The communities of India

It was obvious from the get-go that Interpreter of Maladies had a theme, and as we all quickly realized, that theme was India. India is a common point through all the stories appearing in this collection, whether it is the setting, the object of memories, or the topic of discussion. With India constantly re-appearing, readers get multiple descriptions of the way Indian culture compares to that of America, and of the unique customs in India. Two particular stories that showcased these descriptions were “Mrs. Sen’s” and “A Real Durwan.”

Both “Mrs. Sen’s” and “A Real Durwan” contain a principal character of Indian origin, experiencing or recounting events particular to the setting of India. Mrs. Sen tells Eliot about the community of India, how for any special event the women of the neighborhood would “sit in an enormous circle on the roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night” (115) and how you could “just raise your voice a bit, or express grief or joy of any kind, and one whole neighborhood and half of another has come to share the news, to help with arrangements.” (116). These were things that Mrs. Sen loved about India and which made her homesick, and that sense of community definitely seems appealing. But as we see in “A Real Durwan,” this kind of community is not universal.

Boori Ma, the stair-sweeper and doorkeeper for an apartment building in India, upon first introduction seems very welcomed into the community of the apartment building. The residents “assured Boori Ma that she was always welcome.” (76). That quote would definitely seem to set the scene for a communal relationship similar to the one described in “Mrs. Sen’s,” but as we soon see, this impression doesn’t persist. When the Dalals get a sink of their own and another for the other residents to share, the residents begin to get jealous, and tensions begin to build. They get on edge with one another, negating the tight-knit, ultra-bonded community we saw in “Mrs. Sen’s.” These tensions culminate in the residents throwing Boori Ma on the street when the sink gets stolen and they believe it to be her fault. This gesture is obviously not one to be expected from a closely connected community.

All this is not to say that things were falsely portrayed since scenarios didn’t line up across stories. It’s to say that we should be careful about over-generalizing. We talked a lot in class about the way we saw Indian community as different, more personal and profound than our own American communities. While this may be true in general, we must bear in mind that across all stories and all of India, there is as much variation as one could expect in the kinds of relationships exist between respective communities. 

The Previous Conditions

We have seen racism in the books we’ve been reading this semester. A lot. It particularly struck me as we read “Negocios”, an account of a Mexican man’s struggles in America. He just wants honest work so he can support himself and his family. Sound familiar? Since I lead student discussion for Baldwin’s “Previous Condition”, it was particularly easy to see the parallels.

Peter, the main character in “Previous Condition” was a struggling actor already in America. He didn’t have to worry about being deported or anything, just such petty things as being thrown out of his apartment for simply being black. He also dealt with people thinking he had naturally violent tendencies, people using racist slurs to describe him, and people being scared of him, again for no reason other than his ethnicity.

On the other hand, Ramon in “Negocios” had to deal with very different, but very real problems as well. He had to worry about being caught by Immigration Authorities, since he wasn’t in America legally for a good part of the story. He had to work extremely long hours to make ends meet, and even then there wasn’t much excess. Also, while he didn’t worry about being kicked out of his temporary residences because of his ethnicity, there were problems that definitely only applied to someone in his situation. Namely, being duped out of $800 by people saying they would find him a wife, who actually just conned him and gave him nothing but false hope.

It’s very interesting (and humbling)  to see the various struggles that come with being in various ethnic groups that are discriminated against in various ways. I’ve just presented the most obvious examples. I’m sure there are plenty more you all can find. J

Sex Lives of Animals Without Backbones

As many of you may recall, the epigraph seemed to make very little, if any sense to use when we first started reading Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help. Now, however, having finished the book, quite a bit more light has been shed upon these cryptic, super-random seeming quotes.

“‘The purpose of this book is to direct attention to the various ways in which non-backboned animals reproduce… Some animals reverse sex, some shoot stimulant darts at each other, and some lose an arm while mating.

-Haig H. Najarian

Sex Lives of Animals Without Backbones’”

This quote is quite intriguing just because very few people tend to think about the sex lives of invertebrates in their free time. It seems to draw back to a very common theme throughout Self-Help, however. Many of the stories were about relationships, and the various ways to approach, maintain, or destroy them. The first story, “How to Be an Other Woman”, tells us about how to be a mistress. This could be seen as an alternate to the traditional monogamous marriage, even if it is immoral. We also see a divorced family, in “A Kid’s Guide to Divorce”, a family that is being torn apart by a terminal illness and “rational suicide” and a family with a mother and father with some obvious strife, in “What is Seized”. As there are variations in ways to reproduce in the above quote from the epigraph, so there are various kinds of families and dynamics in the stories of Self-Help.

