Which is worse a cough or a runny nose

Holden has a specific idea of what makes someone phony in The Catcher in the Rye. We’ve discussed in class how he seems to be okay with lying to spare someone ill feelings, yet he despises those who show off real talents for attention or recognition. He seems to believe those who beg for attention are "more fake" than those who betray the truth.

Throughout the novel, Holden lies his way through countless uncomfortable situations. He lies about reading his history textbook in order to save his teacher even more disappointment. He lies about Ernest Morrow to his mother on the subway to convince the mom that his son is a role model rather than a huge punk. These lies are not necessarily harmful; they make the listener feel good. Holden tells the listener what they want to hear rather than the ugly truth. Holden even withholds the truth from the reader, but he is honest about doing so. He won't tell us about his childhood, and he doesn’t go into much detail about his past schools. This relative honesty makes the reader feel as if although Holden will outright lie to people in the story, he will be honest about keeping information from the reader.

Furthermore, Holden takes his relationship with the reader and lying to another level when he tells the reader just how much he is fabricating. An example of this is when his history teacher agrees with Pencey’s headmaster that life is a game. Holden, to save an argument, agrees seemingly wholeheartedly that life is, in fact, a game. He reveals to us, though, that he was lying and the fact that people think of life as a game was something that caused him a degree of anger.

So what is the difference between outright lying and being a showoff? The distinction is never explicitly made, but it can be observed that Holden’s lies are meant to “help” others, or improve their moods, as opposed to his own. A counter-argument to this could be that Holden was telling people what they wanted to hear in order for him to escape ridicule, but that does not fall in line with Holden’s observations of those who are “phony” and we don’t want to call Holden a hypocrite because he is already suffering enough. Those who are “show offs” are demanding attention or recognition. One of the first examples of someone Holden calls “phony” is the dean of one of his previous schools. He would wait outside every day to shake parents’ hands and talk about their kids and other people’s parents for up to a half an hour (that last one is strange but to each their own lol). The explanation for why the dean is phony could be that he is attempting to build a personal relationship with the parents in order the skew their opinions of the school as opposed to simply doing good work as a dean without feeling the need to be liked by each individual parent. Other examples are more clear such as the piano player with a mirror in front of his face, or the arrogant actors.

The question now is whether or not Holden’s deception is better than the phoniness he hates. How much is phoniness hurting others? And how innocent are Holden’s lies? Would you call Holden a hypocrite? Let me know what you think!

DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO CRINGE

I am taking this opportunity to use chapter two of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as an excuse to perform a self roast on my middle school self. I will be using some of the events from chapter two as points of reference for some of my reflection. I deeply sympathize with Joyce over not including his first poem. Keep reading to find out why …..

The first half of chapter two Stephen is described as a middle school aged boy who is understandably super awkward. He has a strange fixation on The Count of Monte Cristo, sitting alone at parties looking at girls, and making cringey art. I'm not trying to rip into Stephen; everyone goes through a uncomfortable period in their life. I think it's valuable that Joyce chose to include details of an embarrassing phase of his life in his novel. It made me reflect on my own middle school years and I had a blast thinking about what a little weirdo I was. 

I thought it could be fun to do not a pastiche of Joyce but a caricature of myself from middle school. There is something overly dramatic yet relatable about Stephen sitting in the corner of a party using his psychic powers to get a girl's attention. Stephen's style throughout the whole chapter reminded me of what a "fedora guy" is all about. For those of you who aren't sticking with the memes, fedora guys are typically preteens to teenagers who think of themselves as having higher intelligence than others and that is why they can't get a girlfriend. They also think that while other boys have "swag" they have "class." They're very strange, like Stephen! I am led to believe that Joyce did not just relay true facts to us in the text, but like any novelist, wrote novel-worthy content which is most likely exaggerated to some degree. I was quite active on deviantart and Tumblr at the time, so I made it in the form of a profile bio. 

Check it out:

[I found a picture of me in middle school and I was going to post it here but I think it is better if I just had this in its place because my middle school self is... shockingly different I don't want to spook anyone. Message (don't comment) me to see]

This is me in the seventh grade! I like to color coordinate my outfits so I only wear one color on my entire body. Some days I look like a grape, and others I look like a fire engine XD 

My interests include making ~fleece unicorn hatz~ and drawing my favorite characters from "hipster" media. Like a good artist, I draw every single day in my bedazzled sketchbook. I try to stylize my pieces as much as possible so that a viewer cannot distinguish between one part of the body from another. I don't really like to show people my sketches anymore, though, because one time my really talented artist friend saw my drawings and wouldn't stop laughing. Similarly, when I showed my dad some of my pieces, two technical anatomy textbooks were soon in my possession. I think my style is quite jarring but I like that it is edgy. That makes it meaningful. 

