Starting The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Essential Question: How do class, gender, religion, race, and culture determine our relationships?

 Examining this question on the level of the infamous high school hierarchy, my first thought is that people associate with those on the same level as them. It’s the widely-held belief that “populars” don’t deign to speak to the nerds and outcasts. But it’s also those on the fringes who often feel “above” befriending the populars. I feel like a majority of people identify themselves as nonconformists and use this as a basis to separate themselves from that group. For a few of these people, it becomes easy to denounce those in the group as superficial, catty, or vapid. Because we like to feel that our own individual group is unique, we tend to generalize and stereotype others.  

In the book How to Be Black, Baratunde Thurston uses comedy to expose the intricacies of understanding race. He points out that although it is generally accepted that racism is bad, it is hard to differentiate between what is racist and what is not. Obviously, most people don't go out of their way to be racist, so at least in most environments that I've been exposed to, race has never been a problem in developing relationships. I do think that people of the same backgrounds are commonly friends, but I think this is partially due to the fact that their cultures automatically give them something in common to bond over, not that they are intolerant of people of other backgrounds.

“Like vampires and extremely rich people, black folk can sense one another. Use your Spidey Sense (Blacky Sense?). Use your blackdar to inspect the workplace for signs of Other Negroes. They may be working security for the building. They may be in administrative support. They may be among the associate pool, or they may even be in upper management. Black folk can be anywhere. After all, you're here. But one of the biggest mistakes you can make as The Black Employee is to assume you are the only one.”

-Baratunde Thurston, How to Be Black

Self-Deception

Many ways to handle life are centered around self-deception, whether it involves pretending a situation is improving when it isn’t, simply ignoring the existence of it altogether, or exclaiming “Perfect! This is exactly what I wanted!” when, in fact, this is exactly what you did not want. I employ methods of self-deception all the time: When a spider sneaks up on me while I am doing homework, I leave the room and collect myself until it disappears from view; I then return and resume working while pretending that there isn’t a spider lurking in some corner of the room... Self-deception allows us to find peace with ourselves. People realize that although keeping in touch with reality is important, knowing the truth does not always equate a fulfilled or happy life, and they sacrifice their realities accordingly. But to what extent is blissful ignorance desirable?

In “The History Teacher”, Collins produces the image of a history teacher who is the definition of self-deception. He teaches his students things that he knows are untrue, but believes that he is somehow helping the kids by preserving their “innocence”. However, these same kids that he believes to be so naive torment each other as soon as they are out of his line of sight. The bullying is not only a great point of irony in the image of the “innocent” child, but also a reflection of the teacher’s inadequacies -- because he shields the children from the evils of the world, they are less likely to look critically at their own behavior. In this way, Collins asserts that age does not determine innocence or wisdom. Kids don’t always mean well, and adults (like the history teacher) can be painfully ignorant. 

I think the sort of existence that the history teacher leads is the saddest kind...even though he could live his whole life like this feeling perfectly content, his life will have gone to waste. As a teacher, his impact on the children could only be detrimental. As an individual, he loses much of himself in his indulgent creation of a fantasy world. I hope my self-deceptions never become so consuming that they define me.

Done with The Scarlet Letter! (FINALLY........loljk)

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a  part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled. (251)

This was my favorite passage of the book-- as I read this, I had the most inexplicable feeling of release; I realized all the built-up tension that the Scarlet Letter had created these last few weeks. Until this point, I think I was physically becoming stressed by the plight of the characters in the novel.

 We discussed this passage during class and (Ryan) analyzed Hawthorne’s use of flow from the varying sentence length to create in the reader’s mind a picture of silence, then a rush of emotion.
 
I love this passage, in particular, because it reminds me of a fairy tale ending. It contains the most positive and light-hearted tone of any other part of the book, and it carries such a sense of closure, not only through its characterization of the assuring passage of time, but also through the emotional fulfillment of each of the characters sharing this moment. Most importantly, it just makes me happy to believe that at least one character can live her life free from crippling social and psychological pressures and have her own “happily ever after”.

Absolve You to Yourself, Pt. 2

This week, we continued to read The Scarlet Letter. As we observed Dimmesdale’s gradual psychological deterioration, we came to discuss his battle with his conscience and its underlying question: not just what is good or evil, but what is the right thing to do? 

Dimmesdale is obviously portrayed as a fundamentally good person, but his fatal flaw is that he never has the courage to confess his sins, to sully his reputation, or to go against the grain of society. However, I don’t think Dimmesdale’s sort of cowardice is necessarily repulsive. If he absolves his sins through confession, he will feel more comfortable with his conscience, but receive dire consequences from the townspeople; his internal comfort takes away from external comfort. 

Today, we consider wearing different clothes, being an “anti-bully”, and participating in non-stereotypical activities as our ways of “going against the crowd” -- activities that have comparatively undramatic consequences. It requires a huge leap of faith to make that kind of life-changing decision to forever be shunned by society, a leap of faith that a majority of people would not take. In fact, the grace with which Hester handles herself in that situation is incredible, and is only really possible in this fiction novel. Hester’s “sins” barely show that she is human, and Hawthorne points out her flaws almost as a show of her modesty -- for this reason, I find Dimmesdale to be infinitely more relatable as a character.