October 2017 – Literary Arts Blogspace

The Braindead Megaphone

“Is human nature such that, under certain conditions, stupidity can come to dominate, infecting the brighter quadrants, dragging everybody down with it?”(Saunders 7)

If you are interested in reading a good collection of essays, I have just the selection for you.

For my blog this week, I decided to do somewhat of an excerpt from a larger work. I’ve selected to review the first “chapter” of essays within the book written by George Saunders, which is a collection of essays. The book is entitled, The Braindead Megaphone and the layout of it itself is quite interesting. The essay themselves are separated as somewhat chapters; however, some of the essays have subtopics. The chapter my blog focuses mainly on is the first one, “The Braindead Megaphone”. The chapter is broken into individual subtext that are divided in numeric order from one to nine. The subtext itself is somewhat confusing when you first begin because at first glance, it doesn’t seem as though they correlate to each other than the fact that they are works based on hypotheticals and internal thoughts.

My two favorites would have to be number two and number six. They both link to each other, and the philosophy of the “Megaphone Man” is truly something brilliant. It is very difficult to explain the clever analysis of the situation within the writing without going in-depth and explaining the entire essay.

This first collection, in particular, does not necessarily lay out a full start to finish storyline; however, each does deliver a message that may or may not tie into another subtext within the essays. The works are written in what I can only explain as a thought process form. To elaborate on that, a few of them drift between thoughts, some follow a distinct line of ideas that drive the work to a specific conclusion, and in others, Saunders lays out information and plainly talks to the readers about a topic that interests him.

The positives I received reading these works are that the works each have some very interesting logic to them. After each of them, they left me with something to think about as I went into the next piece, and a thought-provoking essay is always a good thing. The only negatives I can give are that this book judging from the first chapter that it is not a collection of essays for the feeble-minded and that the layout of the book, taking the numbering and divided sections into consideration, can be somewhat confusing for the reader. However, I do not believe that a book being for an intellectual audience is negative. I am simply stating that the book follows a very complex and creative mind that dissects the boundaries of social living and an individuals purpose in life.

Although this review is only for the first “chapter” of essays, I do not doubt that the writing will be phenomenal. George Saunders has a very distinct voice within his writing that pulls you into a view of the world from an overview. In conclusion, the writing is most definitely worth a read.

A Great Story You Should Read

After reading “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and writing a blog about it, I began looking more into the works of the author. I recently discovered another short story title “Regret” written by Kate Chopin, first published in a short story collection A Night in Acadia. This story is one of the most satisfying piece I’ve ever read.

“Regret” is a story of pure, ironic human nature. Humans often tell themselves what they don’t wont or will never do but when those things are presented to them, their entire perspective changes… and suddenly, you realize it’s exactly what you want. So, shortly, I would say the theme of this short story is chiefly realization.

The story begins introducing the main character, Mamzelle Aurlie (which I have no idea how to pronounce). This 50-year-old woman is introduced as an overall strong, sturdy woman who knows exactly what she does not want. “So, she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with which she shot chicken-hawks), and her religion.” Chopin created a visual, emotional, and literal description of Mamzelle in just one sentence, which is very impressive.

The story then transitions to a morning where Mamzelle is observing her new neighbors. Chopin uses the description to reveal how the main character feels about the family. Chopin uses the show don’t tell method very well, almost like it’s just second nature. I appreciate the functions of all the descriptions. None of them feel redundant or out of place. There’s just enough throughout the entire story. On this morning, Mamzelle is presented exactly what she didn’t want. This abrupt introduction changed her routine and at the end, her emotions.

Mamzelle realizes that she’s been missing out on something very special. Her entire life she believed this aspect didn’t belong in her life story, but she was wrong. The title acts as the last emotional element in the story. The main character doesn’t frankly say or describe how she feels, but the ending created a sort of somber. When you look back at the title, you know exactly what Mamzelle Aurlie is feeling while she sat at the table—regret. The ending stirred an emotion inside of me. I almost felt sorry for the main character. I believe that’s exactly what Chopin wanted her readers to feel.