The one piece I will show you [I WILL NOT SHOW YOU THIS DO NOT ASK] is my original character for my first comic :3c she doesn't have a name because she was born without one and she has no parents. (real reasoning) She is actually based off of me except I am a ninja owo as you can see I have rainbow wings, a hat with big floppy ears, and a scarf. These all help me to stay stealthy in the night. 

I was going to include an image of myself and my artwork but I just felt an overwhelming feeling of pure embarrassment. I think that's okay, and I'm certain Joyce felt it too when he reflected on some of the first poems he wrote. No wonder he didn't include it in his novel. Interestingly, I have no shame in showing grade school and prior artwork, and no shame in showing artwork I'm doing now. For some reason these years have been poisoned for me in terms of artistic development. Maybe Joyce felt the same way. Could it be because middle school is the time that most children begin to think more critically, or that they begin puberty, or is it something else like the art is so close to being good that it is worse than being complete garbage?

I think it would be great to get some other artists perspectives on this. I know there are lots of you out there!! How were your middle school years in terms of the art you produced relative to now? Do you feel the same way abut your work? If you don't consider yourself an artist, are there other ways you relate to Stephen from early chapter two?

15 Y/O HAS RATED R EXPERIENCE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WILL ASTOUND YOU

I don’t mean to write this as a dig at Catholicism or religion in any way. I don’t think ill be saying anything offensive about it, but if for some reason I say something that disturbs you please let me know. What I will be discussing are the effects of social depravation and scare tactics on naïve individuals (in this case a child/teenager) without an alternative authoritative influence such as a parent’s guidance or a group of relatable friends.

                  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man establishes perfectly in the first chapter the stirring pot for Stephen’s decent into self loathing and anxiety. Stephen is sent to a boarding school which isolates him from his family in some of the most important years of his development. Though the school he attended gave him few grievances, his peers bullied him, and in these years of vital development, transformed Stephen into a socially inept character. Because he was deprived of family influence, and friendship with his peers, his religion is the only thing he can pull his understanding of the world from. Since this occurred so early in his life, the effects of this isolation remain and fester with him well into his teenage years. Furthermore, because there is no alternate source that could explain the complex and confusing lessons he is taught, he develops a bizarre understanding of his faith and develops an obsession with sin and punishment.

(I think this interest may have stemmed from his relationship with justice at Clongowes. In what we have read so far, Stephen has a conscience preoccupied with the concept of sin and sinful thoughts, however until chapter three he has not considered the punishment, or justice for being sinful. The cyclic nature of the novel leads me to believe that Stephen will soon enough have to face the justice associated with the crimes he has committed against his faith.)

                  The obsession starts to wear on Stephen’s conscience especially heavily during chapter three when father Arnall describes the punishment he must endure for the what he has done. In this moment the culmination of his social issues, his feelings of guilt, and his pride in his knowledge clash to create some kind of totally devastating vortex for Stephen. He has no friends to confide in, he has no father to confide in, and he cannot possibly confess at his school!! He has all of these feelings that he has internalized after years of being isolated from the group that he can’t let them out when he really needs to. I believe that with the involvement of his guardians or his peers (or even the men working at his school who he has deemed inaccessible because of his status as the head of the Virgin Mary committee) he would have had a much more secular approach to life which could have prevented him from either committing his ultimate sins or feeling such an overwhelming guilt. Would that make Stephen less special? Yeah. Would that make the book less interesting? Yeah. But I think its important to try to think about why Stephen sometimes seems so weird to us.

Also unrelated but related, I watched a 45-minute documentary on Magdalene Asylums, which are orphanages for girls or “safe homes” for women who have given birth before marriage. The sorts of terrible things discussed in this documentary bring to light how central and controlling to society the Catholic faith was in Ireland in the 1900s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWKuGqtWDow

Mother Knows Best

Beloved by Toni Morrison explores the unique connection mothers have with their children by depicting three different mothers and their relationships with their children. The novel seems to be expressing that it is hard to pin down what exactly makes a “good” mother, or what makes a “bad” one. Some of these mother’s actions can be considered disgusting, however the context in which the actions were committed blurs the line between necessity and cruelty.

