Root of wash’d sweet flag!
Of course an action would lie. In morals. Sweet and unctuous duty! Sweet pomegranate seed, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were all simultaneous, if so, all this, he might even have been greater than we do not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, the victim of some heat upon my knees, calls “May the good things, or on different plants, as it tore them off him?” Flag of teeming life!
Systematic
Then, turning to a European event, at first purely morphological, or nearly six feet long; For thus merely touching their faces, Strange large men, to roll the tobacco for a like manner, for his sons, Phegeus and Idaeus went his way, becomes less useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield, a sudden maelstrom; seized the boat knife, stooping, soused their bags and, to be whipped, was one lying by the rapid arming and the green and gold. A pallid float, it has been so unsteady that he said For the love of ease undulates through a single second, Songs that Reached Our Heart melodic, Pennywise’s Way to Wealth parsimonic. My own three syntheses, since I first noticed him when the winter, and he tried to make to one side and some behind, beneath the surface of the dog barking in bell lane poor brute and it shall surely be when the bell bringing the programme of music you must know that fellow in black, one regiment departs to morrow, Do you suppose I would rather feel your way, faintly roaring, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his brow – Think what it is, therefore, discussed this case it were no advantage to the other Achaeans whose lives are delicate, fragile, questionable questions!
Candide
The Flood
Gill sat at a lamp-lit bar called The Ark in Cairo. He ordered another drink.
ANNA: “Gill, after this one I’m cutting you off.”
GILL: “Ah, come on barkeep! I’ve got another story for you, better than all the other ones, swear. You’ll want to make me another and one for yourself, after you hear it.”
ANNA: “I have one already.”
GILL: “Let’s see, I told you the one about fixing the space station, raiding the Nigerian mafia palace, boating the Amazon into Columbia to take out those commie drug dealers, wiping out the Islamists in the hills of Pakistan–”
ANNA: “OK, if you’re as great as you make yourself out to be in your stories, how come you look so down? No offense, but you look like a bum.”
GILL: “You’ll understand once you hear this one: my best friend, partner in crime, died this year.”
ANNA: “I’m sorry to hear that.”
GILL: “It was that last flu epidemic. He was a bull of a man, could almost take me in a fight, but that bug got the best of him. Wasted away with an IV in his arm. He would tear it out whenever he came to.”
Gill finished his drink with a gulp.
ANNA: “Damn.”
GILL: “Don’t you damn him!”
ANNA: “Sorry.”
GILL: “Yeah, right. How’s about that next one?”
Anna motioned over to the doorman.
ANNA: “I think we have someone for the man upstairs.”
GILL: “You mean Noah?”
ANNA: “Yes. This is The Ark, after all. You know him?”
GILL: “If he’s the same Noah I think he is, who hasn’t? He’s a legend.”
ANNA: “Now I’m not so sure I want to send you up there. I thought he could ease your misery with his.”
GILL: “He survived the civil war, the plague, and the flood that was supposed to end it all. Disappeared afterwards, hiding out somewhere…”
ANNA: “Hiding in plain sight. Sounds like you’ve sobered up enough. Tell you what — I’ll make you another drink and then Adam here will take you up.”
IMMORTALITY DENIED
Adam and Gill walked through a labyrinthine series of hallways above the bar before reaching a nondescript door. Adam opened the door and pushed Gill through.
NOAH: “Who is this cretin?”
ADAM: “Calls himself Gill. Been telling Anna some stories. Seems to know who you are.”
NOAH: “And would I know who you are Gill?”
GILL: “Well, sir, I am also known as G.I. Bill and my last name is Gamesh.”
NOAH: “I suspected as much. Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands over Noah’s desk.
GILL: “You don’t look any younger than you were in the pictures I’ve seen, like you’re still my age.”
NOAH: “True. And I suppose you came to find out how? To find out if the rumors are true?”
GILL: “Right. My friend, you might know him as The Kid, died of that last flu. I’ve killed scores of people but his death scared me. I don’t want to die like that.”
NOAH: “I heard he was a great man. I’m sorry for your loss.”
GILL: “Well, thank you.”
Gill finished his drink.
GILL: “So you think you could help me out with this whole not dying thing?”
Noah laughed.
NOAH: “Let me tell you what I had to endure to earn this life extension. You may have heard or suspected. I engineered the dam break at Three Gorges that ended the chaos. The security council gridlocked on military force, and the flu was spreading. A flood seemed the best option.”
GILL: “Not to the Chinese.”
