Extra Credit Post

When this course started and we were introduced to the group blog idea I was very skeptical.  I’m not a huge fan of group work and I don’t like other people being responsible for my grades and vice versa.  I also didn’t know how we would organize our blog.  I was worried that the brunt of the work would be placed on one person.  Luckily with my group that didn’t happen and we were all really good about splitting the work evenly.  We did have a few mix ups because we always split up the work which made it difficult to remember who was responsible for the blog that week.  I also felt like it would be difficult to write the blog because I was worried that our ideas wouldn’t all be the same.  That wasn’t the case though because even when we didn’t see eye to eye on everything we were all willing to listen to the others’ ideas and thoughts which allowed us to grow and learn different ideas.  Our blog never really matched up to our manifesto simply because I don’t think we completely understood the blog assignment when we wrote our manifesto.  We planned to make it much more exciting than it ended up being and I think part of that was our schedule.  Everyone in my group had a very full schedule this semester and I think that was part of the reason that our blog was a bit dry.  We did try to include interesting views and ideas into our blog and I think that matched up well with our original manifesto.  We just kind of struggled because when one of us was busy it seemed like all of us were busy.  I didn’t expect so many students to have such different interpretations of each reading.  It really gave me the opportunity to learn because it allowed me to read others’ interpretations and compare them to mine.  I am a fan of learning from different ideas and perspectives and this blog assignment really allowed me to do so.  Had I not been exposed to other blogs I might not have ever realized the different ways that the text could be understood.  By reading other blogs I was equipped with every weapon I could have for class discussion because I could reference my fellow classmates’ blogs and ideas.  This assignment really allowed me to grow and learn in terms of understanding the texts that we read in this course.

The Awakening & Presentation Idea

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was a very controversial book back during the time in which it was written. It is easy to see this because it shows the main female character, Edna, wanting to explore her sexual desires with other men besides her husband. She goes off on many excursions with various men throughout the story – while deceiving those around her, mainly her husband. In the process she starts to realize that she doesn’t want to be a “proper lady” like madame Ratignolle, but instead was wanting to be more like mademoiselle Reisz who was more artistic and free-spirited. We didn’t really understand why Edna would choose to swim out into the ocean and drown herself though. In class we talked about the Creole vs. Anglo argument that is portrayed in this book, and because Edna was of Creole decent we have now come to the conclusion that she most likely drowned herself because she was “owned” by her husband. We say this because in class we talked about some of the Creole customs and one of them was that the women are pretty much the property of the men. So with that being said, Edna would have been afraid to confront her husband because she had cheated on him and was afraid of just what he would do.

Now we would like to go over what we plan to do for our final paper/presentation. The three of us (plus Joshua Zaborowski) plan on creating a website on the topic of 19^th century heroism. We chose this topic because although it is broad, it gives us a lot of room to work with and will be able to compare and contrast the different styles of heroes that we have learned about during this semester. We will be focusing mainly on Byronic and Romantic heroes, while also comparing the modern day hero to the 19^th century hero. We have the general basis of what our presentation/paper will be on. The main heroes (or stories) that we plan to focus on are Joaquin Murrieta, Frankenstein, and the slave in Douglass’s Narrative to name a few. We will discuss how each of these characters are heroes and what purpose they serve in their respective stories, as well as the similarities and differences amongst them. We will be getting together over the next few weeks to iron out the rest of the details and put the information in a neat, organized, and creative outlook on our websites – while also putting the process of the website design into our paper and presentation. Please provide us with some helpful output on if our idea is ideal and possibly what you might suggest we do differently, thank you!

Pudd'nhead Unchained

In this blog I would really like to relate Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson to the Quinten Tarantino film “Django Unchained.”  “Django Unchained” is a sort of Western film only extremely modernized and, like an Tarantino film, extremely gruesome.  Django, who is played by Jaime Foxx is a former slave who was freed by a German bounty hunter who was disguised as a dentist going to different plantations to conduct business.  The bounty hunter makes a deal with Django that if he can help catch the bounties he will be a free man and he will split the profit.  Django agrees under the condition that they must free his long lost wife from slavery at the “Candy Land” plantation owned by Calvin Candy.  Stephen, who is played by Samuel L. Jackson reminds me a lot of the Real Chambers, or “Tom.”  Stephen is one of the older more privileged slaves on Candy’s plantation.  He has the right to stay in the “big house” and when Candy is away he even tends to business.  He acts very much like a white slave owner would even though he himself is a black slave.  One scene that really demonstrates this is the scene in which Django and the bounty hunter first ride into “Candy Land.”  Django rides a horse alongside the bounty hunter while slaves that Candy just purchased are forced to walk behind the wagon.  Upon seeing Django, a former slave, upon a horse Stephen has an interesting reaction.  He meets the group on the front steps of the “big house” and after a little heckling he asks Candy, “Who dis nigger upon dat nag?”  I find this very interesting because Stephen is economically more poor than Django, given that Django is a free man and Stephen is still in slavery.  It really reminds me of Real Chamber’s character in that because he is raised white and treated better, in turn he oppresses other races and treats other people poorly.  Another parallel between the two stories is the idea of being “sold down river” in Pudd’nhead Wilson and the fact that Stephen wants Django to be sent to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company.  In Pudd’nhead Wilson everybody fears being “sold down river” because they know how harsh conditions will be.  Being “sold down river” is intended to mean that they will have to work every waking moment of every day, they will be beaten, they will be starved, and they will be much worse off than they were before they started causing trouble.  That is exactly what the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company is supposed to do.  After Django gets caught and the white men start to torture him, Stephen convinces them that sending him to the mining company will be worse punishment than anything they could ever do to him because he will be whipped constantly, he will work until the day he dies without ever getting a break, and he might die soon because of his defiance.  Luckily, before Django gets to the mining camp he convinces the men who are transporting him that he can help them make a lot of money, in turn he blows those men up and returns to “Candy Land” where he basically murders everyone that gets in his way and he saves his wife.  I just watched “Django Unchained” this week and I found so many parallels when comparing it to Pudd’nhead Wilson that I can’t help but wonder if the movie is at least loosely based on the novel.