Two Hundred Years of Solitude

(This is Part 1- research- and Part 2- analysis- combined of my CI project about Julio Cortázar’s “Axolotl”)

The short story “Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar uses the quiet, isolated and confusing behavior of the underwater salamander to mirror the narrator’s own loneliness and inability to fit in with a world that doesn’t understand him. The narrator’s predicament is apparent, however the truth of his words is something that under the circumstances of his questionable sanity is up to interpretation.

 

The narrator of Axolotl is a potentially imbalanced child which brings question to the truthfulness of any of what is written in the story. In the very beginning of the story, the narrator declares “I am an axolotl,” (Cortázar) which, considering the narrator is a human boy can either be taken as a blatant lie, something the narrator has convinced himself of, or actually is the truth. It can be assumed that the narrator has not had much chance for human contact during his life because this is not just a chance visit to the zoo, or his first. He assures the reader that he “was friend of the lions and panthers,” (Cortázar) in order to make the rest of the story seem like a normal occurrence. However this just emphasizes the fact that this boy is probably very lonely, only making friends with the animals. Later in the story, after he’s become entranced by the Axolotls, he does mention his contact with the guard at the zoo who “likely thought [he] was a little cracked.” (Cortázar) The way that the narrator says this, makes it seem as if he finds this idea to be absurd, after he’s already told the reader he is friends with these animals that apparently aren’t animals. He constantly contradicts himself, so why should his instance give us any reason to think differently? The narrator is obviously not all there, so any fact he affirms, should be considered but not instantly believed.

In this short story, the narrator’s own loneliness and isolation are emphasized through his interactions with and similarities to the Axolotl. Cortázar was greatly inspired by Sartre’s writings on existentialism so it is possible that the short story “Axolotl” is a way to show the narrator “discovering the Sartrean notion of existence” (Harris 7) in order to present it to an audience. “Cortázar’s short stories could be considered generally existentialist in terms of their protagonist’s experiences.” (Harris 5) The narrator of this story in particular is completely motivated by his free will and acknowledgment of his own existence as is seen in existentialist works. However, this potentially makes him an unreliable narrator. His awareness of himself, something that at a first glance could sound informed, instead becomes more of a crazed rant developed as a result of this narrator’s lack of human interaction. In the scholarly article by Mark D. Harris about this short story, Harris brings forth the idea that the narrator can be seen as deceitful in numerous ways. The fact that the Axolotls “disguise their very existence,” (Harris 12) by existing through a majority of their life as larvae, is important in showing that the narrator is not altogether truthful in his writings. He is very close to these creatures, even sharing qualities with them, because he does not fit in with human society. As the story progresses he shares more and more of these qualities, and as he appears to become aware of his own true existence, he’s actually losing sight of who he was.

The scholarly article written by Maurice J. Bennett also focuses on change over time of the character; looking at the narrator’s “effort of vision” (Bennett 59) as in his mind’s power of “rejection of scientific knowledge.” (Bennett 59) There is a main focus on how the Axolotl influences the narrator. A person who does not experience proper human social interaction is likely to succumb to changes and manipulation. The article even agrees with Harris when it realizes that the narrator’s change is “antecedent to human awareness.” (Bennett 61) He delves into a heightened sense of reality as the story progresses, and it becomes apparent that the Axolotls have a strong affect on his mind. These solitary creatures act as a mirror image of the narrator, and the reader can watch idly by as the mirror begins to blur the line between reality. It becomes less obvious who is observing whom and by the end of it either the narrator has gone completely mad from his isolation, his obsession has left him and embodied itself as an Axolotl, or he really does become an Axolotl. This ambiguity is important in underscoring the narrator’s potential deceitfulness, and in making the author question what they believe as the story progresses.

