  In the story Victor goes to the tribal counsel in order to get money to go retrieve his father’s ashes.  The tribal counsel’s response was

“Now, Victor, we do have some money available for the proper return of tribal members’ bodies.  But I don’t think we have enough to bring your father all the way back from Phoenix (60)”.

The tribal counsel is the one place one would think that would be able and willing to preserve the past, but they are not.  Due to the lack of money within the counsel they cannot help Victor reconnect his past.

            The one person that can help Victor with this connection is Thomas Builds-the-Fire.  Victor and Thomas had been childhood friends, and Thomas was willing to help Victor as long as Victor took him along to Phoenix.  After some thought Victor agreed.  Thomas is known for his story telling, but he was also an outsider because of it.  In a way Thomas’ gift was also a curse, because of the rejection it caused him. 

“Nobody talked to Thomas anymore because he told the same damn stories over and over again. (62)”

            Throughout the trip Thomas is telling Victor stories, and they both are reminiscing.  The most important story of them all would be the last one that Thomas tells.  It is a story about how Thomas first met Victor’s father.  Thomas had a vision that told him to go to Spokane, stand by the Falls, and wait for a sign.  The vision turned out to be Victor’s father, and Thomas’ dreams was telling him to, “Take care of each other (69).”  After hearing this Victor was quiet.  This was finally the reconnection he had been waiting for.  Thomas had given Victor an even greater gift than money.  He gave him memories. “ He searched his mind for memories of his father, found the good ones, found the a few bad ones, added it all up, and smiled. (69)”

            

Even though Thomas had given Victor the gift of memories through his stories, Victor still chose to reject him.  “ Victor knew that he couldn’t really be friends with Thomas, even after all that happened (74)”.  In the end Thomas understood.  He was not mad about Victor’s rejection, because some may reject it and some may not, but it does not matter as long as the stories continue to get told (72).  

Howl

            The word howl means to wail, scream, or cry.  Allen Ginsberg uses his poetic lyrics to wail out the obsession that the Beat generation has with the celestial.

            In Part I of Howl Ginsberg introduces whom it is he is referencing throughout this whole poem, and that is the Beat generation.  He opens up saying he, “Saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix”(9).  That right there is a lot to say in the very first sentence of a poem.  Clearly Ginsberg has something he wants to say and wastes no time in saying it.  This opening sentence also shows the obsession of this generation.  They are “destroyed by madness”, “starving hysterical naked”, and “dragging themselves through the streets.  They are doing all of this for the “heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”.  They are taking drugs in order to reach the celestial or God, they are not taking drugs because of the drugs themselves, they are taking drugs to reach a greater plateau.  Then Ginsberg goes on to explain “the who” even further.  They are the forgotten, the outcasts of the world.  They “passed through universities”, “expelled from the academies”, and “chained themselves to subways”(10). 

            Part II goes on to describe Ginsberg’s idea of America.  He introduces a new character, Moloch.  Moloch is a mythical God that needs blood sacrifices.  Ginsberg sees America as this Machinist society that rejects him and his generations obsession. This can be seen in the lines, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery”(21).  Since society does not accept his generation, his generation must in turn reject society to continue with this obsession that they have to find the celestial.  It would be a lot easier to go along the normal society, but they will not accept the easier way.  They want to go through the underground, and get dirty. 

            Part III of Howl goes on to talk about the one person that has been able to reject society with the purpose of this greater goal.  This person is Carl Solomon.  Solomon is the person who Ginsberg dedicates this whole poem too.  Ginsberg goes on to say how he is with Solomon in Rockland (24).    He is with Solomon wherever Solomon goes.  Ginsberg idolizes Solomon in a way, and puts Solomon up on a pedestal.  He wants to be around Solomon all of the time, even though it is not physically possible.  It goes on to say how Solomon was able to reject society, because he “felt like a stranger”(24), and “screamed in a straightjacket “(25), not because he was crazy, because he was obsessed with something greater, the celestial.

            Through his poetic lyricism, Ginsberg portrays the obsession with the celestial of the Beat generations.  They were outcasts and outsiders who willingly dedicated their lives to the acquisition of something greater, no matter what the cost was, they were faithful to finding it even if it lead to death.  

The Piano Lesson/ Bamboozled

As a class there was a lot of discussion about the theme of the play, The Piano Lesson.  However, there was no real discussion on the movie, Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000).  When reviewing these two, there is one element that these two have in common, which is violence.

In The Piano Lesson violence is subtler.  Throughout the play there was referencing of rope.  In Scene one of the play Avery describes how he works as an elevator operator at the Gulf Building.  One of the characters Lymon, asks him, “How you know the the rope ain’t gonna break? Ain’t you scared the rope’s gonna break?”   Then in Scene five, Boy Willie and Lymon are trying to take the piano out of the room to the truck, but the piano will not budge, so Boy Willie tells Lymon to get some rope so they can put around the piano and then build a plank so they can wheel it out of the house.  Both of these references of “rope” are referring to lynching.  Lynching, is a form of execution, often carried out by hanging.  This was a common form of execution for blacks during this time.  Rope was used in the hanging process. 

Also, in The Piano Lesson there was violence in the form of a battle between Sutter’s Ghost, and Boy Willie.  Doaker, Berniece, and Maretha had seen Sutter’s Ghost, but the only person that the ghost attacks is Boy Willie.  Some say that Boy Willie is the person that ghost wanted the most, because Boy Wille was trying to sell the piano.  The ghost wanted the piano to stay with the family, because of the history it represented for both the Sutter family, and Boy Willie’s family. 

In Bamboozled, there was more obvious violence.  The gang led by Sloan’s brother, Julius aka Big Blak Afrika did not agree with the show so the gang decides to kidnap one of its stars, Man Tan.  The gang end up torturing and killing Man Tan, then when the gang tries to exit the warehouse where they killed Man Tan, the police had a shoot out, which results in the death of the gang, except the white member of the gang who gets handcuffed and taken into police custody.  This is a representation of the black on black crime, which occurs daily in the African American community.  One person kills another person, then all of a sudden that sparks a revenge killing.  It is like a never ending cycle.

The police shoot out scene was another all too familiar scene in the American culture.  Violent shootouts are caught on film every day in this nation and aired on television as entertainment. Then they will show the dead victims, especially if they are African American.  This shows a lack of respect for African Americans, still in this country. 

Therefore, there are two different portrayals of violence in these two works of art.  One is subtler, and one is more in your face, but violence none the less. One form of violence was prevalent back in the day, and the other form of violence is still currently going on.