Here's the record of this week's abbreviated discussion. At the end, I've included some reaction thoughts on my own.
Drew: Did anyone else think the boy at The Hot Spot was going to violate Lucynell.
Everyone: No.
Potter: What’s up with the peppermint stick?
Childs: Yeah, I thought that, too. A “foot long 2” thick” stick? C’mon.
Petras: What about the hitchhiker getting in the truck? Anyone creepy there?
Nahlik (the drifter): Yesterday, we talked about Shiftlet as a negative force, but I saw him as a positive force, especially in relation to the mom?
Wehner: I agree with Nahlik—“in a few days” he begins to transform the place.
Dell’Orco: I disagree. He steals the car, the money; he abandons the girl.
N. Schmidt: (I missed this comment, sorry).
Lux: I see both sides, but I see the positive side more. He leads the daughter out of her nest, gives her some autonomy and puts her in the presence of someone who see her full humanity/glory. It’s no accident that her first word is “birrrd”—she’s finally taking flight.
Lots of general bickering and debating.
Drew: Isn’t the mother gaining some freedom at the same time? Now she isn’t tied to raising a child with a disability for her whole life.
Hannan: I disagree, Mr. Dziedzic. She does a lot of chores, carries her weight.
Nahlik: Mrs. Lucynell is very self-centered—this whole scenario is just about what she can get from the situation.
Cross: So she’s a lot like the grandmother in “Good Man.”
W. Schmitt: (?)
Kainz calls Sasha out! Shbam!
Sasha: uhhh….
Kainz: what did you write about?
Sasha: manipulating.
Kainz: tell us about that.
Sasha: The mother in “Life you Save” thinks she’s manipulating him to marry his daughter at the same time that he’s using him to get the car.
Berger: There aren’t that many indications that she wants to get rid of Lucynell.
Callon: Can someone explain why Berger might be incorrect?
Petras:
Haegerty: The way she haggles with him over 17.50 suggests she’s trying to sell her out
(Judas: 30 pieces of silver? ???)
Quinlan: Doesn’t she want the best for her daughter—somebody for her to communicate with?
Boehm: Notice that she lies about her age as a way to make her more attractive.
Hannan: What about when she says, “I wouldn’t give her up for anything on earth?”
Childs: Reverse psychology?
This is a good time for someone to warm up presenting a new topic/thread. Hogrebe? Bothmann? Hovey? Schneider?
Mr. Paradise—shifting over to the River
Nick Schmidt: I don’t see Paradise as the evil one. If anything, the preacher is the one responsible for planting such literal/dangerous ideas of salvation in the boy’s head.
Lux: Nick is wrong. Remember the pigs? Those are where the demons go when they leave the man’s body. And he looks like a pig to Harry from his underwater perspective at the end.
Potter: There’s really not enough for me to say he’s a bad person.
What about the cancer is has above his ear?
Quinlan: We seem to be putting people into two groups, but there seems to be three groups. I would put Mrs. Connin in the group of the good people. He takes him to a place that’s good for him—his first experience of anything transcendent in his otherwise secular world that treats “Jesus” as a curse word. Mr. Paradise is a cynical man who has fallen away because Christianity hasn’t given him what he wants.
Nick Schmidt: Is it good to baptize a kid without his family’s consent?
Hagaerty: Even the names seem to undercut Quinlan’s theory. How could “Con” be good and “paradise” be bad?
Lux: Every single detail connected to Paradise contradicts your punk comment, Hag.
Heated debate.
Potter takes out a stick and beats Petras. (not sure what they’re talking about)
Scheider: It’s just ironic that his name is Paradise, because he’s ugly—physically and morally.
Callon’s Final thoughts: This was a great discussion. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able just to sit back and listen to students work through the territory in a somewhat ordered, natural way for 5-10 minutes. Nice.
Many of you were looking hard to find the “good” characters—the models or norms in these. That very notion of a “good” character is very problematic in Flannery O’Connor’s stories, which focus primarily on people who suffer from some insurmountable handicap. Often they aren’t even real people but distortions somewhat like the exaggerated characters in a cartoon like The Simpsons.