The narrator as viewed by Doris T. Wight is completely insane with no doubt about it. She notes that we as the reader “cling to contradiction, we insist on deception,” (Wight 59) and “from the very beginning we know the narrator is insane.” (Wight 59) It becomes obvious that the narrator may not be all there in the story because he continues to contradict himself throughout it. He will say things like “the eyes of the axolotls spoke to me,” (Cortázar) or “it was they devouring my slowly with their eyes,” (Cortazar) only to assure the reader that he is not crazy and that “there was nothing strange.” (Cortázar) It is as if he thinks by assuring us over and over again this is regular behavior, then we will believe it but it becomes less believable because he appears to even be trying to convince himself. Ironically, “we never believe a liar more than when he tells us bluntly that he is lying,” (Wight 60) which leads Wight to believe that by trying so hard to make the reader question the narrator’s facts there could be some truth there. It is very backwards and a reader could drive themselves in circles about the truths or falsities of this story. The reader can at least understand that at some point the narrator was sane, because directly after the first paragraph the things he says are obviously reasonable and logical. This enhances the assumption that he was merely a lonely, albeit not completely normal boy, who was slowly driven mad over the course of his time with the strange creatures.

 

 

Scholarly Articles:

Bennett, Maurice J. A Dialogue of Gazes: Metamorphosis and Epiphany in Julio Cortázar’s “Axolotl” 23.1 (1986): 57-63. Web.

Bruno, Paula M. “Yin/Yang, Axolotl/Salamander: Merce Rodoreda and Julio Cortazar’s Amphibians.” Confluentia 21.1 (2005): 110-22. Jstor.org. Web. 24 Nov. 2016.

Harris, Mark D. “Existence, Nothingness, and the Quest for Being: Sartrean Existentialism and Julio Cortázar’s Early Short Fiction.” Latin American Literary Review 37.74 (2009): 5-25. Astor.org. Web. 24 Nov. 2016.

Wight, Doris T. “Cortázar’s Axolotl.” The Explicator 45.2 (1987): 59-63. Web.

Isabel Allende’s powerhouse novel The House of the Spirits is both an exercise in magical realism and a demonstration of twentieth-century Latin American life. It explores topics “like ‘ideology,’ ‘gender,’ ‘race,’ ‘class,’ ‘ethnicity,’ ‘culture,’ ‘marginality,’ ‘hegemony,’ ‘oppression,’ ‘myth,’ [sic]‘destabilize,’ ‘identity,’ ‘monovalence,’ and ‘polyvalence’” (Tayko). What is incredibly interesting about the book is that in many of these topics there is a rigid dichotomy, and each of these dichotomies is directly related to gender – the men, for the most part, are base and greedy, and are both symbols and propagators of hegemony, oligarchy, classism, fascism, rape culture, etc., while the women, who are more spiritual and in all senses of the word “pure”, function likewise for progressivism, democracy, liberalism, and equality. Thus, in telling the story through the eyes of both men and women, i.e. different gender narratives, Allende provides commentary on the social issues presented to her characters via their responses to these issues.

The democratization of Latin America was characterized by the involvement of women in politics (Espinal and Zhao 3). Predictably, given its author’s gender and relationship to former Chilean president Salvador Allende, The House of the Spirits is incredibly politically charged. Some of the most important political comments Allende makes are through the eyes of Esteban, Alba, and Pedro Tercero. Esteban Trueba, the patriarch of the Trueba/del Valle/Garcia family and supposed co-author of Alba’s nonfiction family memoir, is the novel’s main proponent of the right-wing. Allende’s bias is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in Esteban’s thoughts and actions – he is a rapist and an ill-tempered, intolerant miser. He’s also a government official who stymies his country’s liberal progress. Pedro Tercero Garcia, a folk hero to the proletariat, is one of a handful of left-leaning men in the novel – a reminder by Allende that (while gender in her novel is instrumental in understanding binary belief systems) neither men nor women are uniform groups of good or evil. His daughter, Alba Trueba, who is also Esteban’s granddaughter, is probably the most important female political voice. Just as Esteban embodies the right, Alba embodies the left, participating in Marxist demonstrations and aiding communists after the extreme-right military coup.