NOAH: “No, but to the CIA, Russians, Sicilians, Nigerians, Indians, Yakuza — even the Mexican cartels –; anybody who had tentacles in the Shanghai area and stood to profit from rebuilding after such unprecedented destruction.”
GILL: “A conspiracy from the underworld.”
NOAH: “And I led — because of my name, perhaps — but also because of my background as an engineer. We’re both engineers gone bad.”
GILL: “I never thought to question Uncle Sam’s morality until recently. I’m just Special Forces.”
NOAH: “A bit beyond that from what I’ve heard. I was promised restored health, a safe family, and the destruction of a city which I had grown to despise. Seemed righteous enough to me.”
GILL: “Your family?”
NOAH: “My son, with me to help manage the detonations, survived. The rest of my family — my wife, my younger sons, my young daughters, all… I had made arrangements with people I thought I could trust. In the aftermath–”
GILL: “I’m sorry. Anna told me you could relate– I didn’t realize.”
NOAH: “The Americans were apologetic. They’ve promised the best medical technology for as long as it will keep me alive.”
GILL: “So you have immortality.”
NOAH: “I do not derive much comfort from my situation.”
Gill looked to Noah for an answer and found only a brooding visage.
NOAH: “Acquire great wealth, take care of your body, and procreate. Settle down; use the vim and vigor which made you a legend to master less dangerous pursuits.”
GILL: “Sounds boring.”
NOAH: “I have given you the secret to immortality. Do these things, and you will not fear death. Adam, take care of him, please. Excellent to meet, you, famous Gill.”
Movie Hero
When you work with someone who talks all the time about everything, you learn to listen and make the appropriate noises at the appropriate times. That was Matthew’s conclusion, anyway. J and M work as ushers at a movie theater in an upscale shopping district. J talks constantly. Besides helping customers find their theaters, ushers have to clean up the cups, popcorn buckets, candy boxes, and other trash the customers leave behind. J and M wait for Superman Returns to let out and then they go into the theater with their trash bags.
“You see those girls walking out?” J asks.
“Yeah,” says M, “they looked good.”
“Damn fine,” J says. “I haven’t had sex in way too long.”
M opened his mouth as if to speak and looked uncomfortable.
“You know I lost my virginity when I was eleven years old,” J says, “eleven years old, just playin’ some Sonic the Hedgehog, when my friend comes down the stairs and says ‘your turn.’ I went upstairs and –”
“Wait, when you were eleven?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t no big thing. My friends and I was just playin’ some video games and the guy whose house it was, his fourteen year old sister did us all one after the other. Except for her brother, you know.”
“Wow”
“Since I got back from my tours I haven’t had much luck, though. It’s harder to get laid when you live with your mom.”
“…how was your luck in the Middle East?”
“Not great. Had a Japanese girl in Hawaii, when I was on R&R. Met her in a club. I still keep in touch with her, you know. Once the army money comes through for that real estate flip I been telling you about, and I got my money, I’m gonna fly back to Hawaii and marry that girl.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
M stops listening and starts making appropriate noises as he sweeps the top half of the theater. J has somehow moved into talking about his huge and ever-growing pirated movie collection. Probably the Japanese girl got him thinking about anime. M finishes his half before J, as usual.
“You play video games?” J asks.
“I used to play all the time; shooters, mostly.”
“Well, my buddies and I all get together and play Unreal Tournament 2004 on Friday nights. You innerested?”
“I dunno, maybe.”
M starts wheeling the trash can out of the theater. J follows. M stows the trash can in a nook and they go to the lobby. The ticket line is longer than J has ever seen.
“The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is bringin’ um in.” J says.
“Yeah. I doubt it’s any good but people seem to like it. Sequels normally suck.”
“Yeah, I saw it the day it came out and it wasn’t that great.”
They approach the ticket taker, who is in a motorized wheelchair.
“Can you take the podium while I go get dinner?” he asks.
“Sure,” M says, hesitantly. He and J exchange glances.
Once he has zipped away J says, “You know he’s always at that pizza place for at least half an hour.”
“Yeah I know. I’m sick of cleaning theaters, though.” M tears a ticket and points a customer in the right direction. Now all the customers in the lobby are in line for concessions.
“Check out that girl,” J says, nodding towards a woman paying for her drink. “Ooh she’s thick. Pretty face, too.” J stares.
M runs a hand through his shiny black hair and says, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“She’s comin’ over here, be cool.” J steps up to the podium and sucks in his gut, straining his too-tight gray vest. M hangs back, just off to the side.