Instead of trying to divide O’Connor’s characters into “good” or “bad” people, I would suggest beginning by separating them into static/stationary characters and kinetic/mobile figures in search of something. The folks in this first category—the Ashfields in “The River,” Mrs. Lucynell Crater, Bailey-- are fairly flat characters who tend to be stuck in a particular place or frame of mind. And then there’s the more dynamic figures like Shiftlet, the drifter, or the young boy, Harry/Bevel Ashfield in search of something they can’t name. They are groping their way toward something good, something transcendent. They are hungry for more than what their environment offers, yet they’re not able to satisfy that hunger either. As we head into next week, we’ll be questioning a number of thing: what is satisfying/unsatisfying about the brand of Christianity alive in these stories; what are these characters looking for; what substitutes do many of them accept; what do these handicaps—poor sight, missing limbs, cancer—symbolize; are they any truly transcendent, fulfilling alternatives available to these people?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Hemingway Seminar, Week Two
Lux: Fishing. The body of the water is like the Freudian psyche. All these references to fish is a way for Hemingway to show him struggling with the dark thoughts/fears/struggles that he has stored inside him.
Connection to Bass in Indian Camp—the big fish in Big 2 Hearted is a return to the monster(s) beneath the surface. Some live in deep water (big stuff), some are under the surface and easier to catch/handle/filet, etc.
Schneider: “he felt all the old feeling. He was happy.”
--reeling in Big fish is like restoring his connection to a healthy state of mind; losing it is losing the place he’s trying to get back to . That’s why he feels sick and has to sit down.
Potter: Regarding “Now I Lay Me,” no mention of actual fish as in Big 2 Hearted—only of rivers and streams and bait. There, it’s the idea of fishing that confronts him. He’s trying to regain the manliness stripped away from him by the war.
Nahlik: Even in his attempt to escape the problems of his life by heading out to nature in Big 2 Heart, the problems still find him in the form of the burnt landscape, the fish that leaves him feels nauseated, ??
Quinlan: Big 2 Hearted River is a comic ending to the series of stories. The burnt town of Seney is a hopeful sign; the ashes of the town and of the landscape will fertilize a new growth, a second growth; nature will return (“it can’t all be burnt”). This is like Nick; will all his scars and burned out mind, he can return to a state of happiness. When he says, “there are plenty of days to fish the swamp,” he’s acknowledging a willingness to continue to face that which he has ignored as a child/young man. He just will take them in good time.
How old is he here? At what point in his life is he at river?
Hogrebe: Like “End of Something,” his environment—the setting or landscape in which he moves—is a metaphor for his interior landscape, his psyche. As he’s about to sleep there’s a mosquito that comes—another disturbance to bring pain and violence, to feed off of him. Here he burns it. And then has the ability to sleep, something he couldn’t do in the war (“Now I Lay Me”). He’s finding peace amidst the burned out world.
The longest story about “nothing.”
Who else thought comic ending? (question goes nowhere)
Dziedzic: yes, it’s comic because he was obsessed with death in earlier stories (“Lay Me”) but not escapes the confines.
Childs: he still has a battle in front of him.
Schmitt: interested in the references to hot and cold in Big 2 Heart. What he thought his life would be is gone; fishing has been the only certainty, the only steadfast joy. Note his “very heavy pack” he carries. This pack represents the burdens he carries—his experience of war, loss, death. When he makes it to the river after all the toil, he walks through “cool dew.” When fishing later, when he finally gets ahold of the big one, he feels that shock of the cold water (which comes all the way up to his man parts). Later, he catches a few smaller fish. Not going to the swamp and knowing he can go later, he acknowledges that he knows this will be a long process; his recovery will be gradual.
Kainz: Ok, imagine that the characters are trout and the war is the dry hand. Which character gets picked up with the dry hand and “fungassed”
Berger: Major?
