An (unusual) Toomer sandwich!

It is interesting that we are close reading these Jean Toomer excerpts at the end of the semester because I find his style to be among the most obvious and overt that we have read. Therefore, it is pretty easy to close read, but no less interesting. As others have noted in their blogs, "Becky" opens and closes with the same three evocative sentences. The story expands from this opening, and ends with it, forming a sandwich. Actually, it is not really a traditional sandwich, because sandwiches are usually made with two pieces of the same bread and, while this story appears to begin and end with the same slices of bread, it actually ends with the same piece of bread transformed. The top slice is straight from the bread box, the bottom slice is toasted, if you will.

In the opening, "The Pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound" is taken as a metaphor. Obviously, the pines have been personified, and we assume that the whispering of the pines in the wind is interpreted by the narrator through his own religious conviction. The next sentence must be interpreted as following the former. If the pines are in fact 'whispering' in the wind, then it would seem that there is not really a Bible lying on top of the grave, not 'leaves' of a book but leaves rustling on the ground, again being interpreted in a religious context. We also assume that the mound is a proper grave, and the religious overtones support this assumption, despite their gothic nature. By the story's end, the opening has been transformed. We understand that Becky does not have a grave, but has in fact been buried in her cabin under her collapsed chimney. The bricks have formed a mound, on which Barlo throws a Bible. The haunting scene has been left there, the Bible continuing to flap in the wind, the pines whispering to Jesus as they have done since time immemorial.

This structure informs the rest of the narrative, the latter sentences following on the former sentences and transforming them. "Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons" becomes in the second paragraph, "Becky had one Negro son." The second sentence has simplified the first. Not only is the qualifier "was the white woman" removed, making the verb 'had' to emphasize Becky's action, but the number of sons is reduced. Interestingly, Becky's race is removed in the second sentence, but the Negro race of the son is repeated. Toomer constantly plays with the action of his sentences in this story, giving the characters agency and denying it to them. In the first sentence, Becky's action becomes her identity, although the syntax removes Becky's agency from the action. In the second, simplified version, Becky performs the action, she 'had one Negro son,' but the verb is not active. Rather than connoting a violent birthing or an active possession, it seems to say that she simply had the son, as one would have a teakettle on the stove. When the townsfolk opine about Becky's situation, Toomer does not allow them to give voice to their own opinions; it is only their mouths that do, as disembodied creatures, making the vitriolic words even more sinister.
"Who gave it to her? Damn buck nigger, said the white folks' mouths." By posing the first part of this idea as a question, Toomer again removes the action from the actor. He could have written this as, "The damn buck nigger gave it to her, said the white folks' mouths" but that would have meant that the nigger would have actually acted in the sentence. In the Toomer way, the question becomes accusatory of Becky, since the actor has been removed, and in the following explanation, the only actor is the 'white folks' mouths,' making the sentences really an argument between Becky and her fellow 'white folks.' The point is clearly that whoever 'gave' her the son is unimportant, insofar as the white folks will find someone to blame, rightly or wrongly, and inflict punishment. In the story, the focus is on Becky as the more punished, since she is not only exiled by the townspeople, but also bears the cross of God, who has cast her out of his kingdom, as indeed in her death she is not buried properly in the earth. These two sentences are repeated and transformed again,
"Who gave it to her? Low-down nigger with no self-respect, said the black folks' muths." The same structure is repeated, only this time the 'nigger' has been qualified by 'with no self-respect.' Essentially, the judgment is the same from both side of the town.

"The pines whispered to Jesus" becomes a dramatic refrain that builds throughout the story, as the action proceeds. The refrain moves from despair, to compassion, to desperation, "Pines shout to Jesus!" Finally, the story ends with the Pines again whispering, and they seem totally ineffective in reaching the divine.

"Seventh Street" also uses the sandwich beginning and ending technique, which seems like a very effective structure for a short story. In both, everything operates on multiple levels. Language has literal and figurative meanings always, and in this way, the stories play with our perception.

Circles and Heroes

The beginning of Phillip Roth's American Pastoral begins with the Swede. Then it becomes about the Swede's brother, Jerry, his sort of violent antagonist. Then it becomes about the narrator, in a more focused way, since the whole story is invariably about the narrator's perceptions of these two brothers. Finally it becomes about the book that seems to connect and yet divide the narrator from the Swede. Literature that is self-referential is so satisfying. The improbable journey of the chapter ends with a smile.

Ultimately, the chapter is about how people interpret their lives through icons. The ten-year-old narrator idolizes the Swede and can only interpret the other characters in his life through his worship of the Swede. Therefore, Jerry is necessarily formed in reaction to his brother, and the most important thing is how the Swede reacts to the Kid from Tomkinsville, not the narrator's own reaction. The chapter is circular. For the townspeople, the Swede signifies a heroic example of innocence and hope during the war.

Here is one of my favorite, and I think remarkable, sentences from the first chapter:
"It was a cheer that consisted of eight syllables, three of them his name, and it went, Bah bah-bah! Bah bah bah . . . bah-bah! and the tempo, at football games particularly, accelerated with each repetition until, at the peak of frenzied adoration, an explosion of skirt-billowing cartwheels was ecstatically discharged and the orange gym bloomers of ten sturdy little cheerleaders flickered like fireworks before our marveling eyes . . . and not for love of you or me but of the wonderful Swede. "Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'! . . . Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'! . . . Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'!" (Roth, 2)

This sentence has such different moods and such sudden changes in energy. The first description of the cheer, "eight syllables, three of them his name..." and the bahs are so clinical, the choice of sound to beat out the rhythm of the cheer so boring, that the cheer sounds more like a resentful dirge. This has a sense of the narrators voice, a worship that is so ordinary to him it is at once boring, and yet reverential. After the exclamation point, the tempo of the sentence picks up in accordance with the cheer. The first three clauses of the sentence feel like a recollection in absentia; after the exclamation point, the flashback is fully realized. We are transported to the center of the football-fan crowd. This transportation and build-up are achieved through a cascade of clauses. The prepositional phrases and commas cause jarring interruptions in the sentence flow, building to the explosion of cheerleader skirts. The cartwheels seem to discharge from outerspace, appearing on the field like fireworks in the sky. The actions of the cheerleaders are disembodied, and the movement of their skirts fuctions as a metonym for the whole of their performance. The language, "explosion" and "discharged" has a violent connotation, again linking the Swede's success in sports to the war being fought in the outside world. The sentence finally ends oddly, with "not for love of you or me..." as if cheers are supposed to celebrate the lowly crowd rather than the exceptional athlete. The many clauses of the sentence, and its two contrasting moods, require the reader to constantly go back to understand the sentence as a whole. When the words of the cheer are finally revealed, the reader must go back to the "bah" syllables in order to get the rhythm of how it is cheered.

'We call it "unheimlich"; you call it "heimlich"'

Let me begin my post by pointing out the excellent statement Freud makes in his self-effacing introduction:
But I must confess that I have not made a very thorough examination of the literature, especially the foreign literature, relating to this present modest contribution of mine, for reasons which, as may be guessed, lie in the times in which we live; so that my paper is presented to the reader without any claim to priority. (Freud, 1)
This is an excellent excuse, and one which I will now use with Freud's inspiration. I am completing this blog entry five days late, for reasons which, as may be guessed, lie in the times in which we live. I present this post to you, oh reader, without any claim to having made it a priority. Actually, this excuse is so excellent, because it rhetorically relates the reader to Freud's experience. While Freud's reader may not have read any of the literature, foreign or domestic, on the topic of the uncanny, Freud assumes that his reader will be familiar with how difficult it is to get a hold of such research and be sympathetic toward Freud's rather undiverse body of source material. Freud extends his readers an opportunity to feel critical and educated in their response to his work, and then to be prepared to be enlightened by his brilliance.

Freud's lengthy discussion of the etymology of heimlich and its equivalents in other languages is quite interesting, and serves a much greater purpose than simply to endow the reader with a better understanding of the origins of the word. In fact, Freud purposely muddles our understanding of the word, so that by the end of his exhaustive etymological tirade we have begun to have very unheimlich feelings about the heimlich. Truly, it seems that the word can mean almost anything, and the etymology demonstrates to us how such a seemingly strange topic lives at the border of our reality and how easily that which is familiar, which we think we know, can slip into the uncanny without our understanding.