“How you doin’ tonight?” J asks, voice smooth, teeth glowing against his dark skin.
“OK,” she says, adjusting her purse and shouldering her ale-colored hair in the process. “I’m waiting for someone. He was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”
“Shame to keep a girl like you waiting,” J says. She smiles.
“I called him a couple times but he didn’t answer.”
“Shame,” J says, shaking his head, lips pursed. “What movie are you seeing?”
“Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“Oh I saw that Friday, it’s great.”
“But I thought you said –” M says.
“I think it’s better than the first one,” J says.
“Really,” she says, raising her eyebrows.
“Yeah, better than whatever that hero movie is that’s out, too” J says.
Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, VI
I translated this passage for the Albert O. Greef Translation Award Competition, put on by the KU Classics department every year. I didn’t win but, more importantly, I enjoyed the process.
VI
Philonicus the Thessalian took Bucephalus the horse to Philip to sell for thirteen talents. When they went down to the plain to test Bucephalus he seemed difficult and entirely useless. He would not be mounted or obey the voice of any in Philip’s entourage, but struggled against all of them.
Philip, annoyed, ordered Philonicus to lead away the thoroughly wild and unruly horse. But Alexander said, “They’re wasting a great horse; they’ll never be able to handle him because they’re ignorant and weak.”
At first Philip ignored him, but after many interruptions and fits he replied, “Are you rebuking your elders as though you know more and are better able to handle a horse?”
“I could definitely handle this horse better than them.”
“And if you can’t, what will be the penalty for your insolence?”
“By Zeus, I’ll pay the price of the horse.”
Laughter followed his words. Once a mutual wager was agreed upon, he ran straight to the horse, took his rein, and turned him towards the sun. Apparently, Alexander had observed that Bucephalus was utterly confused by the sight of his own shadow rolling and falling before him.
So for a short time Alexander ran alongside him and stroked him, as repetitive movement sated his passion and spirit. Then Alexander gently shrugged off his shabby cloak and gracefully mounted him. Quickly attaching the reins to the bit, he got him under control without hitting him or tearing his mouth. With rhythmic commands and spurrings, Alexander galloped the eager horse.
Philip’s entourage was anxious and silent at first; but when Alexander turned Bucephalus around perfectly, with swagger and a smile, they all went wild. They say that his father even cried tears of joy. When Alexander dismounted, Philip kissed his head and said, “Son, seek a kingdom equal to yourself — Macedonia cannot hold you.”
ENGL 332: Mid-Term Exam
Written in class on 28 Feb 2009; lightly touched-up.
Consider deception as a subject or theme in both comedies and histories. Who deceives whom? How? Is deception always or usually “wrong”?
Deception plays a central part in both Shakespeare’s comedies and his histories. He deceives to allude to the fanciful, hyperreal nature of his plays. His characters deceive to win love, encourage love in others, vanquish enemies, and trick friends. Men and women both deceive in Shakespeare’s worlds, but men more prominently employ dishonesties.
In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare begins with a common drunk. Some nobles kidnap him and convince the hungover pauper that he is a prince. An entire entourage of servants and companions is compelled by a Lord to act various parts, mirroring for the audience what goes on before them. The play proper starts when the cross-dressing “wife” insists the hoodwinked watch a performance to ease his transition from fifteen years of madness to his rightful station.
This method of deception by alterance of outward appearance shows up again in Tranio. He mimics his master Lucentio in order to court and bargain for Bianca. All of Bianca’s suitors engage in some sort of deception, pretending to be teachers or wealthy nobles to gain favor with her and her pimping father. Lucentio comes out with Bianca’s hand, but it is hard to fault him among his company.
In Much Ado About Nothing, a villain and a village deceive to manipulate the course of courtships. The villain Don John employs the sycophant Borachio to use Margaret the maid to deceive Hero’s once and future family into thinking her unchaste and impure. On the other hand, Beatrice and Benedick are brought together by the ego-stroking plots of nobles and maidens, respectively. Again, appearance is enlisted, but wrongly, while suggestion to eavesdropping pridefuls coaxes fruit out of their “merry war” (1.1.57).
Falstaff also deceives. He has no rival in deception in Henry IV‘s first part. His lies come not from malice nor the desire for love but from a pride besotted by a lust for life. Though he knows he is a hopeless wretch he spins heroic tales out of his oft abortive adventures.
His pal Hal becomes Henry V, who will not deceive Falstaff but has no problem deceiving others to achieve his ends.
Storied
“Uncle Moses sat down in the story chair and told this very story” (Alexie 143).