The duality of the spiritual and the physical is as important an identifier between the genders of these characters as their physical sexes. The women, Clara del Valle (Esteban’s wife) in particular, are more naturally attuned to the spirit realm, and some can even communicate with and summon apparitions. The men are not concerned with spirits – most of them don’t acknowledge or believe in them. There are far fewer exceptions to this than any other dichotomy – the closest is Nicolas, who devotes his life to the spiritual, trying to emulate his mother’s natural abilities, and never quite succeeds.

Dire poverty is important to the plot, given especially that the main characters are incredibly wealthy for most of the novel. Jaime, like Pedro Tercero, is a notable exception to the rule, but for the most part the only characters concerned with charity work are the women. Clara and Blanca take in the destitute to stay in their massive home in the city. Ferula donates to the starving and homeless. Esteban resents this charity, espousing the very typically conservative view that these impoverished or otherwise unfortunate people are lazy and undeserving of his money or his time, and should instead be looking for jobs to provide for themselves and their families. These views are, of course, commonly held by staunchly conservative whites in the middle and upper class in the United States today.

Of course, the conflict between men and women itself is central to The House of the Spirits. Clara, Esteban’s wife and ideological opposite, embodies the patient female resistance to subjugation. The novel as a whole was written similarly as a resistance to the male-dominated literary scene of twentieth century Latin America (Smith 2). Clara suffers Esteban’s wrath throughout most of her life. At one point, he even hits her in the face, breaking her teeth.

Today, attitudes toward women in Latin America are changing for the better – they are being heard in their governments, and have even been presidents in six countries (Elgar 3). It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to attribute this to one thing – democratization, globalization, and US principles have all probably had a lot to do with it. Yet it would seem that if Isabel Allende and brave Latin American female authors like her were not indeed catalysts, they were certainly some of the earliest steps in the right direction.

 

Works cited

Tayko, Gail.  “Teaching Isabel Allende’s `La casa de los espiritus’” College Literature. Oct92-Feb93, Vol. 19/20 Issue 3/1, p228. 5p

Espinal, Rosario and Zhao, Shanyang. “Gender Gaps in Civic and Political Participation in Latin America.” Latin American Politics and Society. Spring, 2015, Vol. 57 Issue 1, p123, 16 p

Smith, Kathryn. “Telling (T)he(i)r Story: The Rise of Female Narration and Women’s History in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits.” Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies Journal Vol. 11, 2008-2009

Elgar, Richard. “Women’s rights in transition: the collision of feminist interest groups, religion and non-governmental organizations in three Latin American countries.” Journal of Public Affairs (14723891). Nov2014, Vol. 14 Issue 3/4, p359-368. 10p

Abstract

Taphephobia – [taf-uh-foh-bee-uh] – The fear of being buried alive. The Premature Burial, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of The House of Usher, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. 4 stories with completely different narratives, yet they all share one similarity, Earth. The fear of it. Of being surrounded by it, with no earthly (beyond your death) escape. Possibly among one of the most frightening ways to die it’s no wonder horror writers use the subject of premature burial as often as they do. But what brought on this fear? Yellow fever, plagues, and death itself all bring these fears forward. Is the fear of being buried alive a rational one? In Poe’s time what was happening to spur forward this fear? And what could this fear symbolize?

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Historical Piece and Literary Analysis

“The unendurable oppression of the lungs — the stifling fumes from the damp earth — the clinging to the death garments — the rigid embrace of the narrow house — the blackness of the absolute Night — the silence like a sea that overwhelms — the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm — these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed — that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead — these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth — we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.” – Edgar Allan Poe, ”The Premature Burial”

Death is final, or at least we hope it is. Disregard all religious aspects of that sentence, truly think about it. Imagine, waking up, your lungs seizing on the lack of damp air, you reach out to find the rest of your prison, wood stopping you from comfort, Silence, no noises beyond your own breathing, and perhaps the etching of the worms across your casket. You have been buried alive. It’s not a fun place to put yourself is it? A terrifying concept, nothing but wood and 6 feet of dirt stopping you from life. 3697 lbs of dirt. Bet you wished you didn’t skip arm day? This fear was rampant during the 19th century, and few others wrote as much fiction on it as Poe. In his early career with Loss of Breath, to the early burials of the Usher family, to his study of Premature Burial, Poe’s obsession with this macabre subject must come from somewhere?

