Blogging Around

Jenna's blog post, entitled "Best of Week: School Board Issue" identifies Mr. Allen's challenge to us to defend Cathedral despite the characters' drug use as the best idea/question of the week. She claims that this story clearly doesn't center around the use of drugs and alcohol, but rather they just help establish the setting and the characters' frame of mind. She also points out that we, as TV-watching teenagers, are exposed to much more information about drug and alcohol use than in a short story in English class.

I commented:

"Jenna,

Your defense of Cathedral and its mention of drug and alcohol use was a great articulation of not only everything we discussed in class, but great points of your own as well. I definitely agree that we are exposed to a fusillade (good use of vocab!) of drug imagery, paraphanalia, etc in the media and in high school. It seems futile to worry about an old short story in English class. In fact, I tend to think that reading about drug and alcohol use in candid and educated ways actually helps teens decide to say no to drugs moreso than just not talking about it.

I also think that, in the end, the story casts a negative light, and rightly so, on drug and alcohol use. The narrator tells us how lonely he is at night, just smoking pot, drining boos, and watching TV. This affects his relationship with his wife, and even gives him crazy dreams. None of that really appeals to me, or should appeal to anybody.

Good job!

Daniel"

Jamie's blog post, entitled "What if?: We got graded on collaboration," explores the idea of education centered more around collaboration between students to study and learn rather than the final product, like a test or presentation. She noticed that we, as a class, collaborated very well preparing for our daunting Heart of Darkness test. If only we could be graded on that awesome work instead of a test.

I commented:

"Jamie,

I agree with you that collaboration should take a more central role in both the educational experience as well as the grades. I'm very interested to see how that would work out, seeing as that would require Mr. Allen to basically be on skype with us, observing our chats. That grading process would have to be refined, of course, but I think your proposal is note-worthy.

I can't help but think that many of our teachers would have a real problem with grading based on collaboration. I think Mr. Allen is probably an exception among most teachers, who feel that the only objective way to evaluate students is with a number and a letter. So I believe that many teachers would have to be replaced (or just reeducated).

I believe that your idea will eventually emerge as a more prevalent form of education and evaluation. Until then, it's all tests. But I think we can use our collaboration to help our test grades.

Great job!

Daniel"

Best of Week: Story Fragments

The best thing we did this week was the completion of our assigned story fragments, the first step in the process of writing a short story.  Mr. Allen introduced the idea of story fragments to us on Tuesday, showing a way to get our creative juices flowing and begin a short story without encountering writer's block.  He identified the hardest part of writing a story: starting.  I have to agree with that.  It's always difficult to begin a story, as you don't know how much you need to introduce to the reader, which scene best captures the character, etc.  His solution is a story fragment, which is merely a piece of the story which goes into the story's premise without being labeled as a beginning, middle, or end.   This allows us to establish the character and plot to a certain extent which just being an outlet for all the ideas we have about a topic that often get overlooked in the writing process.  This one page fragment can then be turned into a true short story, with a beginning, middle, and end.

I was shocked at the ease with which I could write my story fragment.  I sat thinking for a few minutes about possible ideas, searching my mind for widowed images - images that we remember in our minds because we cannot understand them - and came upon a memory of walking along the streets of Lower Manhattan and seeing a homeless man hiding behind a newspaper.  I don't know why that picture sticks with me, but it does.  So I began writing a story for this man, and my fingers couldn't keep up with my brain.  I was so pleased with my result, which took a total of about 20 minutes to write, that I read it to my mom, which I almost never do with anything but a final draft.  She really liked it.  

So now I'm thinking about how I can apply this technique in other aspects of my writing and my life.  I am now reassured that picking a topic and running with it can sometimes result in a great foundation to build upon.  I shouldn't push away thoughts that keep returning just because they don't immediately fit in a final draft.  I also shouldn't fear my widowed images.  If I can't understand them now, there's a good chance that I will be able to understand them after writing about them.  I really enjoyed looking at writing as a way of expression rather than a solely a way of presenting your polished thoughts.  I certainly see myself using this technique in the future.

What if?; A world without Postmodernism

Throughout much of this semester in English class we have discussed Postmodernism in order to grasp this important philosophy of our era, as well as in the context of Heart of Darkness and short stories.  On Friday, as the class searched the text of Boys, by Rick Moody, for elements of Postmodernism, I couldn't help but wonder what the world would be like without the knowledge of this articulation of our existence.  Would we see the world in a different way?  

I began with the basic tenant of postmodernism: we are all part of a corporate system of ideas that limits our authenticity and originality, and makes commodities of our lives.  Now if I didn't see it that way, would I live my life differently?  I don't believe my life would be drastically different, yet I do think that I would be more prone to succumb to the system.  This leads me to the next aspect of postmodernism: since we cannot escape the system, we must find a way within the system to find meaning.  Perhaps without knowing that the system exists, I wouldn't know how to make meaning for myself.  

I also wonder how my view of stories like HOD and Boys would be different without an understanding of postmodernism.  My feeling is that I would make similar observations - the harlequin is independent and scrappy, for example - but that would be it.  I wouldn't be able to use that information to conclude other things based on a postmodern view of the character.  What postmodernism offers, it seems, is not a new fabrication of human life, but rather an articulation of the life we already know.  In this way we humans can find meaning in the system just by knowing about the system.  

Connection: Dehumanization in Heart of Darkness and Israel

One of the central themes of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is the dehumanizing portrayal of Africans.  First published in 1899, the story follows a man named Marlow's journey from Belgium to the Congo River and into the heart of the African ivory trade.  Throughout the tale Marlow witnesses near-slave treatment of Africans by European traders, who consider Africans merely part of the machinery of the trade process.  Elements of this unilateral, stereotype-based view of nonwhites that ultimately leads to extreme dehumanization can be found in Israeli-Palestinian relations, especially in the last month or so.

Though neither faction, Israelis nor Palestinians, have complete control over the other, their relations center around the erroneous idea that people of the other faction are just terrorists plotting to kill everyone that is against them.  Even more so, they consider each other's citizens as merely statistics on a death toll sheet.  This view, which shows itself on one side more so than the other sometimes, explains their failure to make peace and their continuous military conflicts.  And, on top of that, the past 8 years of American dehumanization of Muslims in general only boosts the attitude.

So what can we learn from Heart of Darkness and the late 19th century that can help us today?  Well, first of all, we can learn to identify other examples in our society in which two opposing sides fail to recognize the other as anything but inhuman (just look to Washington DC for further example).  By identifying these situations, we can find solutions that bring both parties back to human levels of interaction.  Just as Kurtz in Heart of Darkness tries to reveal the truth about the ivory trade, so too do Israelis need to begin reaching out to Muslims as neighbors, not arch enemies, and vise versa.  Only when these two sides have enough pressure from the outside to relate on a more mature level (much of which will come from the tone in the Washington DC) will they be forced to reconsider their failed policies of "peace."  I truly hope that Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts don't get stymied like Kurtz's efforts to reveal the evils of European treatment of Africans.