“‘If you start to shake hands with someone who has lost an arm, shake his other hand. If he has lost both arms, shake the tip of his artificial hand (be quick and unembarrassed about it).

-The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette’”

This quote, while equally confusing and seemingly unrelated to anything the book could be about, has a subtext to it as well. If presented with an awkward situation, simply do things that make logical sense for the given scenario. This can draw, somewhat cynically, a parallel to “Go Like This”, which presents what the narrator thinks of as a logical way to deal with a terminal illness, her own “awkward situation.” While the rationality of this decision can draw some moral debate, it’s really only about what the narrator thinks that matters.

“‘Give some bones to the dogs and bury the rest around fruit trees…

                                                                -Phyllis Hobson

                                                                Butchering Livestock at Home’”

Now that I’ve shared my thoughts about the first two quotes of the epigraph, I’d like to leave one to you all. What do you think of this, possibly the hardest quote to draw a parallel to? Any thoughts?

Peter and the Unnamed Narrator

In the last few days, we have seen lots of depictions of African Americans and their lives in Baldwin’s writing. We have seen a black family with children playing on a rockpile, the same family going on a spiritual revival, drug addicts and their loved ones, a struggling actor, and a re-assimilating singer, among others. With all these characters, none struck such stark contrast as the last two. Peter from “Previous Condition” and the unnamed narrator from “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon” stuck out to me as two very similar people in two very different situations, and, as such, being treated very differently.

It’s immediately evident that there are some similarities between Peter and the narrator from “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon.” They are both black men, are in a similar line of work, both have close relationships with white women, and their two stories both center around the struggles associated with racism against them. The main difference, then, is the environment they have to deal with. Peter is in America, and the unnamed narrator is in France. With this geographic difference, everything changes in the way these two men are treated. On one hand, Peter is already struggling as an actor, then has additional problems from being a black man. He is kicked out of his apartment simply for being black, with no other discernible transgression. On the other hand, the unnamed narrator is also black, but not discriminated against for that reason. Instead, he is a successful singer who is recognized and respected in France. On page 182, Vidal provides a possible reason as to why there may be this distinction between Europe and America. He says “Perhaps it is because we, in Europe, whatever else we do not know, or have forgotten, know about suffering.”

Another interesting similarity between these two stories is that both principal black characters have a close relationship with a white woman. The unnamed narrator is married to Harriet, and Peter is very close friends with Ida. These relationships also demonstrate the apparent disparity in racist perception in Europe vs. in America. While the unnamed narrator is free to argue with his wife in public without so much as a strange look, Peter and Ida attract all the attention in a restaurant when he loudly exclaims after being whacked with a fork.

As was also brought up in class, Europe is definitely not free of racism, but, based on these stories, it certainly seems to be less of a problem. 

For Esmé – with Love and Squalor

“‘Really,’ she said, “I wasn’t quite born yesterday, you know.’”

I find this a perfect example of the kind of tone we can expect from Esmé throughout her appearance in the story named for her, For Esmé – with Love and Squalor. She is sweet and not insulting, but sassy enough to retort when she knows she’s being lied to. She is mature and nuanced, but childish enough to outdo herself in terms of sophistication. All these qualities and contrasts immediately endeared Esmé to me, as I’m sure was true for many of you, too. This was also the case, it seems, with Sergeant X. Even before he met her, he was taken with her “sweet-sounding, sure” voice. As soon as he meets her in the café, something else appears in the story that demonstrates to me how taken Sergeant X is with Esmé.

As soon as Esmé and the Sergeant get to talking, the story cuts out almost all of the Sergeant’s dialogue. It’s replaced instead with descriptions of what the answer contained. This, to me, demonstrated the extent to which the Sergeant went to extol Esmé and show that she was the true star of the story, not himself. After all, the story is called For Esmé. Rather than record his own responses, he wants to show how precious he finds this charming little girl he met. Thus, he just cuts himself out of it as much as he can as to not distract from the truly important character.