Some interesting things I want to point out is the way Kate Chopin shows her character through her fictional character. Chopin was pro Confederate and obviously racist. Mamzelle describes the slaves working and living across the cotton field. The words negroes and mulatto are used, which was striking to the eye but not so much distracting. I feel I have a very complicated, interested relationship with this author. I know how she felt about my kind, but I can’t help but to appreciate the dynamics of her stories.

Overall, this was a great story. If you want to know what the ‘introduction’ was, click here to give the story a read. It’s very short!

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Image result for the handmaid's tale cover

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a speculative fiction piece taking place in a dystopian world. After the government has been usurped, the main character, known by her fake name of “Offred”, lives in the reformed country of Gilead. Gilead is based on strict but warped Christian fundamentals. Men and women are assigned roles in society—men having roles in government or security, women the roles of housekeeping and simple wives. Offred is a Handmaid. Her job is to go from household to household and become pregnant with the household’s Commander’s child, give it to the Wife, and move to the next house. If she does not succeed in pregnancy within three households, she will be shipped off to the “Colonies.” Throughout the story, Offred looks back on her past life, laments her lack of independency, and wonders if an uprising is on the way.

The story is told by jumps between the present day and the past. The restrictive, “women-aren’t-allowed-to-raise-their-voices” world is juxtaposed to our modern day world. Though the difference is great, the novel rarely goes overboard with it. The few times that Offred laments her restrictive life are used to effect, as opposed to coming up every other sentence. The overall world and how it works are also told in a simple “this is how it is” fashion. The book, after all, doesn’t need to inform the reader that what is happening is not okay—the reader knows that—so Offred doesn’t need to bring it up all the time.

The fact that Offred rarely shows how she feels makes the moments of her falling apart all the more effective. Atwood describes the environments with just enough detail to leave the exact image up to the reader, and because of this, leaves things simple enough to understand. Handmaids wear red, Marthas wear green, Guardians wear black, etc., etc. The reader also isn’t told every single practice of Gilead, but the ones they are told are enough to fill in the blanks. This is a tricky thing with dystopian novels like this and The Hunger Games and Divergent—getting across just how bad the government is without spending half the book on exposition. THT does this very well.

The more we find out about Gilead and the rest of the world, the more things click into place, as opposed to it all coming at once. The last few chapters also cement how things are not always one-hundred percent cemented, either. Not everyone is going to listen to the “system.” And not in the straightforward, uprising rebellion way, just twists in the system way. The fact that the world is speculative also lends to its effect. Nothing about Gilead is too technological or fantastical, and is intentionally realistic enough in function and design. While it’s also clear that the rest of the world is not exactly like this, the book wisely leaves out how other countries react to Gilead, as any explanation would probably be unrealistic.

Characters in this book are tricky. The only ones with straightforward personalities are Moira, Offred’s best friend; the Commander of Offred’s household; and Serena Joy, the Wife to the Commander. Moira is almost like the character who’s supposed to be the protagonist—she’s not vocally rebelling against the system, but she’s sneaky about it, and unlike Offred, retains her personality after the change. The Commander is intentionally mysterious and hard to figure out. Serena Joy is almost the same, as it’s unclear exactly what her motivations are. These characters are primarily what sets the plot forward.

Offred herself is hard to place. It could be argued that she’s simply a shadow of her former self, and that years of abuse and despair have worn her too far down to recover. Her acceptance but bitterness of the system, for example, and having more curiosity than hope in regards to change. This is reasonable, as like I’ve said, she does have her moments where she crumbles a bit. Her reactions to change are not hope or joy, but rather caution in case she gets in trouble.

Because of this, when she thinks back on her former child and husband, it can be a bit hard to take seriously. She doesn’t fear for them, rarely expresses hope that they’re alive, and seems to just accept that they’re gone and she’ll never see them again. The memories she has of her child are tender, but regarding her ex-husband, she talks about him as if he never really mattered. It can be confusing and conflicting at times. This problem is especially tedious towards the end. Offred is put into several very emotional situations that she doesn’t react very emotionally to.