Lux: the kid with the scarf on his nose?
Del Taco: Krebs
Childs: yeah, Krebs.
Hey, this is all marvelous so far. Good job.
Did anyone write about Krebs?
Hagerty: Me. In the war, one guy brags about the girls he has had. He carries back a misunderstanding of love as something you “get” instead of something you “return.” His notion of love is broken, leaving him unable even to admit that he loves his mother. He wants a girl, but he doesn’t want any consequences, anything complex. Love, by nature, though is complex (at least two-sided).
Kainz: So what is it about war that has done this to him?
Burgraff: I compared their opinion of women to death. “He could not get along without girls . . . he had to have them.” Another fellow says “he never thought of them . . . they could not touch him.” This seems like a stretch to relate this to death, but then Krebs says of love, “eventually it will come to you.” Soldiers views of women in Hemingway’s stories mirror their view of death.
Schmidt: Insides. Two extremes. All the fish know is water, which surrounds them all the time. The fish even have water inside them. With Jack, he doesn’t have any water—can’t sweat—but he can still live (as opposed to the dead fish in water?). This fish has only what sustains it but with no depth; Jack has nothing to
It’s foolish to live ONLY with what sustains us (water), with no death. But it’s also foolish to live without worry/fear (things that don’t sustain us).
Berger: After the fight, “Jack stands up and sweat comes out all over his face.” Here, because of the boxing, the struggle to fight for a happy life for himself and his family, he can’t sweat—can’t sustain himself. Now that that contest is over, he can live normally, release himself from the things he worries about when he should be sleeping.
Kainz : let’s compare these boxers: Jack, Ole Andreson, Ad Francis
What would you say Jack’s motto might be?
Ole?
Ad?
Which is healthiest?
Connection to Bass in Indian Camp—the big fish in Big 2 Hearted is a return to the monster(s) beneath the surface. Some live in deep water (big stuff), some are under the surface and easier to catch/handle/filet, etc.
Schneider: “he felt all the old feeling. He was happy.”
--reeling in Big fish is like restoring his connection to a healthy state of mind; losing it is losing the place he’s trying to get back to . That’s why he feels sick and has to sit down.
Potter: Regarding “Now I Lay Me,” no mention of actual fish as in Big 2 Hearted—only of rivers and streams and bait. There, it’s the idea of fishing that confronts him. He’s trying to regain the manliness stripped away from him by the war.
Nahlik: Even in his attempt to escape the problems of his life by heading out to nature in Big 2 Heart, the problems still find him in the form of the burnt landscape, the fish that leaves him feels nauseated, ??
Quinlan: Big 2 Hearted River is a comic ending to the series of stories. The burnt town of Seney is a hopeful sign; the ashes of the town and of the landscape will fertilize a new growth, a second growth; nature will return (“it can’t all be burnt”). This is like Nick; will all his scars and burned out mind, he can return to a state of happiness. When he says, “there are plenty of days to fish the swamp,” he’s acknowledging a willingness to continue to face that which he has ignored as a child/young man. He just will take them in good time.
How old is he here? At what point in his life is he at river?
Hogrebe: Like “End of Something,” his environment—the setting or landscape in which he moves—is a metaphor for his interior landscape, his psyche. As he’s about to sleep there’s a mosquito that comes—another disturbance to bring pain and violence, to feed off of him. Here he burns it. And then has the ability to sleep, something he couldn’t do in the war (“Now I Lay Me”). He’s finding peace amidst the burned out world.
The longest story about “nothing.”
Who else thought comic ending? (question goes nowhere)
Dziedzic: yes, it’s comic because he was obsessed with death in earlier stories (“Lay Me”) but not escapes the confines.
Childs: he still has a battle in front of him.