Drovers Driven to Distraction/Distress

I think "The Two Drovers" is a very lovely story in its language. Sir Walter Scott has a fantastic ear for accents in his dialogue, spicing the musicality of Scottish highland lilt with colloquialisms that are sometimes translated and sometimes left to us to figure out. What is confusing is the constant change in narrative structure and point of view. It is only towards the end of the tale that we learn who the narrator actually is and his relationship to the events, "I was myself present, and as a young Scottish lawyer, or barrister at least, and reputed to be a man of some quality, the politeness of the Sheriff of Cumberland offered me a place on the bench" (21). Prior to this belated introduction, the narrator assumes an omniscient position on the life of drovers in the area and the friendship of Harry Wakefield and Robin Oig in particular. Really, the narrator's point of view is rather unimportant; the story, a rather untragic Shakespearean tragedy of politicized misunderstanding, proceeds through dialogue in many different registers and arguably languages, which Scott does brilliantly.

Interestingly, the fact that the narrator is Scottish is evident in the narration that splices the opening dialogue among the Scottish characters, although this is not revealed until the trial. The musicality of the narration underscores the idyllic pastoral relationship between the two drovers that will be fractured by misunderstanding, as well as the narrator's implicit sympathy with the plight of Robin Oig as a Scottsman.

"There was a natural variety in the whole journey, which exercised the Celt's natural curiosity and love of motion; there were the constant change of place and scene, the petty adventures incidental to the traffic, and the intercourse with the various farmers, graziers, and traders, intermingled with occasional merry-makings, not the less acceptable to Donald that they were void of expense;--and there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the character of their guardian" (2).

This absurdly long sentence is replete with alliteration, causing it to proceed in a cyclical manner that turns back on itself like a song with a chorus. The many hard c's supply a beat. The jolliness of the content give it the subject matter of perhaps a drinking song, or a song for lonely journeys over the highlands with droves of cows. At first, the introduction of the name Donald is confusing--is he to be our first mention of a character? Then, we must conclude that the name is common and simply stands for the average highland drover. Scott presents this inside knowledge to us without explanation.

In the following sentence, Scott adds much italicized Gaelic, some translated and some not.
"Of the number who left Doune in the morning, and with the purpose we described, not a Glunamie of them all cocked his bonnet more briskly, or gartered his tartan hose under knee over a pair of more promising spiogs (legs) than did Robin Oig M'Combich, called familiarly Robin Oig, that is, Young, or the Lesser, Robin" (2).

In this sentence, Scott translates in different ways. The first Gaelic word Glunamie is not translated, but we can gather from context that it must related to the expression "not one of them...". Spiogs is translated parenthetically, while finally Oig is translated in an extended exposition of the main character's name, so that the name is repeated and renamed five times. This sentence is also a mouthful of rhythm, each clause pacing the sentence, with the alliteration of bonnet more briskly and the assonance of gartered his tartan punctuating the middle clauses, which run into the pair of more promising spiogs (legs) that employs alliterated first and last syllables, and ends with the riddle of Robins.

The musicality disappears from the narrator's inconsistent voice when he is describing the activities of the Englishman Harry Wakefield. "At the same time he rebuked his servant severely for having transgressed his commands, and ordered him instantly to assist in ejecting the hungry and weary cattle of Harry Wakefield, which were just beginning to enjoy a meal of unusual plenty, and to introduce those of his comrade, whom the English drover now began to consider as a rival" (10). While much of the earlier alliteration remains, the overwrought vocabulary is awkward when describing such mundane activities.

Scott is able to distinguish Wakefield's accent from Robin Oig's with different colloquialisms. "Take it all, man--take it all--never make two bites of a cherry--thou canst talk over the gentry, and blear a plain man's eye--Out upon you, man--I would not kiss any man's dirty latchets for leave to bake in his oven" (10). The vocabulary and emphasis is different than Robin Oig's speech and sounds definitively English.

Robin Oig's speech, in moments of high passion in particular, gives way to an almost indecipherable brogue, that is as alienating for an unfamiliar reader as it must be to Wakefield. "Nae doubt, nae doubt...and you are a set of very pretty judges, for those prains or pehavior I wad not gie a pinch of sneeshing. If Mr Harry Waakfelt kens where he is wranged, he kens where he may be righted" (13).

Finally the story ends with the very lengthy speech from the judge at Robin Oig's trial for the murder of Wakefield. The end of the story loses me with the judge's impenetrable language that is so heavily qualified and vacilating in opinion it seems impossible to discern what he really thinks. A sample, "In the heat of affray and chaude melée, law, compassionating the infirmities of humanity, makes allowances for the passions which rule such a stormy moment--for the sense of present pain, for the apprehension of further injury, for the difficulty of ascertaining with due accuracy the precise degree of violence which is necessary to protect the person of the individual, without annoying or injuring the assailant more than is absolutely requisite" (24). Note the gerund-verbage of compassion!

It seems that whatever political point Scott has about the tragic results of linguistic and cultural misunderstanding between English and Scottish is buried in the judge's dense speech. There is in fact quite a lot of indication that there is something more complex behind this story but it is too exhausting to dig it out. The confusing narrative structure of this story makes it mainly a showcase for Scott's excellent ability to play with language.

I have decided to spruce up my blog

with new colors and images, by the way...
How exciting!

Injun Territory

Both of these critiques of the influence of Islam in Europe employ the major persuasive rhetorical strategy that we identified in The Communist Manifesto: positioning the argument as an inevitable progression of history. Really, both Steyn and Holmes agree that Islam is already a power that Europe must reckon with. It is the way in which they recommend that Europe respond that differs. Steyn's overarching historical analogies reinforce the sense that Islam is the next historical power, the next age. Drawing from disparate continents and political climates, Steyn compares Muslim countries to "Indian territory" in the United States, at a time when American politicians were obsessed with spreading the "civilizing" influence of American culture into some of the best (inhabited) land in the country. Borrowing a term from Robert D. Kaplan, "the lawless fringes of the map as 'Indian territory'," Steyn compares the Native Americans of the United States to Muslim immigrant settlements in European countries:

"The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry
about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours.
Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.
And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons." (Steyn, 3).

In the three differences Steyn lays out for his readers, he presents the Muslim immigrant as more confrontational, more powerful, and better armed. Rather than portraying Muslims in Europe as a persecuted group, Steyn casts them as a settling force, comparing them to the European colonists that once "settled" the inhabited Americas. This seems like a risky connection to make, on a subject that most writers tiptoe through with an effort toward political correctness, "One of Hirsi Ali's reiterated themes is that well-meaning Europeans frequently hesitate to criticize Islam 'for fear of being called racist'" (Holmes, 3). Indeed, Steyn is little concerned with political correctness, when he uses colloquial slurs like "Injuns." It is curious that in his parallel constructions that correspond to Muslims, Steyn never uses a correspondin slur that would relate the hostility toward Muslims expressed by some racist and xenophobic Westerners such as "towelhead." The most offensive characterization Steyn makes of Muslim immigrants is "followers of the badland's radical imams." This awkward phrase separates the subject of the sentence "followers" from the nexus of their beliefs "the badland's radical imams." This prepositional phrase is completely lacking in the power of a slur like "Injuns." Between the first difference and the second, Steyn also makes a clever alteration of the word "badlands" with a apostrophe. In the first sentence, it is the American plains of the Sioux; in the second, it is a moral judgment on the Arab world as a "badland." Following the first usage, "badland's" carries the connotation of the actual "Indian territory" of the U.S. that seems to comment on the moral distinction of a large geographic space, so that this potentially offensive name also loses its weight. The implicit message is that Muslims have overcome the persecution of the West, or that their persecution is irrelevant, since they have the power of "youth and will" behind them. Comparing Muslim immigrants to American frontier settlers is a useful analogy: both essentially practice a belief in manifest destiny in their migrations.

Holmes, in his review of the two books on Islam in Europe, uses the lens of another enormously important intellectual development, The Enlightenment:

"That a clash of civilization is also heartily endorsed by Islamist extremists should make us sit up and take note. Rather than signaling an admirable willingness to defend the
Enlightenment against its enemies, eagerness to participate in such a clash implies a wholesale abandonment of one of the Enlightenment's main pillars -- namely, the overcoming of collective punishment or group-on-group revenge by the strict individualization of culpability. The Islamophobia of the European right is obviously no less tribalistic than the Islamists' hatred of the West. Although the tribalization of the Enlightenment by European xenophobes clearly distresses Buruma, it does not even interest Hirsi Ali." (Holmes, 3)

Holmes comparison of the two authors' critiques of the current usage of Enlightenment theories of Europe is very interesting. It is difficult to gauge Holmes' stance on the two opinions, perhaps because he is trying to remain objective, and he often seems to contradict himself by giving Hirsi Ali the benefit of the doubt. Rather than holding Hirsi Ali responsible for the potentially violent fracturing of Enlightenment virtues practiced in Europe, Holmes allows that, "It is no reflection on her motives to point out that her high-minded criticism of anti-racism and her plea for
Europeans to stand up and "fight" for their civilization have inevitably appealed to people who refuse coexistence with Muslim immigrants on much cruder and more emotional grounds" (Holmes, 3). While Holmes does criticize the grounds on which Europeans might refuse to interact with Muslims, he allows for the possibility that there could be justifiable grounds. Holmes implicit bias for the perspective of Hirsi Ali can be sensed in his having put the word fight in quotation marks rather than civilization. Holmes allows fight to be qualified by the quotation marks, as if the European response to radical Islam has been less violent than the attacks waged by Muslim extremist organizations, while allowing Hirsi Ali's notion that Europeans have a civilization that must be protected to go unqualified.