The book can be slow at times, because progressions of the plot are coupled with the unspoken thoughts and feelings from Offred. Understandable, considering this is first-person, but rather than the two being interlaced with each other, one chapter can be wholly plot, and the other wholly thoughts. It’s hard not to skim through some bits (sorry if this is literary-sacrilegious.)

The book, without giving away anything, has a semi-happy, semi-ambiguous ending that ties everything nicely together. There’s no grand battle with explosions or anything, but it does end on as pragmatic of a good ending as possible. I didn’t feel like time had been wasted, and its open interpretation gives a lot to think of.

So, in conclusion, THT can be slow and tedious at times, but it still offers some thoughtful insight and capturing worldbuilding.

The Perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This book was about a boy who went through a series of mental illness and didn’t feel like he fit in at any point. He also felt disassociated from the people around him, and he sees things differently than everyone else. We also see how some people around treat him differently than he sees himself. His friends considered him a “wallflower” and he thought after being so close to his friends that being a wallflower wasn’t all that bad. He however, fell in love with one of his friends and due to never believing in being outgoing, he never took action in loving that girl. He instead wrote a series of letters to no person in particular but rather to some person who would understand where he was coming from. We see that he really just wanted someone to understand him when he really didn’t even understand himself.

This book was written in a series of letters. At first the way it was written tripped me up because I never really get into stories that are written in letter format because I always felt that the letters took away from the real meaning of the story. However, this story never really lost my attention. It was formatted well in a way that didn’t lose me and each entry of the letters lead into the next entry well. We also got to get a lot more from the boy himself with it structured in the form of letters because his mind is directly reflected through the words. I felt the deconstruction of his mind and the way he started realizing what was really wrong with him. I see that before the end of the book he really didn’t understand what was wrong with him and he found it weird when his psychiatrist always asked him about his past, but later on he realized the full extent to why his past was so important. It didn’t really feel like a “Dear Diary” thing but rather a reflection on events that made him realize how disassociated from the world around him.

By the end of this book I was feeling so emotionally connected to the book that I really didn’t want it to end. I think that the idea of the book set on teenagers and a boy feeling the way he did about the people around him and himself made it so relateable. There is a lot of mental illness happening and different reasons as to why those mental diseases are caused. I love the idea behind this story and I believe that everyone should read this at some point in their lives. There is so much meaning behind the words that are written and it honestly changed the way i thought about mental illness and disassociation in general. The ending had me awestruck and wondering who those letters were written to and what they were meant to capture. I think that by the end of the book he reveals the reason he is the way he is but only in a way that he finally realizes it himself.

Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska is a wonderful book by John Green. In this book, the characters are in a prestigious boarding school. The main characters are Miles “Pudge” Halter, Chip “The Colonel” Martin, Takumi Hikohito, Alaska Young, and Lara Buterskaya. The book is about these teenagers trying to understand life. The main character, Miles, tries to find out who he is and tries to experience new things in his life. When Alaska goes missing, he begins to try to understand what happened to her and misses her. When she goes missing, he thinks back to the fond memories that he has of her.

The story is told in a brilliant way. It manages to pull the reader along to whatever is going on in the story. John Green does a good job at making ever character very relatable in some way, he wants to constantly make us emotionally invested with every character in the story. Even though the story is about the protagonist trying to get over his feelings for Alaska and us experiencing his incredible bond with her, it’s also a wonderful story about people learning new things constantly in their teenage years. Miles is an inexperienced nerdy kind of guy, and he is introduced to Chip who is a really cool person, almost the exactly the opposite of Miles. Miles goes through a journey of exploration of smoking, drinking, and other things with Chip who is also, in a way, trying to find out who he really is as well.