Schmitt: interested in the references to hot and cold in Big 2 Heart. What he thought his life would be is gone; fishing has been the only certainty, the only steadfast joy. Note his “very heavy pack” he carries. This pack represents the burdens he carries—his experience of war, loss, death. When he makes it to the river after all the toil, he walks through “cool dew.” When fishing later, when he finally gets ahold of the big one, he feels that shock of the cold water (which comes all the way up to his man parts). Later, he catches a few smaller fish. Not going to the swamp and knowing he can go later, he acknowledges that he knows this will be a long process; his recovery will be gradual.
Kainz: Ok, imagine that the characters are trout and the war is the dry hand. Which character gets picked up with the dry hand and “fungassed”
Berger: Major?
Lux: the kid with the scarf on his nose?
Del Taco: Krebs
Childs: yeah, Krebs.
Hey, this is all marvelous so far. Good job.
Did anyone write about Krebs?
Hagerty: Me. In the war, one guy brags about the girls he has had. He carries back a misunderstanding of love as something you “get” instead of something you “return.” His notion of love is broken, leaving him unable even to admit that he loves his mother. He wants a girl, but he doesn’t want any consequences, anything complex. Love, by nature, though is complex (at least two-sided).
Kainz: So what is it about war that has done this to him?
Burgraff: I compared their opinion of women to death. “He could not get along without girls . . . he had to have them.” Another fellow says “he never thought of them . . . they could not touch him.” This seems like a stretch to relate this to death, but then Krebs says of love, “eventually it will come to you.” Soldiers views of women in Hemingway’s stories mirror their view of death.
Schmidt: Insides. Two extremes. All the fish know is water, which surrounds them all the time. The fish even have water inside them. With Jack, he doesn’t have any water—can’t sweat—but he can still live (as opposed to the dead fish in water?). This fish has only what sustains it but with no depth; Jack has nothing to
It’s foolish to live ONLY with what sustains us (water), with no death. But it’s also foolish to live without worry/fear (things that don’t sustain us).
Berger: After the fight, “Jack stands up and sweat comes out all over his face.” Here, because of the boxing, the struggle to fight for a happy life for himself and his family, he can’t sweat—can’t sustain himself. Now that that contest is over, he can live normally, release himself from the things he worries about when he should be sleeping.
Kainz : let’s compare these boxers: Jack, Ole Andreson, Ad Francis
What would you say Jack’s motto might be?
Ole?
Ad?
Which is healthiest?
Seminar Discussion of Hemingway, Week One
Berger: “Can’t you give her anything to make her stop screaming?”
--he seems pretty comfortable, confident at the beginning but seems to want nothing to do with it by the end.
--Nick felt quite sure he would never die. “This shows his insecurity about death; a nice prerequisite to his attitude about death in “The Killers.” There, he values life and he feels that it needs protection—he takes a RISK to warn him. He is surprised that Ole Anderson that this man is willing to wait around and get killed. This is a good correlation to Indian Camp – he still thinks he won’t die and can’t figure out why this man feels this way.
Petras:
There’s a lot of great contrasting imagery (e.g. the darkness into which the boats travel) between life and death in the Indian Camp. Leans his head against his father, whom he trusts absolutely; doesn’t look at the birth itself)
--Lots of focus on the unknown that Nick doesn’t want to accept. He is still very naïve in his thinking at the end.
--Full views of the man’s cut throat and her open stomach—what does he see.
Burggraf:
I also looked at the part where he says he wouldn’t die. I saw religious themes here—after death comes new life. Uncle George/Bass both leave but will come back, appear briefly then disappear—lots of circles and cycles, including the sun, which will come back.
Elton John: “The Circle of Life”
Jacobs:
“Her screams are not important”—I was interested in how silence is important here—death?
Nahlik
“I mean, you can’t scream if you’re dead” just saying.
Haggerty
The first couple paragraphs of End of Something—specifically the mill, which is now shut down. There are no more trees left to cut—just ruins and wasteland. This is like Marge and Nick. She wants more than he can offer. Isn’t love fun anymore she asks? No, he says. After she leaves, he feels empty, lays on the blanket—just remains much like the “broken white limestone foundation” of the mill.