Holmes similarly characterizes the conflict between Muslim immigrants and Europeans as inevitable and violent, "One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe" (Holmes, 3).
For Holmes, this confrontation is a threat against a civilized, established culture, while for Steyn Islam is the next political force to take over from a literally dying civilization whose time has already passed.

Paste

Well, one thing is for sure, when reading Paste I cannot for a second forget about James. The style is as heavily controlled as the emotional displays and disclosures of the characters. The opening uses alliteration profusely, with a preponderance of s-sounds creating a hushed atmosphere surrounding the recent deaths.
"The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other. Some such appearance was in itself of course natural within a week of his stepmother's death, within three of his father's; but what was most present to the girl, herself sensitive and shrewd, was that he seemed somehow to brood without sorrow, to suffer without what in her own case she would have called pain." (James, 84).
Within and without are both repeated twice in the second sentence, emphasizing the sudden loss of Arthur's parents in such a short time. Both of these suspensive sentences leave the emotion to the end, where it evidently rests in the minds of the characters behind all of their outward appearances. James' sentences, with all of their interruptions, really do seem to make everything more complicated than it really is.

The dialogue in this story is so mannered that it seems hardly to vary from James' narration. It is rather sparse, and so embedded in the narration that it doesn't stand out.

"This career could not have been eminent and must much more probably have been comfortless.
'You see what it is--old stuff of the time she never liked to mention.'
Our young woman gave a start; her companion had, after all, rejoined her and had apparently watched a moment her slightly scared recognition. 'So I said to myself,' she replied. Then, to show intelligence, yet keep clear of twaddle: 'How peculiar they look!'
'They look awful,' said Arthur Prime. 'Cheap gilt, diamonds as big as potatoes. These are the trappings of a ruder age than ours. Actors do themselves better now.'" (James, 85).

James' introductory sentence, followed by interjection, dominates Charlotte's two sentence response to Arthur. When the dialogue begins with Arthur's "you see," after a dense paragraph of family history, the you is the only thing jarring. The rest of the material in the sentence "old stuff of the time she never liked to mention" seems to conclude the previous paragraph, which begins with Charlotte looking at the jewelery. The narration continues in the second person with "our young woman," this time including the reader in the narrator's world. Arthur's final comment could easily be rewritten as part of the narrative, rather than dialogue. It sounds like James' voice speaking through Arthur. This dialogue reminds me of the Lydia Davis piece, "They Take Turns Using a Word They Like," in that it is more about the social conventions being expressed than the actual conversation.

Still, not all of James' language is formal. Oddly, he sometimes includes colloquialisms in the narration, while the characters speak very properly, and then inverts, allowing a bit of slang to creep into the dialogue, while the narration becomes exaggeratedly proper.

"'Not a nobody to whom somebody--well, not a nobody with diamonds. It isn't all worth, this trash, five pounds.'
There was something in the old gewgaws that spoke to her, and she continued to turn them over. 'They're relics. I think they have their melancholy and even their dignity.'" (James, 85).

Arthur's comment sounds conversational in his use of "trash" but the phrasing of the second sentence with "this trash" as interruption sounds mannered. James then uses "gewgaws" to describe the jewelery, which seems more like a word that Charlotte would use than James. Finally, Charlotte responds to Arthur in a very proper tone, with words like "melancholy" and "dignity" restoring the former "trash." This technique in the dialogue and narration makes it seem as if James is going in and out of his characters' heads. Perhaps that makes him a more credible narrator.

Montaigne's Maiden Warriors

Montaigne's essay is incredibly fascinating for being so long. I just keep chugging along with it, despite the fact that it never seems to be getting any closer to a conclusion that is not arrived at already within the first five pages. The unfolding of Montaigne's argument is ultimately the subject of the essay, and the experience of it is illuminating. Montaigne's fluid musings on fundamental human issues of life and death, aging, and sexuality are not only profound but humorous. The simple thesis of Montaigne's essay is something like: Sexual pleasure should be enjoyed by older men who can properly appreciate it. But there are many sub-arguments within the essay:
1) The mind can rescue itself from old age, but struggles against the needs of the body in order to do so.
2) It is a mistake to marry for love. Marriage should be entered into as an economic and familial arrangement for "posterity and family" (7).
3) Love should be sought outside of marriage.
4) Women and men have the same sexual desires and urges, and women should be allowed to pursue theirs outside of marriage. Men are hypocritical to deny women this freedom.
5) There are worse vices than promiscuity. Unsanctioned sexual activity, particularly as practiced by women, has only been condemned because human beings are jealous by nature.

Montaigne frequently contradicts himself, but this becomes a strength of the essay, as he is able to anticipate counterarguments, and debunk prevailing thinking through sarcasm. Contradiction, juxtaposition, and oxymoron are ubiquitous in the essay. To characterize his age, exaggerating his decrepit seniority, Montaigne juxtaposes, "From the excess of sprightliness I am fallen into that of severity" (1). He then humorously juxtaposes wisdom and folly, "Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by alternate services in this calamity of age" (2). Then, the mind and the body, "Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue gree, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree" Montaigne invokes plaintively, with a fantastically morbid simile (3). The juxtaposition continues throughout, as I have outlined. Montaigne's argument relies on dualities to represent the complexity of human experience.

Montaigne's frequent use of oxymorons exposes how ridiculous and ineffective the prevailing oppression of female sexuality is. "We, on the contrary, would have them at once sound, vigorous, plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and cold, for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning, is but small refreshment to them as we order the matter" (11). Later, Montaigne provides an even clearer image of the problems of suppressing female sexuality, in oxymoron, "There is no doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active; I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armor all the days of one's life than a maidenhood; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most noble, as being the hardest to keep" (15). Montaigne seems to comment on his own use of oxymoron when he says, "there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desires" (19).

One of the strongest rhetorical facets of Montaigne's argument is his complete omission of the subjects he is discussing, and occasional euphemism. As soon as Montaigne actually starts talking about sex, he completely refrains from using the word. Montaigne writes at length about the penis, but never uses the word penis. The euphemism he uses most often is "member"; he also uses "shameful parts," "implements," and "natural furniture."

"In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified; in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a piece; others offered and consecrated their seed." (13)
"To what end do we make a show of our implements in figure under our gaskins, and often, which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?" (13)

The fact that Montaigne effectively omits the subject of these sentences, and yet we know exactly what he is talking about, forces us to agree with him.
In this fantastic passage, Montaigne again writes with humor about activities performed on his "member," this time in the context of aging:

"Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable, without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inch of pitiful vigor which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set out itself with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardor you think in you, for it will certainly leave you in the lurch at your greatest need; but rather transfer it to some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod and blushes" (32). Montaigne's overwrought account of masturbation among old men is so hilarious and pitiable, he wins us over, as at the beginning when he characterizes himself as a pitiable old man. The passage is another oxymoron: Montaigne argues that pleasure should be reserved for older men who can appreciate it properly, but then reveals that his body is not quite up to the task. Alas, youth and experience do not go hand in hand, again the problem of mind/body disconnect.

"Every member I have, as much one as another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man than this," Montaigne writes, in case we had any doubt as to which member he had been referring to throughout the essay. Montaigne emphasizes the fact that the word member is not specific, that it could really mean any appendage of the body, but we knew exactly what he meant all along, which means we have already experienced his point and must therefore agree with him.

Later, Montaigne compares the sexual organs and apetites of males and females:

"The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite, to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till, having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed the bottom of their matrix" (14). Montaigne's account of Plato is so wildly imaginative it allows his radical argument to pass as comical, although sincere.

Montaigne very rarely refers to women directly in the essay, only using a sex indicator when it is absolutely necessary to clarify the attributes of one sex versus the other. When he can, Montaigne simply uses 'us and them'. While the assumption that the writer was male at the time would have been pretty much universal, the fact that Montaigne can describe the conditions under which women lived without referring to women directly, again forces us to agree with him. Montaigne's delightful assay proceeds with a will of its own through humour, juxtaposition, oxymoron, and above all, euphemism.