To understand Poe in this context we must note two things, why was everyone so afraid of being buried alive, and what could it mean in a literary stance? Poe was born in 1809 and lived until 1849. Meaning he lived during The Industrial Revolution but died before The Civil War. Which puts in a magical time where slaves were worked to death, hands were destroyed by cotton gins, and The Cholera Epidemic.

Sounds like a fun place right? Give it thirty years and brother would be killing brother. “But, Max?” you ask “What does this have to do with being buried alive?” well, Cholera, Plague, and Smallpox, had people just collapsing from exhaustion in the streets(this is the important bit, hold onto it). The problem with Cholera is(besides it’s at the time as high as 80% mortality rates in urban areas), the more dead people that are in the streets, the easier it is for Cholera to spread, and the problem with Smallpox was that it was everywhere. So this melting pot of perfect storm of people falling over dead from Smallpox and their corpses making everything more decayed and therefore spreading Cholera. What was our solution? We needed to bury them, away from the undiseased, so for the rich, they got their coffins and their tombs, everyone else got The Cholera Pits. The Cholera Pits, I don’t even want to imagine about the people they didn’t know were alive that got buried in those. You would be wrapped in linens, lined up in a 8 foot deep hole next to others who had fallen to disease, liberally sprinkled with quicklime, covered in coal tar or pitch, burned, and then buried. That’s right it was a time so bad that we resorted to mass graves.

To prove a point here a few cases

“In 1837, Cardinal Somaglia was taken ill, passed out, and was thought to have died. Preparations were begun immediately to embalm this very important church official. When the surgeon/embalmer cut into the chest to instill embalming materials, he could see the cardinal’s heart still beating. Worse, at this point, the cardinal awoke from his stupor and wisely pushed the knife away from his chest. His effort was to no avail, though — the chest incision killed him.” (Snopes) due to a lack of modern medicine we had no way to prove whether or not someone was dead, beyond that of the arterial pulse and these incidents have not stopped with modern medicine either “In 1984, a post-mortem examination was being conducted in a mortuary in New York. When the pathologist made the first cut the “corpse” leaped up and grabbed him by the throat. The pathologist died of shock.” (Snopes) sounds like something out of a horror story doesn’t it?

“William Tebb(1830-1917) compiled 219 instances of narrow escape from premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial, 10 cases in which bodies were accidentally dissected before death, and 2 cases in which embalming was started on the not-yet-dead.” (Snopes) and those 149 cases were just the ones he caught! Think of those were never found. paupers graves, mass graves, just being unlucky, people died before their time under the earth. So, naturally people feared this grisly demise, and the safety coffin was invented. You heard me right, SAFETY COFFIN (oxymoron that that is), imagine a coffin, you know what that is right? Big wooden box. Then give it 6 feet of copper tubing for an air hole, and a string and a bell running through it. Pull on the string and ring the bell if you are trapped, and boom, grave keeper to the rescue.

Now that you know what was happening at the time. What was Poe trying to say, or what could being buried alive symbolize? Luckily for us, Poe gave his opinion on this matter and the subject in his work The Premature Burial “To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think.” (Poe). Poe like a great deal of others were afraid of the subject, and what is the best muse for a horror writer? Your fears. “Fearful indeed the suspicion — but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death.” It was not the fear of being buried alive that frightened Poe, it was the fear of his inevitable death given form. In that wooden box you only have so much time, like the man on death row watching the clock, your death seems more inevitable in that cage.