This is the last line of THE STORY, the center of Sherman Alexie’s “A Good Story” (139). Story appears twice in the sentence, which pivots on “the story.” The name, Uncle Moses, evokes the old stories of the Torah. Writers, from the ancient Hebrews to now, sit in chairs — the universal setting. And for all that, Uncle Moses retells “this very story,” ending the third page. Hence, a good story recurses — repeats itself.
A young kid, Arnold, prompts this particular recursion. He asks old Uncle Moses for “a good story.” Instead of going to a baseball game with his classmates, Arnold hides until they leave, just because he wanted to listen to him. An old Indian, Moses delights in the “Little Man”’s little rebellion — skipping out on the great American pastime to hear his elder (143). His elder, who everyday “made sure to greet what he could not see” and “held the last bite of bread and meat in his mouth like the last word of a good story” (141).
Uncle Moses is the agent of recursion in THE STORY. But Alexie himself, called Junior by his mother, tells this story first. He narrates “A Good Story” in the first person. His mother prompts his telling, asking for “a real good story”; Sherman replies “Okay, If you want to hear a good story, you have to listen” (140). This quote ends the first of the three sections that make up this short piece. It implicitly instructs the reader to pay close attention.
Such attention shows how Alexie turns his mother’s question around on her; the young boy in his story asks an old man for a good story, echoing his mother’s request of him. In response, his mother hums a “slow song through her thin lips.” When asked about it, she responds with her own playful repetition — she echoes the first line of her son’s story, saying she is “singing an it-is-a-good-day song” (144).
The songs and lips of Winter Santiaga’s world, however, are fast and full. Though much material wealth fills the Santiaga household, there are no tender moments involving rich and meaningful interplay like the one in “A Good Story.” Conversations between Winter and her parents center around business and pleasure. “I just need to get my whip,” Winter’s mother says in the middle of their longest dialog, as though a car will solve her petty woes (25).
Winter’s story borrows from the morality tale, demonstrating the negative consequences of the hip hop generation’s successes and excesses. Sister Souljah uses Winter to demonstrate she understands the mindset of hip hop culture, repeating the themes of its most popular music. She slowly introduces herself into her novel as a counterpoint to Winter: first as an object of Winter’s hate, then as someone respected by Midnight and Rashida, then as a speaking and present character.
Thus, she turns her reader’s engagement with Winter around on them, like Alexie does in “A Good Story.” Packaged to capitalize on the popularity of hip hop, the cover of The Coldest Winter Ever gives little hint of Sister Souljah’s personal feelings towards and relationship with the movement, which are revealed in the Reader’s Guide that follows Winter’s story. Answering ten never-uttered questions, she divulges how she rose from a poor girl in the Brooklyn projects to a world-traveled, college-educated do-gooder. Souljah paints herself as a compassionate person who genuinely wants and is able to help those living in projects and ghettos. “Overall,” she says, “I knew by including myself in the story, I was giving readers a compass to find their way” (304). She and Doc represent positive role models, in contrast with the women portrayed previously. Whereas Winter knowingly gives her mother crack and spends all her money on herself, Souljah embraces the HIV positive and raises money for them. Winter steals from Souljah, emulates her hedonistic mother, and ends up abandoned by her community, another unwitting client of the corrections industry. A morality tale, through and through.
Though there are major differences between the familial relationships and lifestyles portrayed in Souljah and Alexie’s works, they do share some common vectors: parties, alcohol and drug abuse, and unfair treatment of their respective ethnic groups by the authorities. With regard to these themes, they do similar cultural work. They engage in ethnography, recognizing that their people are persecuted but also revealing the elements of their cultures that are self-destructive — namely, succumbing to hedonistic and escapist behavior without considering consequences. Alexie uses irony and playfulness to reveal, while Souljah tells a keep-it-real morality tale; but both challenge their communities to better themselves.
“A Good Story” ends: “Believe me, there is just barely enough goodness in all of this” — a tacit acknowledgement, perhaps, of the there-absent self-destructiveness that flows through the rest of the book (144). The Coldest Winter Ever, on the other hand, ends with Winter’s bitter internal monologue: “Fuck it. She’ll learn for herself. That’s just the way it is” (284). Here Souljah echoes a popular song by Tupac Shakur, a murdered rap superstar. Winter’s staccato judgement does not superficially mesh with Souljah’s message, but the veiled reference strengthens her and Alexie’s point. Whether told from a chair or a mic, a good story repeats.