Comments from a reactionary

I had read the Communist Manifesto in a vague sort of way for other classes before, but I had always considered it a sort of artifact of history and not a text with the power of persuasion for subsequent generations of would-be revolutionaries. It is difficult for me to account for the lasting power of the Communist Manifesto because I don't find it persuasive. It's lofty language and exaggerated claims seem hardly serious to me. I find it more funny than persuasive. From the opening sentence, "A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of communism," the manifesto strikes a tone that is at once powerful and comical. This is a fantastic and extremely memorable opening sentence for a work of literature, but in this context, when I read this line all that comes to mind are a bunch of zombie revolutionaries stalking the darkened streets of Paris. Marx and Engels' attempts to frighten their readers into agreement with lofty similes end up sounding ridiculous, "Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." This childish, fairytale analogy makes the arguable claims advanced about the bourgeoisie trite. The strong image that the analogy conjures obscures the modern conditions that the sorcerer is being compared to.

The manifesto makes bold, unwavering claims, as a manifesto should: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." The phrasing of this sentence so that the word history is repeated emphasizes the radical recasting of the dominant historical narrative by Marx and Engels. As potent and quotable these simple declarative sentences that are spliced throughout the text are, I think their simplicity undermines the argument. History is not so simple as to be reduced to an overarching declaration. The tone of certainty, articulated in vitriolic rhetoric, has a great deal to do with the historical power of the manifesto, as it has lasted through its quotability and memorability. However, I find the certainty unsettling.

One of most powerful rhetorical strategies used by Marx and Engels is inversion. As the argument proceeds from their account of perpetual class struggle, they declare, "The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part." Recasting the group they had just labelled as oppressors as having been, historically, revolutionary, Marx and Engels make way for the second part of their argument: the inevitability of the impending proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie revolution has outlasted its time, they argue. The time for a workers revolution has come.

Throughout the manifesto, the opposing of groups (bourgeois/proletariat), communists/everyone else as anti-communist, forces the reader to take a side. From the opening, the reader is labelled either as a communist, or as one among the reactionaries who are already behind the momentous revolution. "Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?" Communism is declared to be a power, in fact declared by the opposition to be a power, and those that are sceptical of it can only be those currently in power or those that are against change. This may be an effective rhetorical strategy for readers that are prone to take sides; perhaps at the time the Communist Manifesto was written there were more such readers. However, I find it alienating, and imagine that others might react similarly. As many critics have said before, the high language can hardly expect to be appreciated by the proletariat it incites to revolution, so the question remains, who is the intended audience? While Marx and Engels make many statements that would seem to alienate the "petty bourgeoisie," whose interests are so opposed to such a communist revolution, it is to this audience that the manifesto seems to most clearly apply. Certainly, in its current circulation, the Communist Manifesto seems to be most often espoused by those who are minimally oppressed and privileged enough to claim to speak for the lower classes.

It's Interactive!

Ben's short fiction selections for tomorrow are very interesting. What is immediately apparent about them is that each of them say a lot with few words. This is a characteristic of writing that I really admire. It makes the interpretation of the reader a part of the text, creating an interaction between the reader and the characters of the story. Each of the fictions generally seem to be about social ritual, and involve communication between two subjects. The two women in the Lydia Davis piece take turns using the word extraordinary, the first placing the emphasis on the word and the second placing the emphasis on the verb and thus on her own opinion, which seems to both agree with and trump that of the first woman. The change in emphasis across the two lines of dialogue puts the lines in conversation with each other, along with the two women. While the two lines appear to be almost identical, they each have a different tone and reveal different information. In fact, it is not absolutely clear that the second person speaking is a woman; she is simply referred to as 'the other' and so we assume that she is another woman. The title, "They take turns using a word they like," becomes necessarily a part of the story that is required in order to interpret the two line conversation. According to the title, the conversation is really not about anything. This frees the reader from interpreting the actual content of the conversation, and instead allows her to consider the inherent meaning behind the interaction. The conversation really seems to be about the competition between two women, couched in a dramatic but meaningless word, extraordinary, and exaggerated politeness.

Hills Like White Elephants

Hills Like White Elephants is interesting in that it is told almost entirely through dialogue, within which the topic of conversation is never actually named. Since our discussion last week, I have been much more consciously aware of the presence of authors in their writing, particularly fiction writing. In this story, I sense Hemingway's presence very strongly in the way that he manipulates the our perceptions of the events. The title in particular is a beautiful and striking line, a simile that I expected to be revealed in Hemingway's narration of the setting. In fact, it is said by the woman, and turns out to be of little importance, on the surface.

"The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

‘They look like white elephants,’ she said.

‘I’ve never seen one,’ the man drank his beer.

‘No, you wouldn’t have.’"

Coming after Hemingway's characteristically minimal description of the hills, the girl's observation seems like a comment on Hemingway's narration. In fact, "hills like white elephants" is obviously Hemingway's own simile that he situated in the mouth of this girl, almost it seems so that he did not have to accept responsibility for the self-conscious writerliness of the line. The girl is entirely self-conscious when she says this, as is revealed later in her indignation at the man's response, "‘All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?’

‘That was bright.’"

In the situation of this line, we sense Hemingway's presence, as well as in his very minimal descriptions that are just enough to set the scene. Hemingway's simple, low style, feels very mannered and unnatural, but allows the subtlety of the subject matter to come through.

By telling the story mainly through dialogue, Hemingway sets up a dynamic in which the reader is voyeur to the conversation between the couple. Giving us just enough evocative detail to set the scene, Hemingway places us in the middle of this overheard conversation and refuses to interpret it for us. This story is entirely about what is not said, both between the couple in the world of the story, and stylistically in the writing of it.

Rewriting of Hemingway in high style:

The girl narrowed her eyes against the haze of heat toward the hills, starkly white like starched sheets spread over tall humps of dry brown country.

"They look like white elephants," she said.

"I've never seen one," the man said swallowing his words with the cold and salty beer.

"No, you wouldn't have," she mused, to the battered edge of counter where her elbow trailed. She had never seen a white elephant either, but imagined they would be as anomalous in this landscape as a sensitive word from her manfriend. The licorice sweetness choked its way through her languid limbs, falling to the pit of her stomach, where it sucked at her until the air was gone.

Highs & Lows with Sister Mary Ignatius' Explanation

In Chapter 8, Lanham is trying to make a distinction that he admits is difficult to describe. While the distinction between high, middle and low styles seems quite subjective, it is more the type of thing that a good critique recognizes when she reads it. As we have discussed profusely in the course of the class so far, good stylists often ignore or purposefully break 'the rules,' and Lanham's description of high style is particularly difficult to nail down because as he explains that the qualities that are often present in the high style do not necessarily combine to form the high style. What I find particularly interesting is how Lanham analyzes the importance of the social situation or context in which the piece fits. This is especially apparent in his description of Churcill's wartime radio addresses, which brought a public speech into private livingrooms, "The front-stage/back-stage antithesis was potentially healed, the whole range spanned, before Churchill began to speak...As we now know, over and over again he made the most of it, brought all Britain into a sublime unity where public and private worlds fused" (Lanham, 169). Lanham also disscusses the problem Hennesy has in reworking the carefully neutral historical tone of Marx in the Communist Manifesto into an angry feminist revolutionary cry, also a problem of situation.

Of the writers we have read so far, Baldwin would certainly be an example of high style. As we discussed, Baldwin's self-consciously scholarly and objective tone, with passive constructions and 'to be' verbs, is what makes his essay persuasive and his gross generalizations credible. While on the surface, Baldwin appears to be simply reporting the facts in a neutral, historical tone, Baldwin's subject matter is actually quite sublime, going to the heart of the experience of rage, fear and identity. As I analyzed in my post on Baldwin, his use of chiasmus throughout the essay is quite self-conscious and develops as a persuasive structure, as well as his metaphors, figurative language, and religious diction, that allow the essay to operate on multiple levels and depict a highly complicated and embedded situation. Baldwin also dissolves the antithetical framework of private/public by extending a personal experience into a universal experience for a group of people and reactionary experiences for other groups of people in different cultures.

