Melody

This semester started off with a bang with the evil unit. This was definitely my favorite unit and I loved reading all of the interviews and articles. I liked applying the evil to history and today. After that, the Macbeth unit. I have never really liked Shakespeare and I probably never will. To be brutally honest, I really dislike Shakespeare. There, I said it. I have never enjoyed reading Shakespeare, I find it the most boring piece of literature one could ever read. But that’s just my opinion. Watching and reading all the different versions really put Macbeth into context and showed that a play is so much more than a play. It’s sometimes interpreted by so many different people of different backgrounds, into different languages and environments. The amount of changes you can make to an original work and still keep the basic elements is amazing. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), Macbeth was not my favorite book. After that was A Lesson Before Dying. I felt that we really breezed through that book. I could be wrong, but it seemed like we spent the least amount of time investigating this book. This also was not one of my favorites. It was a pretty depressing book, especially in the end. I felt as though Grant Wiggins had not really mad as huge of an impact as he could have. It was incredible to change one life, but he could have taken that one step further and encouraged education even a little more, somehow. Anyway, Huck Finn was a great read. I guess it’s hard for kids our age to read it and really understand it, but it is good for us to read it now and be able to compare what we got out of it if we read it later as adults. I am sure there will be a completely different view of the book if we read it when we’re older. I learned a lot this semester. English never fails to amaze me because of how in-depth you can get with every book and every theme. Now and then I always think “what if the guy just wrote this without meaning anything?” but I suppose in the long run it’s more valuable to recognize the book’s themes now than when we’re in college. This coming semester I hope to read more (and free-read more) and maybe do some creative writing, which we’ll get to do pretty soon. I’m really excited for this semester to start.

3:10 p.m. January 11, 2007

GREENWOOD, Miss. – A videotaped scuffle between a black teenager and a white police officer who twice pulled his gun in a crowded high school hall has prompted a $1 million lawsuit, accusations of racism and calls for the officer’s dismissal. The Dec. 6 school surveillance tapes that show the officer pointing his gun at the back of the unarmed teenager’s head were released Friday as part of discovery in student James Marshall’s lawsuit.

This article is proof that racism is still a very large part of today’s world. This article was posted only a few days ago. Racism is very much existent, especially in cities where racism has been a reoccurring theme. The fact that the police officer was white while the teenager was African American incites feelings of racism because the white person is the “bigger, stronger” individual, with a weapon, threatening the life of an African American. Sound familiar? Incidents like this are very common with policemen. It horrifies me that they think they can just pull a gun on anybody and nobody will think twice about it just because they are the ones “in charge.” Just because someone is a policeman does not mean they can threaten just anybody, especially in a crowded high school. News like this upsets me, but also intrigues me. How far can humans go before they realize what they are doing is so taboo it will make the news? How far will humans go anyway? Racism can definitely tie into our other theme of evil, where racism can blind someone, making them go into senseless rage and do things they wouldn’t normally do. People stop and stare, and wonder how someone can be so ridiculously twisted in their thinking, but sometimes the intense feeling of racism can do that to someone. I could never, ever imagine hating someone so much just because the color of their skin.

Well, it’s amazing how a British guy can pull of an amazing Kazakhstai accent. The personality that Cohen has created really blows my mind. Listening to him on NPR, a very well respected and prestigious radio station, changes my opinion of him. He is really a well versed person and can explain what he was trying to say in his movies without trying to promote a seemingly stupid, immature movie. He really seems to understand his work and why he does what he does. His passion really backs him up and makes him seem more respectable. He says that his movie can be considered one of the best comedy movies, and there were many standing ovations. He says it is effective because it is showing the really horrible delusions some people have, which is really the essence of satire. For example, he says that Borat claims that Jews planned the attack on 9/11. But he also believes that Jews can shift their shapes into cockroaches, which is clearly impossible. It’s amazing how much more effective satire is when it is performed or told by someone who understands what satire is all about. Clearly, Sacha Baron Cohen has stepped back to Square 1 to review what satire is all about, which not only makes a funny movie, but drives his opinions home even more emphatically.

In it, please address whether (and how) the narrative enhanced your understanding of slavery in America, how it might relate to Huck Finn and Twain, and any other connections you can make. In that second post, quoting from and linking to your narrative, as well as a post from another ENG213 student (plus, if you find any other resources, some of them) will make this much more effective.

The first few paragraphs of this narrative are pretty shocking. Annie L Burton writes:

The memory of my happy, care-free childhood days on the plantation, with my little white and black companions, is often with me…Our days were spent roaming about from plantation to plantation, not knowing or caring what things were going on in the great world outside our little realm. Planting time and harvest time were happy days for us.

It’s amazing to me because this is the first narrative I have ever read by a slave that describes her days a slave “happy and care-free.” This really opens my eyes to the varying degrees of slavery that was implemented in that time. Apparently, some slave owners were kinder than others:

I owe a great deal to Mis’ Mary for her good training of me, in honesty, uprightness and truthfulness. She told me that when I went out into the world all white folks would not treat me as she had, but that I must not feel bad about it, but just do what I was employed to do, and if I wasn’t satisfied, to go elsewhere; but always to carry an honest name.

This relates to Huck Finn in the idea that Jim’s owner, Miss Watson, was not particularly kind to Jim. Jim tells Huck, “Ole missus-dat’s Miss Watson-she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough…” Annie’s foster family was very nice to her, gave her an allowance, and taught her how to read, write , and cook.

Annie also writes that she “never knew what shoes were until I got big enough to earn them myself.” This little detail is in there, and she still seems to have enjoyed her youth on the plantation. It makes me wonder that if someone is raised a certain way, they have such low expectations that many things can satisfy them. For example, a child raised today in the USA would be upset without shoes, but in a third world country they might be grateful just to have clothes. Many parts of the blog is also described with little or no emotion, but I think this makes the narrative much more powerful. When Annie is describing her father, she says:

I will venture to say that I only saw my father a dozen times, when I was about four years old; and those times I saw him only from a distance, as he was driving by the great house of our plantation. Whenever my mistress saw him going by, she would take me by the hand and run out upon the piazza, and exclaim, ” Stop there, I say! Don’t you want to see and speak to and caress your darling child? She often speaks of you and wants to embrace her dear father. See what a bright and beautiful daughter she is, a perfect picture of yourself. Well, I declare, you are an affectionate father.” I well remember that whenever my mistress would speak thus and upbraid him, he would whip up his horse and get out of sight and hearing as quickly as possible…I never spoke to him, and cannot remember that he ever noticed me, or in any way acknowledged me to be his child.

This entire description is used with any emotion or feeling. However, this also lets the reader connect and form their own opinions without being influenced. Annie wrote a very long narrative that described her experiences before, during, and after slaves were freed. It is really interesting to read her life and see how different it was from mine, or anyone else’s today. The change from slavery to freedom must have been joyful and confusing at the same time.