While Poe is writing from a character’s perspective that is not his own in The Premature Burial you can tell that the fear is there and that the man did his research. But Poe was a writer, and writers can be fickle things. Always writing one thing yet meaning another? People have dedicated their lives to the attempts to find what writers really meant with that passage. Or what this subject could of meant, I am going to attempt to summon the spirits of literary critics and analysts past. What does being buried alive symbolize?

Three Views Jump out at me.

1.The Defining Moment of Death and its Transition

I touched briefly on this earlier but the questions must be asked. When are you dead? Is it when the doctor announces you dead? When your family is going through coffin brochures? When you are being lowered into the dirt, or put into the crematory? In being buried alive it is not based on any of these three, it happens while you are in the coffin (and hopefully not the crematory) and in fictional states it takes hours and sometimes days. In The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket when it’s title character is trapped in the hold of the ship (entombment with death’s presence of eventuality staring down at him, i’m counting it as a premature burial) he loses track of time, things distort, the food he has with him rots, and he has no idea how long he is in there. Perhaps Poe was talking about the transition of death, It’s more visible in the spectrum of hours as opposed to years. Man is born, Man ages, Man withers away, Man dies. That is the lucky(by lucky i mean no disease or murder, but a peaceful age related death) natural order, the inevitable withering away into death. In the span of a couple hours that process is almost followed to the dot. Man “dies”, Man is buried, Man must breathe, Man withers, Man dies. That withering that we are in a constant state of is show much more clearly, akin to a time lapse in the representation of the premature burial.

2.The Inability to Act (“I can’t do anything tonight, I’m buried under all this homework”)

Imagine you are skiing down a black diamond slope. For some reason or another you come across every skier’s nightmare, an avalanche. Few skiers last more than 25 minutes due to hypothermia, brain damage sets in after 10 minutes. All and all you are not in a good situation. You cannot move, you struggle to breathe, and depending on what you are wearing you may not even be able to scream without flooding your mouth with snow. You will be unconscious within a matter of minutes, and you are completely dependent on whether or not your partners escaped or if someone responds to your beacon in time. It’s easy to draw the connections to any form of premature burial. In a coffin you have no room to move, and if you scream you will just be using precious air. Better hope your signal is good enough to get through six feet of dirt.

3.Failure

So you’re dead. Good job Buddy, you failed at life. But, wait, someone else failed at deciding whether or not if you were dead! A second chance! If you can break through a wooden box, with barely enough room to throw a punch, and a couple thousand pounds of dirt backing that wood. Looks like you failed again. In many societies your life is judged on its successes and its failures. What is more of a failure in life then death? What spits in the face of a social order more than a corpse who refused to stay dead?

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Creative Writing Piece.

(With use of Poe’s The Philosophy of Composition in attempt to facade his writing style.

http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philcomp.htm)

It all turned out well in the end, getting there was the problem. To come to terms, meet with, and fight one’s own Mortality is no minor task, and one worth bragging about. They are fickle things, always out of sight. Until the day comes when they decide to leave the quiet solace of their sepulchers. They stare you in the eyes. Their own filled with the anger that you have suppressed them for so long. Once they come out, they never leave, always hovering above you, influencing your actions. Speaking in your ear in the dead of night when their friends Fear and Regret are hiding under your bed and in your closet, whispering of past actions and things that would let Mortality finally take his grasp of you.

When I was 10 I met Mortality, it came in the shape of a great towering bull mastiff name Caesar, or Seize-r. Caesar was my Aunt’s guard dog, and he was good at his job. The Mailman refused to come by unless Caesar was caged. Caesar did not know me, but he knew Fear. Fear and Pain came to Caesar in the form of two boys my age who had thrown rocks at him and teased him. Fear came again to Caesar when he saw a boy like those who introduced him to Pain. 120 pounds of dog collided with 80 pounds of boy. The fight would of been a short one if not for the my Mother who was with me at the time. Teeth connected with the bone of my skull as the dog mauled me. Lachesis shook her head at Atropos, there was more thread to be spun before my life was to be cut. I escaped, but from that point on I knew who Mortality was, and his friend Fear, who now comes in the shape of all dogs.