For me, this is the most useful distinction that Lanham makes between high and low style:
"the style that has been discussed, analyzed, marveled at, has been the high style...Ornamented, emotional, spotlighted, it was the style you could see. And talk about. The transparent, neutral, unemotional style could be applauded but there wasn't much to say about it. Ideally it wasn't there at all. You looked right through it to the facts beyond" (Lanham, 165).
With Nabokov, the more you look, the more you find. You could read Nabokov for the rest of your life, and continue to discover new complexities, new twists of meaning. This is high style. As Lanham points out, low style can be quite self-conscious, quite literary, and quite entertaining, but it really only operates at one level, although it can incorporate multiple cultural reference points, as his example of car journalism does. It is the middle style that seems to be the most disappointing. Neither entertaining nor sublime, it can only be read as failing to attain the higher level to which it aspires. If it seems to aspire to nothing, it is drier than an elbow in winter.

Faulkner--Dry September

The horrifying subject matter of this short story is conveyed in Southern gothic high drama through a suspensive structure. The third sentence is fantastic for revealing the structure which is to inform the action: "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what had happened." The only two people in the story who should rightly feel "attacked, insulted, frightened" are Will Mayes and Minnie Cooper, if in fact she was attacked. However, the sentence begins by putting the emphasis on the men in the barber shop, who feel threatened by what they perceive as a racial threat against their women. We are never really told how Minnie Cooper feels. We can only infer through her bizarre behavior, trembling in public and laughing hysterically. This sentence is an unusual example of sentence pattern 3, compound sentence with explanatory statement, but because a series of mostly prepositional phrases interrupts the subject and verb, which should explain the three inflamatory feelings layed out at the beginning, the sentence explains more in the following clause than appears at the surface. By punctuating the sentence with a colon, Faulkner draws attention to the subsequent clause that seems to explain little, except to conjure the room in which the men heatedly ponder their action. In fact, the details about the stale and stationary air and the odors of the men serve to emphasize the gossip that is swirling, until the sentence comes to the disturbing conclusion that none of the men actually know the details of the supposed crime that they all are prepared to carry out justice in the name of. Throughout the story, air, speech and breath are referred to as "hissing" informing the gothic tone of the story and establishing the sinister nature of the gossip.

Leaving the reader perilously holding on to find out what is going to happen to Will Mayes, and without any power to stop the men, Faulkner jumps to describe Minnie Cooper in section II. Faulkner does an excellent job of characterizing Minnie Cooper, as he does in this breathless cumulative sentence, "When she was young she had had a slender, nervous body and a sort of hard vivacity which had enabled her for a time to ride upon the crest of the town's social life as exemplified by the high school party and church social period of her contemporaries while still children enough to be unclassconscious." Throughout the story, Faulkner makes up illuminating composite adjective such as unclassconscious, the mouthful of the word having a sort of illustrative onomatopoeic quality.

The beginning of the "white folks" violent confrontation with Will Mayes has the gothic suspense of a horror movie, simultaneously captivitating the reader and making her loathe to read on. "Below the cast the wan hemorrhage of the moon increased. It heaved above the ridge, silvering the air, the dust, so that they seemed to breathe, live, in a bowl of molten lead. There was no sound of nightbird nor insect, no sound save their breathing and a faint ticking of contracting metal about the cars." This is the moment in the horror movie when everything goes completely silent and you know something bad is about to happen; in fact, suddenly suspicious noises are heard creeping up the road! How predictable, and yet utterly new. Faulkner plays with the reader's sympathies. We want to be afraid for Will Mayes, but the narrative point of view tells us we should be afraid for the men who have ostensibly come to kill him. Faulkner takes the reader on a journey closer and closer to the awful conclusion, and then refuses to show it to us. The action does not play out as we expect; Will Mayes escapes, but we do not know for how long.

At the moment when the barber and Will Mayes both jump out of the car, Faulker unites the two of them in plural pronouns:

"The barber began to tug furiously at the door. "Look out, there!" the soldier said, but the barber had already kicked the door open and swung onto the running board. The soldier leaned across the Negro and grasped at him, but he had already jumped. The car went on without checking speed."
So, evidently, "the Negro" jumped out of the car after the barber. Straightforward enough.
"The impetus hurled him crashing through dust-sheathed weeds, into the ditch. Dust puffed about him, and in a thin, vicious crackling of sapless stems he lay choking and retching until the second car passed and died away. Then he rose and limped on until he reached the highroad and turned toward town, brushing at his clothes with his hands. The moon was higher, riding high and clear of the dust at last, and after a while the town began to glare beneath the dust. He went on, limping. Presently he heard cars and the glow of them grew in the dust behind him and he left the road and crouched again in the weeds until they passed. McLendon's car came last now. There were four people in it and Butch was not on the running board."
In this paragraph that follows, we take the unnamed "him" to be Will Mayes, since he jumped out of the car in the previous sentence. We wonder what happened to the barber. Then, Faulkner switches to "them." While the them is obviously standing for the two cars, it can also figuratively stand for both Will Mayes and the barber, since we have been lead to believe that they both jumped out of the car and don't know what happened to them.
"They went on; the dust swallowed them; the glare and the sound died away. The dust of them hung for a while, but soon the eternal dust absorbed it again. The barber climbed back onto the road and limped on toward town."
Finally, we find out that it is only the barber who continues on his way. All this elaborate suspensiveness leads us to the question, WHAT HAPPENED TO WILL MAYES? which is never directly answered.

Faulkner interrupts the naration again, leaving the reader to ponder what happened to Will Mayes and to the barber who pathetically stood up for him in section III, and moves on to narrate Miss Cooper's apparently traumatic trip to the movies in section IV. During Miss Cooper's trip in to town, we learn the only further bits of information to help answer the question through the nonchalant gossip of the men, "What did they do with the nigger? Did they--?" "Sure. He's all right." "All right, is he?" "Sure. He went on a little trip." While this statement could mean that Will Mayes fled, we are lead to infer that the man is referring to the sort of untimely trip that racist Southerners of this period would refer to in that way. We never know for sure. Faulkner's gothic descriptions contribute to the construction of the story as a sort of extended suspensive sentence.

The Chiasmic Baldwin

In discussing such a painful topic as race in America, particularly at the time he was writing, Baldwin carefully manages "Stranger in the Village" to draw attention to its logic and objectivity, even as he relates personal and difficult experiences. In one of the highest points of tension during the essay, Baldwin states, "There are, no doubt, as many ways of coping with the resulting complex of tensions as there are black men in the world, but no black man can hope ever to be entirely liberated from this internal warfare--rage, dissembling, and contempt having inevitably accompanied his first realization of the power of white men" (162). Yet the essay functions as more than simply a 'way of coping with the resulting complex of tensions' for Baldwin; Baldwin's ability to control his rage makes it all the more potent, and yet accessible and informative to a large audience. It is clear throughout the essay that Baldwin is not speaking only to black American men; he is also speaking to white men--"by means of what the white man imagines the black man to be, the black man is enabled to know who the white man is"--as well as to Europeans (163). Baldwin's purpose is to tell his readers what a black man understands about white people through his experience that white people are too busy pretending to be innocent to know about themselves, as well as what an American knows about Europeans through the experience of their cultural inheritance. That the essay is rife with chiasmus is logical then, since Baldwin is illuminating the way structures have been transmuted from one group and imposed on another.

Some particularly potent examples of chiasmus from the essay:
"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them" (161).
"The villagers wonder less about the texture of my hair than they did then, and wonder rather more about me" (163).
"Thus it was impossible for Americans to accept the black man as one of themselves, for to do so was to jeopardize their status as white men" (166).
"At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to be able to live with himself" (166-67).
"In this long battle, a battle by no means finished, the unforeseeable effects of which will be felt by many future generations, the white man's motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity" (167).
"The cathedral of Chartres, I have said, says something to the people of this village which it cannot say to me; but it is important to understand that this cathedral says something to me which it cannot say to them" (167).
"But I must accept the status which myth, if nothing else, gives me in the West before I can hope to change the myth" (167).
These are instances of isolated chiasmus.

The essay also employs several brilliant paragraphs of extended chiasmus:
I thought of white men arriving for the first time in an African village, strangers there, as I am a stranger here, and tried to imagine the astounded populace touching their hair and marveling at the color of their skin. But there is a great difference between being the first white man to be seen by Africans and being the first black man to be seen by whites. The white man takes the astonishment as tribute, for he arrives to conquer and to convert the natives, whose inferiority in relation to himself is not even to be questioned; whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have cost me more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who yet do not even know of my existence. The astonishment with which I might have greeted them, should they have stumbled into my African village a few hundred years ago, might have rejoiced their hearts. But the astonishment with which they greet me today can only poison mine. (161)
In this selection, Baldwin compares the different baggage associated with a black stranger in a white village, vs. a white stranger in a black village, as a way of describing, eventually, his point about race relations in America, which is that black Americans can no longer be strangers in America. White men can never regain the "European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist" (167-8). Baldwin's very presence in the village is a reversal of the structure in which white men enter a village of brown men to colonize it, a figurative chiasmus which serves to heighten the altered power dynamic borne by the historical implications of this alternative encounter. While the scene he is relating is, figuratively speaking, a chiasmus, Baldwin also uses chiasmus to link his sentences together to give his essay an objective and logical flow. I have highlighted the chiasmus operating across sentences, and within sentences with many levels, in bold. In the cumulative sentence in particular, the alliteration of hard c-words is reflected across the levels of the sentences, their slight alteration serving to magnify the differences between the two experiences and make the conclusion of the sentence all the more affective when it breaks the pattern established by the previous clauses.