Essay Four: Fear and the Imagination
When inside he felt there must be snakes all about him, ready to strike. It seemed he could see and feel them there, waiting tensely in coil. In the dark he imagined long white fangs ready to sink into his neck, his side, his legs. He wanted to come out, but kept still. Shucks, he told himself, ef there wuz any snakes in here they sho woulda done bit me by now. Some of his fear left, and he relaxed (Wright 264).
In the quotation above, Big Boy has just entered the kiln that serves as his hiding place while he waits to escape to “Chicawgo” (263). His entrance had been complicated by a six foot rattlesnake which he killed with a stick. This passage shows the resulting paranoia. He imagines not another solitary snake like the one he just encountered, but multiple snakes, surrounding him. His frightened mind fills in the sensory details.
The repetition of “his” in the third sentence emphasizes the self-consciousness induced by fear. Imagination nearly overrides the fight or flight instinct, showing the psychological effect of fear. Internal dialog checks his imagination. Wright indicates Big Boy’s thoughts by using vernacular in his narration. “Ef”, “wuz”, and “sho woulda done” are reminiscent of earlier dialog and depart from the style of the surrounding narration.
After their confrontations with violence, both Big Boy and Newt retreat within themselves. How each character’s thoughts are presented to the reader gives insight into the author’s intentions for that character. Parks uses more devices to convey his character’s thoughts than Wright does. By this measure, Newt’s inner life is better developed than Big Boy’s.
In The Learning Tree, Parks uses many different devices to let the reader hear his protagonist’s thoughts. A couple longer thoughts are introduced with quotation marks, like dialog. Breaking his convention, a thinking verb replaces the expected saying verb. This break implies well-developed, articulate, and rational thought, suggesting that the content of quote has a strong effect on Newt’s actions and words.
More often, Parks simply describes Newt’s internal landscape. After the Mississippi-free-for-all, Newt broods at home, feeling “bitterness and deep shame” (125). A more specific look into Newt’s mind directly precedes this picture:
Time, it seemed, couldn’t erase the jeering inhuman voices that had goaded him to such an indecent victory. [. . .] He had begun thinking of those voices as coming from a huge lump of colorless, sweating flesh, with countless eyes and a big crooked mouth, uttering one word – “nigger!” He sat dejectedly on the porch now, wanting to run from this place to some un-heard-of land where such a word didn’t exist (125).
Here, Newt’s mind also fills in sensory details to fit his emotions. Like Big Boy, Newt wants to run and escape, but stays put. He is helpless in his fear, and cannot relax. He seems to only push his fear into his subconscious when Mag Pullens tells him his cousin Polly has arrived. Polly passes for white, inciting a fight as Newt walks her back to his house. His anger is incited by the slur that haunts him, showing how strongly his daymare affected him.
Another device Parks uses is a lengthy, rambling parenthetical. He uses it after Newt has witnessed Mr. Kiner’s murder and is wrestling with the dilemma of whether or not to tell on Booker. The steps on the path of his deliberation are linked by ellipses. Directly after this paragraph of a sentence, Parks returns to describing Newt’s visions, which stem from his dilemma. He sees “all the houses burning and people screaming and fighting,” all because of the revelation that a black man killed old man Kiner (159).
These different devices, then, serve different purposes. Descriptions work best for complex, intense mental activity experienced as visual or auditory perceptions. And parenthetical phrases work to convey dramatic inner struggle.
Wright, on the other hand, doesn’t use such a variety of devices. His standard, grammatical English blends with the Southern vernacular that marks Big Boy’s inner dialog. Wright also describes Big Boy’s frightened imaginings, though they are less hallucinatory than Newt’s. Nevertheless, they are similarly symbolic.
Both convey well the fear of the unseen other, the alien. Big Boy’s fear of imminent attack by snakes reflects his fear of the lynch mob that hunts him. And the surreal visions Newt has are his fears come to life in his mind. Both creatively extrapolate possible future events from recent events. Rather than straightforward symbolism, replacing one object of fear for another, Newt sees a sweeping, detailed vision of his town in chaos as a consequence of his confession, or the hellish, surreal face of racism. While Wright tells his readers through drama, Parks goes a step further and shows them the psychological effects of conflict.
Works Cited
Parks, Gordon. The Learning Tree. 1963. New York: Fawcett, 1987.
Wright, Richard. Uncle Tom’s Children.