                  The first mother in the chronological story, Baby Suggs, is a woman whose son bought her freedom by working overtime. She moved north to ensure her son’s hard work did not go to waste. Tired from the hard life of slavery, she felt it difficult to truly enjoy freedom but she felt is necessary to create a home for which her son and his family to escape. Though Baby Suggs does not commit a deplorable act against her children, she does possess a deep spiritual connection with her sons. Every time one of her children dies, she can sense a loss within her. Loss wears away at her until she falls into a deep depression, and eventually passes away. Perhaps her depression is in part due to regret for not being able to protect her children, or perhaps it is due to the departure of her grandsons, Buglar and Howard, Sethe’s children.

                  Sethe’s dedication to her children runs deep within her character, motivating her to defy death (or welcome it in some cases) in order to protect her children. She is forced to decide, before leaving Sweet Home to either wait for her MIA husband, Halle, or leave with the presented opportunity to reach her kids. During her escape to freedom, she has a near death experience in which she collapses from exhaustion and pain. As she is about to give up, she feels her baby Denver in her womb kicking, and she thinks of her children waiting for her in the North. Amy discovers Sethe and nurses her back to health, and Sethe with a second wind takes her enormously pregnant self to safety in the North. (Ok so I need to mention this, I am not sure if a lot of you are 100% aware of how IMPOSSIBLE it is to move when you’re really freaking pregnant like ok I am sure you have all seen pregnant people but listen ok my mom was pregnant when I was a subbie and lived with her and tended to her I am absolutely sure that traveling in the wilderness with no shoes would kill 9/10 pregnant women like Sethe is metal ok that is a mommy’s love thank you)

                  Once in the North, Sethe is able to decompress and enjoy freedom with all of her children… until schoolteacher shows up. Sethe’s reaction is instinctual. She makes the decision for her children that death is better than a life of slavery. People criticize Sethe because Sethe had escaped slavery to the North. In order to better understand Sethe’s rationale (if there even is any) for her choice, we need to look into what we can assume about her mother from the information were given about her as well as Sethe’s experience as a slave. Sethe’s mother wsas hung perhaps over a failed attempt to escape slavery. Sethe thinks over this and wonders if her mother really would leave her in order to escape to freedom. These thoughts motivate Sethe to be a better mother and never leave her kids behind. She has an ingrained dedication to her children over the abandonment she felt when she was young. To kill her children was a desperate attempt to protect them from the life she lived under school teacher. In her mind, she saved her children from being raped, from being whipped, from being separated and sold, and she saved them from living a life that was not their own. Whether or not her children could have escaped slavery if they were taken is irrelevant. They were not taken. If they were taken, the suffering they would have had to endure would taint the rest of their lives. A physical representation of this tarnish is Sethe’s tree on her back. Do I agree with Sethe’s actions? It is hard to say… I am still deciding what I think. It is hard to wrestle with because it was instinctual, it had noble intentions, and it ended up saving 3/4 of her children.

                  A mother that killed her children not out of protection but out of hatred and disgust was Ella, a former slave that was sexually abused and raped by her white owners. She was forced to carry the child of one of her rapists, and instead of raising the child she hated, she let it die. This was another really difficult choice that was made in Beloved, and another hard choice to judge. Toni Morrison may have been creating such difficult scenarios to make us look into ourselves and think about how judgmental we are being. We are being just like the community in Cincinnati. It shows the kinds of impossible decisions mothers must make in order to do what is right.

吉子さん

Yoshiko's purpose in the novel The White Boy Shuffle is much more than just being a "mail order bride". She becomes a powerful companion to Gunnar by exposing him to Japanese literature and culture. Through this exposure, Gunnar develops a new, more complex view of his world. Further, Yoshiko's exposure to western culture (initially through Gunnar's poetry) and the English language have allowed her to develop a strong relationship with her new husband.

Upon meeting and getting married, Yoshiko defends herself against Betty and Veronica successfully, thus winning their approval as opposed to fighting with them outright. This display of confidence gives Gunnar and his family more confidence in their relationship. Gunnar's world seems to open up literally and figuratively the moment Yoshiko touches Gunnar's anus for the first time. The newlyweds are off to college together, a place full of possibility (even though we end up seeing Gunnar being pretty disappointed). After a hard day at class, he returns to his dorm butt naked and falls into Yoshiko's lap. Her response is very casual, revealing that their relationship has risen to a much greater level over the course of their time together.