As Clotho spins the wheel, Lachesis draws out string, and it is upon Atropos to cut it. Such is the Moirai. Atropos the Inevitable, Mortality given form by the Greeks through her shears, her cut will happen and Mortality will grasp you. But Mortality does not know when it is due. It hounds you across your life. Atropos’ shears scratching along the string but not closing in to make the cut that means your end. Mortality hounds some more than others, Mortality knows that it is due eventually, and but its patience will wear thin. It will reach out and try to touch those whose time not yet up.

I grappled with mortality two years after the first story. 2 laps, 25 jumping jacks, staying on the court until 20 shots were sunk in total. That was how it was every day for PE. It was quick, and designed to get the jitters out of students who couldn’t sit still in class. Whenever the teacher had us not line up for laps we knew something fun was going to happen. It had been a while since the last time after some kids got hurt playing dodge ball. The teachers forgot that the pain is the incentive to dodge and that sport was quickly banned. Balance games, sounds fun. We stood on one leg for as long as we could, balanced basketballs on our noses, but tradition is tradition and we had to run two laps, but this time we were to do it backwards. The teachers failed to notice that blacktop and unbalanced kids do not mix well together

I was flying, my feet had left the ground. I was flying, defying reality until it brought up gravity, then I suddenly wasn’t. I had tripped. On my own damned feet. It’s funny when you’re in danger, your body goes into overdrive and because everything is overclocked you remember things slower. Events that took seconds seem to take minutes when you recall them. I remember tripping, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky that day, just the blinding sun. It was beautiful, a perfect blue surrounding a white sphere that threatened to blind you with it’s glory. Pain, shot me back into reality, the back of my head impacting with harsh blacktop. Once. Pain reminding my young mind that I was not flying, I was falling. Pain again, this time sparking on the back of my head and carrying it’s embers down the entirety of my body. Twice. I was picked up, asking aloud to those who brought me back what was wrong, with a tongue that did not work because my brain refused to let it move properly in its damaged state. My body was experiencing a full system reboot. They carried me back and put me onto a couch. Mortality ever present, it hovered above my ear whispering down “Sleep, sleep and the pain will go away” so I did. An eldritch need, a compulsion beyond reason that must be answered, as blackness enveloped the sides of my eyes I drifted away into sleep.

My body waged war with Mortality for 5 months. Refusing Mortality’s final helping hand, drawing a line in the sand. I slept for 20-23 hours every day, ate ramen without the flavor packet every day because I could keep nothing else down, and woke up briefly to pet my dog. Yet I live because Mortality cannot always win. True, it will have it’s due. But, I survived. I grappled with the claws of Mortality, Atropos’ shears did not come down and cut the string, Clothos spins more for Lachesis to pull out. My life goes on, and hopefully it will go on. I’m told I use this story too often, but aren’t all the stories of brave heroes surviving near death scenarios? Where would we be without The Odyssey, Little Red Riding Hood, or James Bond?

I don’t remember much from before I was twelve. The story of Caesar is all second hand and put together from other accounts. Too many concussions, but I remember that day with perfect clarity, the angry sun, the perfect blue. Mortality’s gift, to remember it by.

 

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Bondeson, Jan. Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear. New York: Norton, 2001. Google Books. Google. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

Del Río Parra, Elena. “‘He Has No Pulse’: Typologies of the Fear of Being Buried Alive in Pre-Industrial Spain.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 76, no. 3, 2011, pp. 129–150. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43739127.

Lawes, Carolyn J. “Buried Alive? Fear of Failure in Antebellum America.” The Journal of American Culture 37.3 (2014): 299-313. Web.

Kennedy, J. Gerald. “Poe and Magazine Writing on Premature Burial.” Studies in the American Renaissance, 1977, pp. 165–178. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30227431.

@snopes. “Buried Alive.” Snopes. Snopes, 2011. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.