Hogrebe
In order for the lumber mill to have substance, it needs fuel, commodities—like the relationship, it has been used up. No longer a purpose for it to exist. Lumber town a metaphor for relationship.
Potter
Instead of connecting the deterioration of the relationship to the mill, I connected it to wood/logs/logging. When, for instance, she says on the boat, “there’s our old ruin, Nick,” she’s ironically pointing out their own relationship.
Also, wood connected to manliness. Axes—connection back to Indian Camp, Doc and doctor’s wife. Why is he even mentioning his ax wound? The Doc/wife story is all about driftwood and about the doctor getting humiliated over it.
Dell’Orco?
End of Something: Fishing: They go from the shallows to the serious darkness to fishing from the shore. Why would he choose rainbow trout of all fish? These implies joy, happiness, promise, pots of gold! (not without me lucky charms!)—they can’t get it. They aren’t even striking.
Kuebel
Relationship with Marge and Nick compared to relationship with Doctor and wife. Very similar: both Nick and Doc are terse in their choice of words; both looking for freedom from things that paralyze them, hold them back---the doctor’s walk away from home and then into the woods at the end is part of his attempt to escape these bonds.
--he seems pretty comfortable, confident at the beginning but seems to want nothing to do with it by the end.
--Nick felt quite sure he would never die. “This shows his insecurity about death; a nice prerequisite to his attitude about death in “The Killers.” There, he values life and he feels that it needs protection—he takes a RISK to warn him. He is surprised that Ole Anderson that this man is willing to wait around and get killed. This is a good correlation to Indian Camp – he still thinks he won’t die and can’t figure out why this man feels this way.
Petras:
There’s a lot of great contrasting imagery (e.g. the darkness into which the boats travel) between life and death in the Indian Camp. Leans his head against his father, whom he trusts absolutely; doesn’t look at the birth itself)
--Lots of focus on the unknown that Nick doesn’t want to accept. He is still very naïve in his thinking at the end.
--Full views of the man’s cut throat and her open stomach—what does he see.
Burggraf:
I also looked at the part where he says he wouldn’t die. I saw religious themes here—after death comes new life. Uncle George/Bass both leave but will come back, appear briefly then disappear—lots of circles and cycles, including the sun, which will come back.
Elton John: “The Circle of Life”
Jacobs:
“Her screams are not important”—I was interested in how silence is important here—death?
Nahlik
“I mean, you can’t scream if you’re dead” just saying.
Haggerty
The first couple paragraphs of End of Something—specifically the mill, which is now shut down. There are no more trees left to cut—just ruins and wasteland. This is like Marge and Nick. She wants more than he can offer. Isn’t love fun anymore she asks? No, he says. After she leaves, he feels empty, lays on the blanket—just remains much like the “broken white limestone foundation” of the mill.
Hogrebe
In order for the lumber mill to have substance, it needs fuel, commodities—like the relationship, it has been used up. No longer a purpose for it to exist. Lumber town a metaphor for relationship.
Potter
Instead of connecting the deterioration of the relationship to the mill, I connected it to wood/logs/logging. When, for instance, she says on the boat, “there’s our old ruin, Nick,” she’s ironically pointing out their own relationship.
Also, wood connected to manliness. Axes—connection back to Indian Camp, Doc and doctor’s wife. Why is he even mentioning his ax wound? The Doc/wife story is all about driftwood and about the doctor getting humiliated over it.
Dell’Orco?
End of Something: Fishing: They go from the shallows to the serious darkness to fishing from the shore. Why would he choose rainbow trout of all fish? These implies joy, happiness, promise, pots of gold! (not without me lucky charms!)—they can’t get it. They aren’t even striking.
Kuebel
Relationship with Marge and Nick compared to relationship with Doctor and wife. Very similar: both Nick and Doc are terse in their choice of words; both looking for freedom from things that paralyze them, hold them back---the doctor’s walk away from home and then into the woods at the end is part of his attempt to escape these bonds.
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