What makes this scene interesting is how casual she remains throughout the bizarre events. Her behavior in part is what makes people uncomfortable with the novels course, as her apathy adds a sort of surrealism to the novel that people don't expect. 

Yoshiko's behavior illuminates how comfortable she and Gunnar have become over the few weeks they've known each other. As mentioned in class, Yoshiko's constant butt poking is one of the many twists on stereotypes the novel presents. Typically, African American males are supposed to be extremely masculine, however this kind of behavior between Gunnar and his wife is emasculating him in a way that makes the stereotype not fit quite right. 

By the end of the scene, with the help of his entire Writing 104 class, Yoshiko has convinced Gunnar to publish a book of poetry.

Yoshiko's most important influence may come from her letters to Gunnar while he's away playing basketball. She sends him traditional Japanese literature that creates a new perspective for Gunnar. Of course, the literature resonates with him because he's a nerd who loves to read, but it gives him an idea of what other philosophies there could be in the world. Eventually, the most relevant ideology he receives from Yoshiko is that suicide is not giving up, but a defiance against the enemy. 

This idea drives the end of the novel, as countless people begin sending Gunnar death poems before the commit suicide, in haiku format. Japanese death poems were written by samurai before committing sepukku by cutting their abdomen and bleeding to death. It was considered honorable as opposed to pitiful.

Yoshiko provided Gunnar the information he needed to drive the movement, however when Gunnar believes it is time for him to commit suicide she is violently against the idea. She cries out that she knew Gunnar would leave her with a baby to care for on her own. Ironically, the only Japanese character in the novel is against the Japanese suicide method that is sweeping the nation! It is hard to say whether Yoshiko is against the idea of seppuku as a whole, or for her family in particular. But there is no doubt that Yoshiko played a pivotal role in the novel. 

*The Correct Protest Novel*

The prologue in The White Boy Shuffle gives a very sinister reality in which black Americans have given up all hope of achieving equality. For a novel written far closer to the present in relation to the three others we’ve read in class, I’m not so surprised this one seems more aggressive in its tone. With swear words and dark imagery, the novel starts out with a setting that pulls the reader in.
The novel comes after the civil rights movement, which was a time full of change and hope for African American equality, yet it was met with assassinations and true equality was still kept from protestors by the racist white establishment. 

Even today, our American society has a long way to go before we reach true social equality. It is not a new epidemic that officers have been killing black Americans over minor offenses. The media has been giving these crimes more attention, and the Black Lives Matter movement has gained a lot of momentum, which are great steps, however these have not yet changed the fact that the officers more often than not receive no punishment for their actions, and justice, in many cases, in not served. (EDIT think of Rodney King all the way up to Michael Brown and the countless others who have become victims) Even today, in 2016, the prologue of The White Boy Shuffle may have some sort of point. I’m not saying its hopeless, nor am I saying that suicide is the way to go when things are looking rough, but try to imagine how it must feel that after hundreds of years of a fight for something so simple — to be treated like humans with human rights, to be treated the same as any white person — it must get really old when so many people refuse to listen. The prologue seems to be asking “What’s the point?” when one of the most important values of the American constitution “liberty and justice for all” fails an entire race of people…

It’s a very dramatic contrast with Invisible Man, in which the narrator’s protest is individual. He doesn’t seem to be making that big of a difference in the big picture, but what matters to him is his personal defiance. Also, for some reason, the narrator really enjoys the American constitution and is totally jazzed by the Founding Fathers. Not to say Invisible Man isn’t a great novel in terms of protesting the white establishment, these two novels just take very different stances on how to successfully protest I guess? I think Native Son is closer to The White Boy Shuffle's prologue because of the futility expressed in both. Considering how aggressive Richard Wright is about ****THE CORRECT PROTEST NOVEL**** I'd like to see what he thinks of The White Boy Shuffle, and the prologue especially. There is definitely a possibility that The White Boy Shuffle has taken inspiration from both novels, and may be making commentary on both of them in order to add a modern contribution to the protest conversation. 

       I can't wait to see how Gunnar grows up to become the radical leader he says he is. Let me know what you think of the prologue! Do you think its reflective of some of the attitudes of post civil rights protestors? Do you think post civil rights activists felt, and possibly still feel that they need to make an even larger statement to make a change?