Plummeting into the gap

Plath utilizes several interesting rhetorical strategies to imply the impending nervous breakdown and increasing suicidal impulses of her main character, Esther. Throughout the chapter, Plath implies that Esther is at war with herself by deliberately describing her in contradictory ways. The first sentence, "The face in the mirror looked like a sick Indian" is jarring, if only because it seems dated and strikingly un-PC (Plath, 112). But it is referenced later in the passage when Esther blurts out absentmindedly, "'Pollyanna Cowgirl.'" Esther describes herself both as a "sick Indian" and as a cowgirl who is so generous as to be taken advantage of by her 'friend.' Plath calls to mind the opposition of cowboy/Indian, and the qualification of the Indian as sick and the Cowgirl as Pollyanna calls to mind an inward sickness paired with a social dysfunction, generosity without agency.

Throughout the chapter, Plath emphasizes Esther's alienation from herself and others by disembodying her actions. It is not Esther that looked like a sick Indian, but her face. The phone, an instrument of social interaction, is described, "The black instrument on the hall table trilled its hysterical note over and over, like a nervous bird" (Plath, 117). Realizing that she should call Jody back and tell her that she would come to stay with her friends in Harvard Square, Esther seems unable to make the effort to pick up the phone and arrange for something positive to look forward to. "My hand advanced a few inches, then retreated and fell limp. I forced it toward the receiver again, but again it stopped short, as if it had collided with a pane of glass" (Plath, 118). Esther seems to be only capable of removing all future opportunities that might cause her to be happy, but even this she does as if not quite in control of herself. "I dialed the Admissions Office and listened to the zombie voice leave a message that Miss Esther Greenwood was canceling all arrangements to come to summer school" (Plath, 119). Esther is described as "zombie voiced" throughout the chapter, as if something has taken over her body and she is no longer in control of her life, an apt metaphor for depression. By including the excerpt from the beginnings of Esther's novel, Plath demonstrates one of the reasons for Esther's unhappiness: her inability to get outside of herself. Esther is only able to write about a fictional version of herself, and this fictionalizing of herself removes her more fully from embodying who she is and claiming agency in her illness.

The chapter is filled with foreshadowing of Esther's attempted suicide, beginning with the blouse she has traded her bathrobe to a friend for, with sleeves that are "floppy as the wings of a new angel." A few sentences later, Esther sees "A wan reflection of myself, white wings, brown ponytail and all, ghosted over the landscape" (Plath, 112). Esther is already dead to herself, as unrecognizable as the landscape outside the train window. When Esther gets off the train to meet her mother, "A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death" (Plath, 113). Esther's descent into depression begins with her rejection from the writing course she had applied to take during the summer. All through June the writing course had stretched before me like a bright, safe bridge over the dull gulf of the summer. Now I saw it totter and dissolve, and a body in a white blouse and green skirt plummet into the gap." (Plath, 114). Without this comfortable plan to salvage her deteriorating life, Esther seems to decide to give up, watching herself fall into the unknown, as if in a dream. Later, "I crawled between the mattress and the padded bedstead and let the mattress fall across me like a tombstone" (Plath, 123). Esther cannot sleep, and yet dreams of death, of being crushed by sleep.

Esther is also alienated from her family and neighbors. Despite her interest in Dodo Conway, Esther sees her and thinks, "Her head tilted happily back, like a sparrow egg perched on a duck egg" (Plath, 116). This bizarre description serves to completely dehumanize Dodo Conway, and instead characterizes her as a fertility machine. As her mother lies sleeping next to her Esther, annoyed by her snoring, thinks "the only way to stop it would be to take the column of skin and sinew from which it rose and twist it to silence between my hands" (Plath, 123). The sounds of breathing irritate Esther; her violent relationship with herself extends now to others.

There is a great sense throughout the chapter of the passage of time. Through Plath's writing, the reader is able to experience the expansive oppression of free time and Esther's loneliness. This is partly through the use of isocolon, creating a buildup of small details. Then the buzz of the orange squeezer sounded from downstairs, and the smell of coffee and bacon filtered under my door. Then the sink water ran from the tap and dishes clinked as my mother dried them and put them back in the cupboard. Then the front door opened and shut. Then the car door opened and shut, and the motor went broom-broom and, edging off with a crunch of gravel, faded into the distance" (Plath, 115). Beginning the sentences with 'then' weights them at the front and deflates the action, reflecting the deflating of Esther's life. This is enhanced by the repetition of sounds when the sentences include 'then' and 'them' or the two sentences which use 'opened and shut'. There is a sense throughout the chapter that time is simultaneously opening and closing on Esther.

Belated Notes on Lanham Chs 1-3

In his introduction, The Domain of Style, Lanham discusses and then dismantles the predominating theory of prose writing which he calls, 'C-B-S' theory: clarity, brevity, and sincerity. We are taught that prose should be unnoticeable, simply a vehicle for conveying meaning clearly, without any remarkable style. After looking into the literal implications of the 'C-B-S' theory, however, it "seems to contradict all that we say is good in literature and so runs an enormous rift between 'literature' on the one hand and 'ordinary prose' on the other" (Lanham, 3). This is a very provocative statement: Must literature necessarily break the rules that attempt to enforce the clear transferral of information to readers? Lanham then opposes poetry and prose, as the 'C-B-S' theory implies, "Prose must be entirely transparent, poetry entirely opaque. Prose must be minimally self-conscious, poetry the reverse" (Lanham, 3). Clearly, there must be a happy medium, a sort of continuum of style between poetry and prose, high literature and mundane statements of fact, as Lanham argues. The study of rhetoric is the examination of this continuum.

Some terms:
Isocolon: arranging phrases and clauses in units of equal length and structure. (15)
Doublet: sentence with paired structure.
Tricolon: sentence with three items of equal length and structure.
Tetracolon: sentence with four items of equal length and structure.
*Tricolon and tetracolon could be written as isocolon by opening up the sentence into multiple sentences, each with one item of equal length and structure.
Parataxis: sentences that weigh phrases, clauses and/or subjects equally. "Syntactic democracy." Leaves ranking, ordering, or relating of the parts up to the reader. (29)
Hypotaxis: sentences that rank the components, making clear what derives from what. Ranking is done for the reader. Hypotaxis usually has pronounced syntactic patterns (29)
Asyndetic: style that uses few connectors. Narrator or writer's voice can seem detached. (33)
Polysyndetic: style that uses many connectors, within and across sentences. Asyndetic styles are often paratactic and use anaphora. (33-35)
Lanham mentions that hypotaxis and polysyndeton often go together, while parataxis can be both asyndetic and polysyndetic.
Epanaphora: similar ending pattern. ex. "The afternoon is rawest and the dense fog is densest and the muddy streets are muddiest" (36)
Homoioteleuton: similar word endings. ex. "rawest, densest, muddiest" (36)
Protasis/apodosis: if/then quality. Protactic clauses are uncertain and open-ended; apodosis provides resolution. (40)

Periodic style

• often hypotactic
• construction formed from syntax and sense
• suspension of syntax and sense until end; climax comes at end
  
• period can be one sentence or stretch over several

Lamming lists different styles that developed in reaction to the dramatic style of period as an effort to capture a natural human thought or expression, including running style, pointed style, plain style.
Zeugma: A sentence in which one verb or subject serves for a series of others.
Ellipsis: omission of subsequent verbs/nouns where it is assumed in the following constructions. Creates interaction with reader.

Good luck, Lawrence!

In his short story, The Rocking-Horse Winner, D. H. Lawrence explores the universal theme of luck as well as the more culturally specific theme of class. Lawrence portrays an upper-class family living in financial anxiety, to the extent that their house seems to whisper to everyone, including the covertly observant children, "There must be more money!" The family obsessively maintains the appearance of their wealth and class, even as it plunges further into debt and despair. Lawrence conveys this pressing anxiety through a highly physical prose, employing onomatopoeia extensively, as well as images that relate to physical sensations.

It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. (Lawrence, 276).