Essay Three: Burning Glory
— Shannon didn’t even scream. Her mouth was wide open, and she just breathed the flames in. Her glasses went opaque, her eyes vanished, and all around her skull her fine hair stood up in a crown of burning glory — (Allison 201)
This is a gruesome, yet beautiful passage. Though the image it evokes may make the reader sick, it also inspires awe with the simple phrase “in a crown of burning glory.” This seems a fitting image for the death of Shannon Pearl — an albino, a hateful outcast, yet an angel to her obsessive parents. The account of this tragedy illustrates how Dorothy Allison turns meaningless suffering into meaningful narrative, exercising agency over her painful past by integrating intrusive traumatic memories into a novel with great aesthetic merit.
For Bone, Allison’s fictional counterpart, Shannon’s dramatic death must have been particularly painful. She is her first close friend, and there is evidence that their relationship is more than platonic. Particularly, Allison describes a vaguely sexual encounter underneath the stage at a gospel show which ends in Bone vomiting. Shannon puts her arms around Bone and rocks her head back and forth. Bone starts to feel sick from the smell of Shannon’s hair, suggesting their faces are close together. Twice, while Bone is trying to escape from Shannon, Allison begins a paragraph with “Uh uh uh” without attributing it to anyone. When Bone starts vomiting Shannon is “gasping and giggling” (164).
Bone’s disgust quickly shifts subjects. After Bone and Shannon have crawled out from under the stage, a singer sees Shannon and calls her the “ugliest thing” he has “ever seen” (165). Bone unleashes a flurry of obscenities and insults upon him in furious retaliation. After Mrs. Pearl intervenes and defuses the situation, Bone reaches for Shannon’s hand but is rejected. After Allison reflects on their shared hatred, the scene ends with Shannon whispering “Someday” and Bone replying in kind (167).
But Shannon dies before she and Bone can get their revenge and/or grow more intimate. Though they have a nasty falling-out, Bone accepts an invitation to a Pearl family barbeque after an extended period of silence. She realizes that she “was the only friend Shannon Pearl had in the world” when she sees Shannon at her family get-together, alone and occasionally insulted by her cousins (199). Remembering “the way I’d loved her stubborn pride, the righteous rage she turned on her tormentors,” Bone recognizes Shannon as “the kind of monster I could understand” (200).
Before describing Shannon’s death, Allison describes the scene just after Shannon’s fiery demise. With a line of white space she communicates how fast it happened, skipping from jumping the fence to being questioned by the Sheriff and yelled at by Shannon’s mother. She quickly returns to the specifics of Shannon’s death, and describes it step-by-step. She breaks what must have taken thirty seconds into three paragraphs, sparing the reader, and herself, no detail.
The random, freak accident that takes Shannon’s life becomes meaningful through what Bone learns afterwards. Most directly, though, she learns about suffering and loss. Seeing Mrs. Pearl’s grief makes her realize that everyone suffers, not just the marginalized. Mrs. Pearl’s moan is “the purest gospel, a song of absolute hopeless grief” (203). Realizing these painful emotions are universal, her “hardheaded anger” dissipates. Now able to feel empathy, Mrs. Pearl’s skewed vision of her daughter as “an angel of the Lord” instructs her on the subjectivity of experience (202). Stories can be told many different ways — based on different assumptions and perspectives. For a young writer, this realization is paramount.
Having relived her experiences and related them, if obliquely, to her current situation, Allison makes her past pain meaningful. She does this through the process of making her experiences accessible and meaningful to the reader. This makes her writing therapeutic. Sharing past experience with others, finding the universal appeal of her story, Allison brings the pain out of the murk of her consciousness and into the light of public discourse.
For Bone, though, the lesson doesn’t sink in right away. While sharing in grief at Shannon’s funeral assuages her pain temporarily, it does not expunge the hate that burns inside her. Continued frustrations due to class tension and restrictive gender roles make the hate instilled by Glen’s abuse color her entire view of the world. Raylene recognizes Bone’s negative outlook and reproves her for it, while at the same time recognizing the budding writer. “You’re making up stories about those people,” she says. “Look at it from the other side for a while. Maybe you won’t be glaring at people so much” (262).
This lesson does sink in, to an extent, within the novel. After Glen rapes Bone and Anney displays compassion for the insane Glen in the aftermath, propelling Bone into unconsciousness, the subjectivity of experience beings to sink in. She sees from her Mama’s perspective and realizes that Anney will go back to Glen. She may not understand why, but she knows what it means for her. Looking at her situation through her mother’s eyes, and contrasting it with her own interests, she is able to make her first adult decision: to live with Raylene.
Works Cited
Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. New York: Plume, 1993.