We also talked in class about how well the Sergeant acts with the children. In taking the initiative to strike up a conversation with Esmé after he came to her children’s choir rehearsal, he went further than most adults about to be shipped out for war would have. He interacts pleasantly and appropriately with Esmé, not being harsh when she asks extremely personal questions (“Are you very deeply in love with your wife?”) or letting on that she doesn’t know exactly what certain words mean, despite her confident use of them. It becomes especially evident to me that Sergeant X puts a lot of effort into being kind to these children when Charles comes into the picture. Not only does he play along with Charles’ riddle and his very childish amusement with it, but Sergeant X is immediately distraught when he offends Charles for no particular reason. This shows that he cares about Charles’ hurt feelings, even if they were hurt for no reason at all. Then, when Esmé and Charles part ways from Sergeant X, he repeats the riddle in a perfect way to again raise Charles’ spirits and rectify whatever he did to upset Charles previously.

Sergeant X became a very likable character to me through the way he treated Esmé and Charles. I loved seeing how he interacted with them both, and loved seeing his continual kindness, patience, and self-abasing attitude towards the children he reached out to after choir practice. Did you all interpret his narration and actions the same way I did? Was Sergeant X as likable to you as he was to me?

Capturing Speech in Salinger

The most artistic thing about last night’s reading of A Perfect Day for Bananafish, was, to me, the way Salinger captured dialogue. We talked about this in class as well, but even before, I thought it was amazing how fluid and natural the speech found in the story was.

Throughout Muriel’s conversation with her mom, we see several distinctive ways of making the conversation more realistic and fluid. The first one I noticed was that Salinger italicizes certain syllables of words, the ones people actually emphasize, instead of the whole word. This helped me to better recreate what Salinger’s vision of the conversation was, reading it more like the characters would have said it. This kind of emphasis helps readers draw more conclusions, and get a better sense of what kind of attitude a character may have, as opposed to Hemingway’s style that leaves everything to speculation by just giving the bare facts of the matter. I really enjoyed this kind of dialogue, as it helped to put me more in the mindset of the characters, which I really like in stories.

The second way Salinger really made conversation come to life was by replicating how speech is thrown back and forth between two people in actual conversation. Muriel and her mother rarely let each other complete their thoughts, and they often change the topic without seeing the other topic to its end. This, when you think about it, is so much truer to our actual speech patterns than depicting conversations as one sentence, then another, then another. One topic, then another, then another. No! We’re constantly wanting our voice to be heard and jumping forward or backward to previous or new topics. I love the realistic aspect of Salinger’s writing in this way, because it puts the reader in the mindset to find everything else realistic as well.

What did you guys think of this kind of style? How does it work for you in contrast to the very bare, factual presentation given by Hemingway?

In a Soldier's Shoes

“You are a United States Infantryman.” One sentence into the story When Engaging Targets, Remember and the reader is already sucked into the setting of the story, placed in the position of a real soldier in a real unit in a real war. That, to me, is what makes this story in Fire and Forget so memorable.

Gavin Ford Kovite decided that the most effective way to express his experiences from the war in Iraq was to write his story in the choose-your-own-adventure style. I think that this decision worked really well for what I think Kovite was trying to do. As is inherently true with this type of story, the ending is not set in stone. It is dependent upon what you deem to be the wise choice at an earlier point in the story. Thus, somebody could end up injured or dead because of your poor choice. In writing like this, Kovite is giving us a better sense of what it means to be a soldier than if he just told us which choices he made and what happened because of them. He gives us a choice, so that the consequences all rest on us, so that we feel responsible for the ending we experienced.

At least for me, it’s been really easy to judge characters while reading all these war stories. I think, Well, that was a dumb choice, it was obvious he should’ve done something else. However, after reading When Engaging Targets, Remember I feel more sympathetic towards characters, knowing that they were thinking about the consequences for all of the decisions they made, and realizing that I wouldn’t always know what to do in such situations either.

Another similar feature unique to this kind of story is that the reader can always go back and read the paths they didn’t choose the first time. I did this and saw what happened when you didn’t fire on the BMW and let it pass into the convoy. Though it is also necessary to leave the different storylines open like that for those who choose them the first time, I think it parallels another aspect of being a real soldier and making real decisions. We as readers can flip a few pages and see what could’ve been. Soldiers, on the other hand, have hours of free time to muse about the events leading up to a certain choice and to imagine what would have happened if you had made the other choice. The difference between a reader and a soldier is, of course, that the former is reading about realistic events and the other is experiencing real events.

While stories will always do their best to make us feel like the latter, it will never be exactly the same. That being said, the choose-your-own-adventure style of When Engaging Targets, Remember came as close as any story to replicating that experience for me.