The alliteration of this sentence gives it an onomatopoeic quality. The preponderance of s-sounds emphasize the secretive, hushed communication of this anxiety, while the focus in the sentence on the "springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse" grounds the reader in the physical momentum of the toy. One can hear and feel the springing under the horse through the diction in this sentence. The use of the word champing is clever, also. Its most obvious meaning is that the horse is 'champing at the bit'; however, as this rocking-horse will be revealed to be the luck winning horse, it also seems to pun on champion, especially when used in reference to the head and not the mouth.

That the toys whisper the anxious refrain in such a personified manner adds an element of magical realism to the story that is consistent with the imaginative point of view of a child. While the story is not narrated by Paul, he is the main character, and the narrator seems to speak from his point of view or in his voice often. The dialogue in the story is quite striking, as it seems very sincere interactions between children and adults. The dialogue is also very revealing of the characters, in place of more descriptive characterization by the narrator.

'Hallo, you young jockey! Riding a winner?' said his uncle.
'Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse? You're not a very little boy any longer, you know,' said his mother. (278)
While Paul's uncle plays along with his nephew's game, his mother seeks to put an end to his imaginative play.
'Well, I got there!' he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.
'Where did you get to?' asked his mother.
'Where I wanted to go,' he flared back at her.
'That's right, son!' said Uncle Oscar. 'Don't you stop till you get there. What's the horse's name?' (278)

By contrast to the mother's indecisiveness, Uncle Oscar praises the boy for his certainty and command of the horse, encouraging him to keep on his journey until he 'gets there.' Throughout the story, Uncle Oscar is explicitly connected with luck, while the mother is not. This is one of the first instances, in which the dialogue between the three makes a stark comparison between the two adult influences in Paul's life. "And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for. He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he forced it" (278). Unlike Paul's mother, Uncle Oscar forces his luck rather than waiting for it to fall into his hands.

If this story is so admired, I imagine there have been some interesting feminist critiques of it. Running parallel to the theme of luck is the theme of patriarchal control that is integral to the British system of class. The mother is immediately identified as being without love for her children; two motifs of the story are the mother's stony heart, contrasted with the vivid, firey blue eyes of her son. This becomes one motif when the boy becomes ill: "He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone."(not sure of page) The mother's luck begins to go downhill after she marries; she loses love for her husband, and her husband fails to live up to both of their expectations as a provider, despite having "good prospects." Both parents fail to provide an income adequate to the lifestyle their appearance of superiority requires; but the mother fails especially, since she can never earn as much as her husband, nor can she love her children properly, although she maintains the appearance of motherly adoration. When asked if she is lucky, the mother replies, 'I can't be, if I married an ulucky husband.' 'But by yourself, aren't you?' 'I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed.' (277). The mother is unable to define herself outside of her husband, like her son who simply declares that he has been endowed with luck by God. While the mother doesn't know that her young son is providing for the family so that she can continue spending at excess, she must be humiliated by the fact that Uncle Oscar, one of the well-off family members, must meet with the family lawyer and sign off in order to allow her to withdraw the 5,000 pounds supplied by her son at once.

Ultimately the boy's luck is shallow and attached only to earning money through gambling on horse racing. The end to the story has an element of morality tale: luck is a gamble. Would the boy's luck have continued as he grew older? Eventually he would have completely outgrown the rocking-horse and would have been unable to use it to predict winning horses. It seems the boy's luck would not have outlasted his childhood, his ability to imagine and create his reality through belief. Perhaps that is what is meant by Uncle Oscar's puzzling pronouncement on the boy's luck at the end.

The phenomenon of orwellian discursive processes...

"Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against," writes Orwell in his Politics and the English Language; however, the essay is persuasive and successful for the very reason that he uses his writing as a broad example of the type of writing he praises (Orwell, 711). Orwell asserts that in order to write clearly and well, one must "let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about" (712). Throughout the essay, the form of Orwell's sentences serves their argumentative function; they clarify the meaning for the reader, either through their diction or through use of an illustrative simile or metaphor that is alive and not hackneyed. The first sentence I have quoted from page 711 appears to break Orwell's rules by employing commonly used phrases that could be stated in single words, such as "for certain" and "again and again." Orwell could have substituted "and you will certainly find that I have frequently committed..." in place of "and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed," but his version of the clause illustrates the type of language he is referring to and how easily we fall back into using it.
The essay is full of vivid metaphors and similes that reinforce Orwell's meaning by creating images for the reader, unlike the type of dysfunctional metaphors he rails against like, "the Fascist octopus has sung its swan song." Orwell opens the essay with the fantastic simile, "Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house" (704). The simile is very visual, and emphasizes the quality that is missing from the "prefabricated" prose that Orwell rails against. As Orwell gets into the pith of his argument on how political euphemism has corrupted the clarity of expression in the English language, he opens into an extended simile, comparing mainstream politics to an orthodoxy. "Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style" he writes, then later, "If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church" (709-10). In the second sentence, Orwell reverses the position of the speaker from orator to audience member, disembodying him and reinforcing the mechanical quality that he describes in the middle of the paragraph. Juxtaposed with the religious allusion, Orwell offers a comparison to the industrial age in the center of the paragraph. "When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases...one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them" (709). This striking and relatable image embosses itself on the reader's mind, and as Orwell builds more and more images throughout the essay, they form a visual map of the main points that makes the writing more persuasive.
In the climactic paragraph of the essay, Orwell layers images to impress his point upon the reader. Exposing the euphemisms of politics with images such as, "People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: This is called elimination of unreliable elements" Orwell literally horrifies the reader into agreeing with him (710). The vague language of politics is not just bad English; as Orwell writes, "the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes" and consequences (702).
Orwell's evident passion and sincerity are part of his success. As he reminds us, "The enemy of clear language is insincerity" (710). Augmenting this statement with an illustrative simile, "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared airms, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink" (710). Orwell's figurative language always serves to clarify his meaning and make a lasting impression, not to win the reader over with the beauty of his flowery language. In this case, the simile supplies the sense of the end of the sentence, which is not directly stated: vague language is a defense mechanism to cover up our lies.

The Grace of Joyce

Grace is the story of a man's fall and redemption. It is an exploration of faith. Taking place in Ireland, the dialogue between Mr. Kernan and his friends allows for much more sincere religious debate than is usually sanctioned among pious Catholics. Faith is represented with complexity and irony. Mrs. Kernan's "faith was bounded by her kitchen, but, if she was put to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost" (Joyce, 261). In this paratactic sentence, the banshee of Irish folklore and the Holy Ghost are equated in the dubious corner of Mrs. Kernan's religious beliefs, emphasizing the pragmatism of her faith. Mr. Kernan, who comes from a Protestant family, exemplifies the surface conformity to the Catholic religion that the other characters show to varying degrees. "Though he had been converted to the Catholic faith at the time of his marriage, he had not been in the pale of the Church for twenty years. He was fond, moreover, of giving side-thrusts at Catholicism" (Joyce, 260). As Mr. Kernan and his friends discuss Catholicism, their favorite Popes, the great ministers they have known, a drinking ritual with religious overtones occurs simultaneously. "Mr. Power officiated. Glasses were rinsed and five small measure of whiskey were poured out" (Joyce, 268). Later Mr. Cummingham responds to Mr. Kernan's Protestant doubt with, "'Not one of them, not the biggest drunkard, not the most...out-and-out ruffian, not one of them ever preached ex cathedra a word of false doctrine'" (Joyce, 269). Sins are forgiveable; what is important is to live an honest life and know the truth. In this context, "The light music of whiskey falling into glasses" assumes the significance of a mass (Joyce, 270). During the climactic moment of religious catharsis, when the men go on retreat to "wash the pot," we realize that this ritual is "religion of habit" as much as a serious spiritual exercise. Mr. Cunningham, the moral arbiter of the group of friends covertly points out the various attendees, from Mr. Harford, the moneylender widely accused of being a Jew, to the town officials, to businessmen, prosperous or fallen on hard times, speculating on their sins and offenses.
The story is also an exploration of human relationships and loyalty. Mr. Kernan is a relatable character; for all of his faults, he is not so very bad compared to you or I, or anyone. As Joyce demonstrates, there are worse people in the town than Mr. Kernan, which is why he has loyal friends who are willing to help him back to a more dignified existence. A large portion of the story is devoted to the conversation of Mr. Kernan and his friends around his bedside. Joyce presents their relationship almost exclusively through dialogue, with little narrative intervention, leaving judgment up to the reader. Joyce presents the loyalty of Mrs. Kernan to her husband, also with little judgment, although through her vivid memories, the reader can glimpse her acceptance of her lot.

