Storytelling

"Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world" (72).

In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie creates a character who tells stories to all who will listen.  Thomas Builds-the-Fire is the storyteller, and he and Victor Joseph grow up together as friends on the reservation. But because of Thomas' storytelling, their relationship as young men has become estranged. In This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona, the boys take a road trip to collect what Victor's father has left behind after his death including his remains.    Victor needs the money Thomas can give him in order to make the trip, and part of the bargain is that Victor will have to listen to Thomas' stories on the journey.  Reluctantly, Victor agrees, and the two set out together for Phoenix, Arizona.

How do Alexie's stories help to "change the world"?  What changes between Thomas and Victor on their trip?  How does Alexie use the character of Thomas Builds-the-Fire to help readers relate to the characters in the stories?  And, why is this character estranged from the Indian (a word Alexie uses without prejudice) community?  

Their Eyes Were Watching God

"She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her" (11).

"Oh to be a pear tree--any tree in bloom! . . . Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience.  Waiting for the world to be made" (11).

A noted intellectual, anthropologist, and writer whose career began during the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God  in only seven weeks while in Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship.  The novel, filled African American folklore, dialect, and poetry, tells the story of a young African American woman's quest for self.  In the lines quoted above, Hurston uses the pear tree as a metaphor for the life her protagonist seeks.  What is it that Janie sees as she lays under the pear tree?  What is the voice that she hears? What connection do you see between Janie and the pear tree?   What passages can you identify that reflect this metaphor?

A Gathering of Old Men

In A Gathering of Old Men Ernest Gaines employs several narrators, each one providing readers with his/her version of the events that happen in a single day on the grounds of the Marshall Plantation in south Louisiana in the late 1970's.  Beau Bouton lays dead, and there are at least a dozen old black men and one white woman who claim responsibility for his killing.  As each narrator tells his/her story, we learn of the deep racial tension between whites, blacks, and Cajuns in a society in which the effects of the plantation system continue to linger long after slavery has ended.  

Why does everyone want to take credit for this killing?  Is it more than just a means of avoiding prosecution, or are these old men trying to make some kind of statement?  If so, what?  Why now?  And finally, describe how the racial dynamic described in Gaines' text reflects the plantation system.

Caught Between Two Cultures

In America is in the Heart Carlos Bulosan eloquently describes the paradox of America, especially for the Asian-American immigrant.  Those who came to America seeking the "land of opportunity" often found themselves limited by political policies and social practices based on racism. Bulosan's novel focuses on the experiences of Filipino migrant workers who were predominantly men.  Faced with deplorable working and living conditions, these men found solace and solidarity in the fraternal bond.  In The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan gives voice to another group of Asian immigrants, this time a group of Chinese women and their American-born daughters.  While Bulosan's male characters seem to be drawn closer together as they face the challenges of life as an immigrant, Tan's female characters often seem to be driven apart.  In the following exchange between Waverly Jong and her mother, Lindo, the daughter seems to be trying to distance herself from her mother:

"I wish you wouldn't do that, telling everybody I'm your daughter."  My mother stopped walking.  Crowds of people with heavy bags pushed past us on the sidewalk, bumping into first one shoulder, then another. "Aiii-ya.  So shame be with mother?'  She grasped my hand even tighter as she glared at me.  I looked down.  "It's not that, it's just so obvious.  It's just so embarrassing" (99).

Why was Waverly embarrassed?  Was her mother "too Chinese"?  Is Wavery (and the other daughters) caught between two cultures?  How?  Did Tan's characters face challenges similar to those faced by Bulosan's?  How/why are these experiences different?

The Unvanquished

 . . . Ringo and I had been born in the same month and had both fed at the same breast and had slept together and eaten together for so long that Ringo called Granny 'Granny' just like I did, until maybe he wasn't a nigger anymore or maybe I wasn't a white boy anymore, the two of us neither, not even people any longer . . . .

from The Unvanquished (7)

Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post as a series of short stories, The Unvanquished tells the story of two boys born the same month on a Mississippi plantation in September 1849.  What makes their story compelling is that one boy is black, and the other is white.  Faulkner uses this novel to explore several issues in the Antebellum South including race, Christian morality, and Southern honor. When the novel opens in the summer of 1862, Bayard and Ringo are twelve years old playing war games in the back yard of the Sartoris house.   The Civil War had been fought mostly in Virginia, but they are soon confronted with the reality of war when they learn that Vicksburg has fallen to the Yankees. In the absence of Bayard's father, John Sartoris, who is off fighting in the war, they decide that they must defend themselves from the advancing Yankees. Briefly describe the relationship between these two boys.  Why does Faulkner choose Bayard to narrate the story? What effect does this have on the reader's perception of the story?  How would it be different if Ringo had been chosen instead?

The Lost Generation

"You are all a lost generation."

                                      - Gertrude Stein 

Gertrude Stein is said to have spoken these words to Ernest Hemingway referring to a generation of American writers who became disillusioned after World War I by a society that they believed valued material wealth, power, and puritanical mores more than human life.  Although he was unable to serve in combat as a soldier because of poor eyesight, Hemingway nonetheless enlisted and served as an ambulance driver in Italy, where he saw first hand the death and destruction of combat.  He was seriously wounded in July 1918 and spent several months in Italian hospitals before returning home in January 1919. He would later return to Europe to join Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson,  F. Scott Fitzgerald, (among others)  who congregated in London and Paris where they lived a lifestyle free of the puritanical confines of early twentieth century American society.

Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, tells the story of Jake Barnes, an American jounalist and WWI veteran who is living in Paris with a group of expatriates who seem to be living the bohemian lifestyle Hemingway and other members of the Lost Generation had adopted after the war.  He is in love with a woman who is engaged to another man, and he spends his evenings going from one bar to another drinking heavily.  What motivates Jake?  Does he have a moral compass?  How does this character reflect the "Lost Generation"?