Team Poe

...because he'd be so much better with Bella than Irving could ever be.

Lame and obvious joking aside, I'm firmly a Poe fan. Irving's work doesn't strike me as that enjoyable to read, to me personally of course. Poe, though, is deep, and (as we discussed in class) uses a lot of awesome language. I love his poetry especially. There was a time when I tried to memorize "The Raven" (and I have successfully memorized most of it, haha), and of course there's my favorite Poe poem, "A Dream Within a Dream." For those of you unfamiliar with it, it goes:

Take this kiss upon the brow
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow:
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream
Yet, if hope has flown away
In a night or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand.
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep!--while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

(Any errors in the above should be attributed to my faulty memory, but otherwise I guess you'll just have to trust me that I didn't look this one up.)

"A Dream Within a Dream" is one of Poe's lesser-known works, but I find it resonated with me a lot. I love the rhyme and the subject, the language and the imagery, the metaphors and the emotion in it. And I suppose that's what I love about Poe's work the most. He writes creepiness really well, but he recognizes beauty within his works also.

Charlie Chaplin and the Communist Party

Charlie Chapman was a popular movie-writer and actor who first became famous in 1915. His specialty was comedies and social commentaries. He was really popular in the United States until 1940, when he made a film called "The Great Dictator" that ended with a call for Americans to rally against Hitler and the Nazis. America, at the time, was strongly anti-war, so Chapman already had points counting against him there.

The thing that really condemned him was his later full-fledged supported the Soviet Union; 1942 articles written by columnist Westbrook Pegler accused Chapman of being a Communist sympathizer and, what was worse for his reputation, an immoral womanizer. The second count actually did the most damage to his reputation in the eyes of most Americans. He was eventually accused of all sorts of crimes of both illegal and immoral nature--fathering a child of an unmarried woman; owning white slaves; and, of course, being a Communist. He was innocent of all of these despite his pro-Soviet leanings (he was not a member of the Communist Party but was never allowed to testify on his own behalf when he was taken to court about it), and he eventually ended up leaving the country to live in Switzerland by 1953 to escape the intense political persecution.

To be honest, the things that most strike me about this article are the similarities between the political journalists (Pegler, as mentioned above, but also a "Hollywood columnis[t]" named Hedda Hopper) and the fictional journalist Rita Skeeter from the Harry Potter series. In the books, Skeeter was a clear villain--a journalist whose main goal it was to go after any and all scandals, regardless of their truth, as long as they sold newspapers. She was (as her name suggests) like a mosquito or a leech--sucking the juicy rumors out of the truth and publishing them for her own means. Pegler and Hopper may not have been villains, but journalists who are in business for the money and drama of stories, instead of for the truth, are like villains to their victims. Reading this article made me think more about the bias of the media and whether they should publish personal things about celebrities, as they make a habit of doing. I've heard that "the people have a right to know," but do they really? So what if Chapman really was a Communist sympathizer? He did have influence over American media, but by persecuting him as the legal authorities did, the American right of free speech was violated. That moral compromise probably did more harm for the nation than Chapman would ever have done.

Source: "What Made Charlie Run?" Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1989. By Stephen M. Weissman, MD. http://www1.american.edu/academic.depts/soc/run.html

The Crucible Act I Reflection

I like this play, The Crucible, so far from what we've read about it. The Salem witch trials have always frightened me, but this is giving us a chance to look at the individual members' psychology in addition to seeing the acts of Salem as a whole. In particular, I wonder about the mentality of the little girls who claim to have seen the witches. In modern-day interrogations, it has been shown that children can be highly suggestible when giving testimony.

Contemporary "witchhunts" take the form of accusations of things like child molesting, which (like witchcraft in Salem) often has little evidence outside of witness accounts. Psychologists who press children for testimony with leading questions like "Did so-and-so do THIS to you?" tend to result in the mental phenomenon known as false memories--a child wants to please the questioner and thus convinces him/herself that whatever he/she is being asked about really did happen. When pressed for details, the child will search his/her mind until they "remember" things that in actuality did not happen. Once he/she have said that it is true, though, the child stands by his/her decision (for the child does not want to believe him/herself a liar) even in court. And who would disbelieve the testimony of an innocent child who has even convinced him/herself that what he/she is saying is true? In this way, guiltless adults can be convicted of unfathomably terrible crimes that they under no circumstances would commit.

I believe that this is what was happening to many of the child witnesses in Salem, at least in the play.

Another person involved whom I am interested in is Tituba. She comes under fire from all sides but is shown a way out through accusing other people. I don't think we can justifiably blame her, at least in the way we would blame an evil villain in a story. Her motives are sympathetic at least--she's a victim who's scared out of her mind and says whatever she can to keep herself away from the noose of Salem's "justice." Of course what she did was wrong, but she didn't have a lot of time to think about what she was doing--she reacted in the middle of a swirl of terror and panic. Once again the idea of leading questions comes into play--the people she eventually accused were the ones her interrogators suggested for her.

All in all, I think that the play so far is very interesting in terms of mob psychology (as discussed in class) as well as that of the individuals involved.

As I walk in a pitch-black Night

(A poem--written in the Puritan style of Anne Bradstreet.)

The eve tonight is cold and dark
The only thing that bids me hark
Are crickets singing in the grass
As if lamenting, "Ah, alas--
"The sun is gone, the night to stay
"'Til dawn shall break another day."

No moon lights up the cloudy sky
No twinkling stars to nav'gate by
I see no path beneath my feet
And so I wander off the street
Until my neighbor's light I spy
And find my way with now-keen eye

The neighbors ours, they walk alone
No stepping-path to them is shown
It is our duty and our joy
To those in the world's grim employ
To show them truth and light their way
'Til their dark night turn into day.