Sentence patterns:
She was an active, practical woman of middle age. Not long before she had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her husband by waltzing with him to Mr Power's accompaniment. In her days of courtship, Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported and, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon his other arm. After three weeks she had found a wife's life irksome and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had become a mother.
(Joyce, 259)

The first sentence is an example of pattern 4, a series without a conjunction. Joyce uses this sentence type frequently, modifying the subject with multiple adjectives but omitting a conjunction. The second sentence is written in pattern 8, dependent clauses in a pair. It opens with an independent clause, "Not long before she had celebrated her silver wedding anniversary" but then follows it with two dependent clauses, "and renewed her intimacy with her husband" "by waltzing with him to Mr Power's accompaniment." It is a cumulative sentence. The third sentence is quite complex, cumulative and polysyndetic, and combines several patterns. Beginning with the prepositional phrase, "In her days of courtship," the core of the sentence follows pattern 3, compound sentence with explanatory statement, "Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported." The sentence then continues polysyndetically in pattern 12, with a series of participial phrases, "seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon his other arm." This long and layered sentence conveys a feeling of girlish breathlessness. The reader is able to experience Mrs Kernan's delight. The last sentence is a variation on pattern 14, prepositional phrase before subject and verb. It presents a series of two prepositional phrases, "after three weeks," and " when she was beginning to find it unbearable."

Lo. Lee. Ta.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Cumulative Rendering

Lolita is the light of my life and fire of my loins when I say her name, "Lo-lee-ta," my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth, or in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock, when she is Lo, plain Lo, and even as Lola in slacks or Dolly at school, or Dolores on the dotted line, she is always, in my arms, Lolita, my sin, my soul.

In order to write a cumulative version of the opening of Lolita, which seems almost sacrilegious to me since I love these opening paragraphs so much, I had to group the short, often fragmented sentences together into an overarching idea. I choose to go with Humbert's names for Lolita, which is the surface topic of the paragraph. Unfortunately, in trying to create one sentence out of about nine, I had to simplify it a great deal, which is something Nabokov avoids with his extreme parataxis. In the opening, there are absolutely no connectors, even when the ideas being stated appear to be related. Though all of the names given to Lolita appear to be related to her, as Nabokov demonstrates in his etymological analysis of the name Lolita, they are each distinct identities that have little to do with Lolita herself, but instead, have to do with Humbert's fantasy of Lolita. In order to make this a cumulative sentence, I had to add conjunctions, which relate identities that are not actually related. I also had to group parallel constructions, in order to omit verbs and cram more information into one sentence. The sentence I wrote ends up being much simpler in sense than Nabokov's paragraphs, which force the reader to do much more of the work and, in their brevity, are more ambiguous than clear.

What Nabokov does do is use his language and form to bring out the meaning for the reader, rather than making explicit connections. The opening paragraph, with its pattern 4 sentences that list subjects in a series, A, B, C, creates a sense of reverence for this character. The delicious alliteration of L-sounds rolls itself through the mouth like the name "Lo-lee-ta" does in Humbert's schematic of speech. The religious language, "light of my life," "fire," "sin," "soul," reinforce the devotional overtones. Adoration is being performed. A prayer is being said. Still, this worship has hellish undertones. "Sin" following immediately after "fire" evokes fire and brimstone, retribution, but paired with soul, offers hope for redemption. The paragraph is filled with antithesis, "My sin, my soul," that underscore the indecision and moral struggle of Humbert.
The second paragraph relies almost completely on isocolon, but begins by interrupting the isocolon that is being set up with parenthetical explanation.
She was Lo in the morning
She was Lola in slacks
She was Dolly at school
She was Dolores on the dotted line
The sentences follow a pattern of subject + verb + name +prepositional phrase, emphasizing that Lolita's names and identities change according to where she is in space, as well as what she is wearing. Breaking the isocolon of the first sentence with a running style creates a breathless beginning that is then contrasted with the methodical, reasoned isocolonic sentences that try to encapsulate Lolita and keep her in her place. These extremes of feeling are what Humbert undergoes when he thinks about Lolita. She breaks the rules. She escapes from the boxes in which he tries to organize her in his mind. The simple sentences have a childlike quality, reflective both of Lolita, who is a child, and Humbert, who thinks often in immature and childish ways.

Clinton's Inaugural Address

Questions

I am a little confused by Lanham's use of the term zeugma, as he defines it differently than I have learned it in the past. Lanham defines it as, "one verb serves for a series of objects." He then seems to apply it also to cases in which the same subject is assumed for a series of verbs. In John Drury's The Poetry Dictionary, what Lanham is referring to is more generally described by the term, "Syllepsis: word with different meanings in relation to two other words, for example a verb with two objects (as in 'I'll strike the first blow and a match'); called zeugma when one of those two 'yoked' elements is gramatically incompatible with the word that governs them, as in 'I struck the first blow, and may you too') (250). Perhaps this is a different usage of the term specifically for poetry, but I am still a little confused by exactly what type of sentences Lanham is naming by it. In my reading of Clinton's speech, I have employed the term zeugma as I believe it is used by Lanham.
In general, I feel pretty clear on the Lanham. I just feel like I need more practice using the terms.

Now, to the First Inaugural Address of Bill Clinton...

In his first inaugural speech, Bill Clinton pulls his audience in with an unexpected topic: spring. As he makes clear, spring is not on anyone's mind in "the depth of winter," but Clinton argues that it should be, in the figurative sense, as he calls every citizen to work to renew America.
The speech has a driving rhythm leading to its inspiring and climactic call to action. Contributing to this rhythm are many parallel constructions that allow the listener's thought processes to progress according to the logical pattern of the President's words. One of these is the refrain on the theme of renewal that runs throughout the speech, polysyndetically connecting its disparate topics, from domestic issues to foreign crises.
The refrain begins,
"Today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal."
It then continues in the infinitive form throughout the speech,
"To renew America, we must be bold.
To renew America, we must revitalize our democracy.
To renew America, we must meet challenges abroad as well as at home."
In contrast to the running sentences that make up the bulk of Clinton's expositions on these topics, the refrain sentences are short and clipped. They allow the listener to pause and reflect on what was just said, as well as to prepare himself for the topic introduced by the refrain. The refrain provides a simple skeleton for the listener to connect to, within the jungle of words that augment the inspirational anecdotes.
Clinton also begins several sentences "with what in the Renaissance was called a doublet" and pairs these doublets by alliteration, elevating his language to elegant musicality that, again, makes it easier for the listener to absorb (Lanham, 70).
"Communications and commerce are global
Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world
we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift"
In the second sentence, he even employs internal rhyme. These devices heighten the individual words and make the meaning stand out more.
As this address was in honor of Clinton's assuming the presidency, the name 'America' is especially pronounced. One way in which Clinton keeps the nation's name in the minds of his listeners is by beginning and ending sentences with it.
"Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
Today, we do more than celebrate America; we rededicate ourselves to the very idea of America.
These reflexive sentences emphasize Clinton's theme that, as American's, we have the resources of our renewal within ourselves.
Clinton's running style has an intricate chiasmus that pulls the listener forward to the speech's inspiring conclusion by creating a polysyndetic relationship between sentences.
"And so today, we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift--a new season of American renewal has begun.
To renew America, we must be bold"
Clinton picks up the subject of the former sentence, "American renewal" and begins the next sentence with the refrain, "to renew America," in verb form.
He does it again later.
"Now, we must do the work the season demands."
And a few lines later,
"I challenge a new generation of Americans to a season of service".
In this second example, Clinton transforms the sense of 'season.' In the first case, he refers to the figurative season of spring, but in the second, he invokes a period of work, of giving back.
Finally, one of the most effective rhetorical devices employed in this speech to facilitate the driving rhythm is zeugma.
"Our hopes, our hearts, our hands, are with those on every continent who are building democracy and freedom."
In this sentence, the verb 'are' is assumed for the three alliterated subjects, 'hopes,' 'hearts,' 'hands.' Again, the alliteration highlights the rhetorical device and emphasizes the extent of our involvement in these other continents.
The zeugma intensifies toward the end as the speech builds on the listener's emotions to the climactic call to action.
"we rededicate ourselves to the very idea of America
An idea born in revolution and renewed
An idea tempered by the knowledge
An idea ennobled by the faith"
An idea infused with the conviction"
America is the idea assumed by the following sentences. Layering these sentences with the same subject, the theme of America, Clinton has already built the "joyful mountaintop of celebration" from which he hears and makes the "call to service in the valley."

Works Cited
Drury, John. The Poetry Dictionary. Cincinatti: Writer's Digest Books, 2006.