I believe that this book is very symbolic. Cigarettes are used as a symbol in this story. It is used as a sign of rebellion, but also it symbolizes time running out. One very popular quote from Alaska is, “Y’all smoke to enjoy it, I smoke to die.” I believe that cigarettes are used as a way to symbolize death and time running out. Alaska goes missing and it ultimately shows other people that time is very scarce. I think the book is a good way to show people that time matters in our life and we shouldn’t throw it away. Instead of spending all of our time trying to understand life, it symbolizes that we should spend our life trying new things and not being scared. That we should always jump into everything head first because life is too short and valuable. The book represents a giant example that we can literally die at any time.

Life is too short to dwell on mistakes we made in the past and worry about everything that will happen in the future. The book shows that we should not worry about the future, especially since we are young, because we could also die at any time. Time is valuable, but also the time for us to die does not have any limits to how old we are. I think that John Green made this book to get people out of their comfort zones and to just dive in all the way into life and not regret things that we do.

To Put A Writer’s Soul To Rest

There is something magical about my literary classroom. Something about the giant windows, the dark wooden floors, the red mushroom lamp. There is something about the way the beige walls and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards posters stare back at you. There is something about the endless sounds of typing and creaks in the floorboards that puts a writer’s soul to rest.

There is something awful in the way coffee smells in the afternoon and how eyes burn form staring at a bright computer screen for hours on end. Something about how your fingers begin to cramp from typing. Something about the way your shoulders slouch under the weight of an impending deadline. There is something about the panic of having only today to finish an assignment that puts a writer’s soul to rest.

There is something infuriating about the untended bookshelf that is collapsing under the weight of books stacked miles high and the leaky Keurig that keeps so many awake. Something about the conflicting opinions that makes your head begin to ache. Something about the criticism that makes you roll your eyes. There is something about the computer shutting down before you can save your work that puts a writer’s soul to rest.

There is something about my literary classroom. Something magical. Something infuriating. Something awful.

Something that puts my soul to rest.

Morning

I wake up one morning earlier than I usually would. The sun has not even fully risen. I lie awake in bed trying to persuade my unconscious mind into succumbing to sleep once again, but it eventually wins out and forces me out of my bed. I get dressed and make my way downstairs. I make a bowl of cereal and start to eat it in silence. After a few bites, I decide to turn on the TV. I walk into the living room to get the remote, but I am surprised by what I find sitting next to it on the couch. I find a corpse sitting there looking as if he is just relaxing. I stand still staring at it, not knowing who the body belonged to or what I was supposed to do about it. I eventually decide that I should call 911 and tell them that I’ve found a dead body sitting on my couch which they immediately question, but I have no answers for them. I finish the phone call and proceed to do the same with my cereal. After doing so, ambulances and police cars pull up with sirens blaring. I open the door to let them in. The paramedics confirm that the body is in fact a dead one though I felt pretty confident in my personal assessment of the body’s state of being. The police officers questioned me, but I had as many solid answers as I did minutes earlier on the phone. They eventually put the body in an ambulance which I found ironic and drove him away. As they drive away, I go back into my bedroom, brush my teeth as well as my hair, and just finish preparing to leave in general. I look down at my watch and realize that it’s time for me to leave. I go to head out the door, but realize that I don’t have my car keys. I check the kitchen counter, my beside table, and just about everywhere else that I’d think they could be. I look over my living room and see my key chain poking up between two couch cushions. I grab them, but as I do so, I smell something awful. I hold my breath, and get outside. I sigh to myself and hope that getting my couch cleaned won’t be too expensive. I then get in my car and drive to work.

the suburbs (pt. 3)

modern man // arcade fire

we were stuck.

we all were.

we’d gotten ourselves caught up in the suburban life, allowing ourselves to succumb to the fate of growing up in a small town and never getting out of it.

or worse: getting out and finding ourselves crawling back home.

but i always wanted to get out. i always wanted to run away from the community that never truly made me feel welcome.

and i knew i could. i knew that one day i would drive past the welcome signs and never once look back. i knew that my life wouldn’t stagnate in the town i never really belonged in.

so they ask, “who do you want to be?” “what do you want to be?”

and i reply, “i want to be a writer.”