The Wampanoag Tribe

One of the main players in the Pilgrims' story was the Wampanoag tribe. The Wampanoag tribe at one time had about 12,000 members, but disease claimed so many of them that by the time they encountered the Pilgrims there were fewer than 2,000 of them on the mainland of southeastern Massachusetts. The Wampanoag were farmers and hunters and were able to teach many Pilgrims how to survive in the New World. To do this, though, they had to cross the language barrier. This was famously done by the chief, Massassoit, and later a man named Squanto--both Wampanoag men who had had enough contact with the foreigners that they learned English.

The fate of the Wampanoag was not cheery, despite Massassoit's peace treaties with the Pilgrims in the 1620's. After Massassoit passed away in 1660, the treaty was ignored by the British. The British accused Massassoit's son Wamsutta of cheating the colonists out of land that had been sold to them. This tension grew after Wamsutta's death of illness, but Wamsutta's brother Metacom managed to forge another temporary peace with the English.

Eventually Metacom united different Native American groups in a war against the English colonists, intending to force them out of what was previously Wampanoag land, but this failed drastically. Native American chiefs (including Metacom) were killed, and the remaining Wampanoag had to flee to surrounding islands to escape the English. Their bloodline intermixed with others', and some of their descendants still live on the islands--Martha's Vineyard in particular. Those on islands like Nantucket sadly were wiped out around 1963 due to an epidemic.

Sources: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/northamerica/wampanoagculture.html
http://www.tolatsga.org/wampa.html

Bias

The thing in John Smith's History of Virginia that most struck me, even before we discussed it in class, was the bias shown by the author. John Smith was regarded by his fellows as a mutineer and a power-hungry murderer, but somehow he managed to paint himself as a renegade hero, the champion of the Jamestown colony and the only righteous person in the New World.

My biggest question regarding this bias is: was it subconscious or intentional? Was John Smith a master schemer who knew how to create a rags-to-riches tale that his audience would eagerly lap up? Or was he really so deluded as to believe himself the only sane man on his excursion?

Even now, opinions are divided as to whether Smith was a hero or an outlaw. One of the main reasons for this, I believe, is because Smith is one of our only complete sources regarding the events at Jamestown. Those who read his journal and take it as fact would see Smith in a totally different light than those who read it skeptically. I think it all boils down to how much we trust Smith as a reliable narrator.

As we discussed in class, we can evaluate how much we should trust Smith based on his track record and on how much he had to gain from lying. It's true that Smith wasn't necessarily well-respected in his early years, but these too are subject to interpretation--was he a disloyal, money-grabbing soldier-for-hire, or did his years in the military teach him responsibility, survival, and the value of hard work? But he did have plenty to gain from lying, just like Cabeza de Vaca before him.

In particular, Pocahontas is an interesting case. According to Smith, she saved his life--but he only wrote this account many years after it allegedly happened, and once Pocahontas had become popular in England. Did he retcon his own personal canon to profit from Pocahontas' fame? It would make a lot of sense, but we can't prove anything, since the only witnesses there were the Native Americans (who, as far as I know, did not record the incident at all) and Smith himself.

I believe the evidence points to Smith being strongly and, likely, intentionally biased, but ultimately we cannot prove this. All we can do is read Smith's account, take it with a grain of salt, and compare/contrast our sources.

Trickster Coyote in Modern Media

One of the most vivid characters in the Native American legends is Coyote. Often called the Trickster, he takes on many different forms and fills many different roles in the myths he appears in; one thing is consistent, though: his sense of humor. He is an easygoing character with a lot of power that he uses to get himself into and out of trouble at the drop of a hat.

One of my favorite portrayals of Coyote is in the webcomic "Gunnerkrigg Court." He introduces himself with laughter, and takes pride even in his failures, which are of course as spectacular as his successes.




(The above image is the property of the artist, Tom Siddell.)

As you can see, Coyote survives even through the modern media. He is not the only trickster, though. Perhaps you have laughed at the antics of Coyote's successor in name and in character: Wile E. Coyote. A bit of a villain, Wile E. is continously plotting the downfall of his nemesis through trickery and shadows. His efforts always double on himself in the end, but we find we can love him anyway.

(Image from tinyurl.com/yady4my ; the characters are the property of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)

A more somber, spiritual side of Coyote can be seen in the Simpsons episode "El Viejo Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer." This coyote is a parody of the spirit guides seen throughout Native American literature. He tries to guide Homer but, as can be expected from a show like the Simpsons, runs into some hijinks with him along the way.

(Image belongs to the Fox Broadcasting Company.)

As you can see, Trickster Coyote is far from having disappeared from our culture and stories. On the contrary, he's survived through legends and tales for centuries; and he's such a fun, engaging, and clever character, I would not be surprised if he survives for centuries more.

Aloha

Greetings, salutations, and good tidings to you all. Please take a seat; don't be shy. Your eyes will adjust to the darkness in good time.

All ready? Good.

Welcome to my weblog. An unoriginal beginning, that, but it was something that needed to be said. Leaving this webpage completely blank would hardly be courteous to any readers who would happen to stumble upon it.

Thus this pointless fluff of a blog post. Introduce yourself if you like. Don't if you wouldn't.

And please forgive me for my flowery language; it is fun to put on airs at times. I doubt it shall last long--but what is the internet, if not for displays of individualism and mindless rambling like this post?

Oh yes, and please have a very merry unbirthday.