“pick something more realistic,” they demand. they wanted a change, something practical.

so i give it to them.

“i want to be a teacher.” “i want to be a doctor.” “i want to be a hematologist.” “i want to be a pediatric surgeon.”

sure, the dreams i told them i had were still things i was interested in, but they weren’t passionate. and i think dreams have to be passionate for them to become anything at all.

i let them change what dreams came out of my mouth, but they could never change the dreams the grew from my brain like wildflowers.

i kept my dreams to myself and watched as they left their own dreams behind. i watched as they assimilated to never leaving the state to go to college, and never leaving the county to start a family. i watched people bloom and wither away into caricatures of the american south.

i saw people open their mouths when asked what they want to be when they grow up only to close them again, returning to the question with something thought more appropriate by the adults who had their dreams shattered by suburbia. they’d let suburbia cloud their ambitions and hopes, and they were trying to make us kids do the same.

but i wasn’t going to let them turn me into another suburban machine. i wasn’t going to let them make me be something i didn’t feel. they weren’t going to poison the wildflowers that grew in my brain.

after all, it was those very wildflowers, that very determination to be what i wanted to be when i grew up, that brought me here.

Ramble

I’m just going to do this off of the top of my head because I think it’s better that way. We edit too much, and we censor ourselves. There is something raw to listening to someone ramble; you get to know their true thoughts off of the top of their head.

I’m always afraid that the thoughts off of the top of my head aren’t good enough. I don’t know enough weird facts. I know a lot about sharks, though. I’m scared of the ocean, and I’m scared of sharks especially. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to get into a shark cage if I ever get the chance, though. I live for the thrill.

Someone once told me that I had lived too much in too short of a time. I was bored because I was an adrenaline junkie. I don’t know whether or not that’s true; I just do whatever makes me happy. I follow my heart no matter what.

I often get really bored with life. I need constant change, and I thrive on it.

I don’t like to share things about myself. The things that you know are not in my comfort zone of things to tell people. I suppose that’s why, sometimes, I overindulge. I like to be out of my comfort zone. Being comfortable makes me uncomfortable in a way–not in the heart pounding way that I want, but rather in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out.

I suppose that’s why I wait to do blogs until the last moment. I don’t follow directions that well because in a way, that makes me vulnerable in a way that I do not ever want to be again. I used to follow every direction every uttered to me.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I don’t know where I’m going in life. The truth is that I’m lost, and I’m just rambling because it’s 8:21 PM on Wednesday night.

I’m lost in life right now. The thing that scares me the most is that I don’t know what my passion is anymore. Writing has lost a lot of its zeal now that I’m forced to do it. I’m terrified that one day, the appeal will slip from me or bubble and boil into something as dreadful as work. I used to play a lot of instruments, but that just doesn’t bring me the same feeling it used to. Besides, I always feel like I’m missing out on life if I’m not doing something adventurous.

I just want passion, and I’ve followed my heart so recklessly for so long that I think I’ve done a lot of what I wanted to do. It really upsets me sometimes. Sometimes I’m afraid that people love me for my quirks and for the things that I do instead of the things I say. It’s weird, I know.

I’m weird in a lot of ways. Anyways, that is all. Have a nice day.

Apartment Mentality

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/190417890478034496/

Link above shows picture inspiring the poem:

Apartment Mentality

Four tiny walls

tiny kitchen

tiny molded toilet and overdue rent

angel white tapestry

separating scenes of the city and sounds of

lost people remembering again

blue speckled pots and pans and spoons

falling from countertop to living room

floor, the door concrete and

warped in the dark when speakers below blow

brilliant red chords with no room to reach out

so they reach up instead

dirty socks line the doorway, Chinese takeout

the last excuse to leave the room

a dove perch on the open balcony, as far as the

eye can see

nothing but little people doing little things

smalls as dust mites or spider bites

scrambling like eggs in a frying pan across the expanse of

big city spread out beneath

each person looking up and biting off small

chunks of their own sky, that is,

within 1000 square feet of carpet.