(This is part 3 of my CI project and the writing style is supposed to be based off of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe)

Having seen movies and television shows about art schools, I came to my highschool believing that it would be similar to this televised experience. Because of course, art schools are all fun and games. It’s a little difficult however to be part of the Visual Arts Cluster against the three Performing Arts- Theater, Music, and Dance. It’s the odd cluster out and as a result no one really knew what to do with us or how to treat us. We tended to keep to our own because there was an obvious divide between us and them.

In my first year, we had a principal who later left for a better paying job but during that time, I remained happily ignorant, safe with my sister’s group of senior friends. But during my next year I began to notice a sort of separation and stereotyping that I never thought I’d encounter. There were little annoying things like people assuming that if I was a Visual then I must do drugs, but there were also more cruel things like people claiming that we did not put in the same work as the other clusters. On the otherhand we put in a great amount of work- just at home where we did individual pieces and not like the performers putting on their group shows.The Performing Clusters had trouble understanding us and didn’t always respect the work we did, but that was never as much if an attack as when our new principal came into power.

He was secretly an aspiring Performing Arts principal but obviously he would take what he could get even if Visuals were in thw mix. I remember an incident where we first became alarmed. During a public speech as our new principal discussed to a large audience what he intended for the school he listed off the clusters and completely forgot to mention the Visual cluster- or chose to forget. One of the first hits was an infamous event- something that would occur multiple times in the year called Paul Baker day. It had an innocent disguise.

He said the intention was to integrate the clusters; for us to build a mutual appreciation for one another. However, we understood its true purpose when it succeeded in making a complete mockery of our cluster in two aspects. One, we were forced to perform in some way, which many of us just did not have the skill or confidence to do, and the performing clusters were told they were doing visual art by making them play with crayons and construction paper. It strategically missed the point by making us look like a group of unprofessional fools.

I was somewhat consoled by the fact that the Visual Arts teachers were for the most part on our side. One of my most memorable experiences was in Ceramics because my teacher there acted as a friend to us. On the otherhand, her very relaxed and unconventional style of teaching intimidated our principal. He began to personally sit in on our classes and wait for her to slip up on anything- letting someone work on other classwork during class, allowing a very colloquial style of talking, or even leaving the room for too long. He constantly marked her down in teacher surveys. It became a game of being ourselves until he stepped into the room and, until he left, being perfect robotic angels.

This led to junior year where we were first enlisted to help our teachers in the ongoing battle to get the respect we deserved. With a new figurehead, many people in the other clusters outwardly fely comfortable rejecting us. The biggest problem was that the Theater Cluster was the largest, most recognized cluster, with much better funding, but they wanted more. I remember when I had created my network of Theatre friends, I was told that one of their teachers had said, “Get rid of the Visual Cluster.” They wanted our funding and our room space to successfully dominate the school.

We could not strike back without jeopardizing our place in the school so during my junior year training, we were taught very specific and special opperation tactics that were pur into play during late junior year through senior year. We did subtle things. Part of it, and I’m not proud of this, did end up being sucking up to our Principal whenever we saw him and telling him all about what “inspired us to do this piece” or “what this subject represents” etcetra, etcetra. The fun part was offensive instead of being so defensive.

We did little things like hanging up our work everywhere, feeding rumors into the other clusters, and throwing massive Visual Arts Guild events with enough food to attract half the school, then we watched our work unfold. Every Visual senior is part of a senior show and mine was the most controversial. I will not spoil every little detail but one of our group was denied the right to be in our senior show after our Principal decided that her work was too mature. This was what he said but it actually had to do with his problem with her as one of the strongest Visual rebels. We could not fight his decision so instead most of us in that show helped paint a massive tribute to her and hung it up right in the middle of the show.

Behind our back, some of our Principal’s teacher pets, like the Drawing teacher, must have been acting as a double agent in all of this because, after less than a year of the fight, the biggest hit to our cluster came when the “All school” Musical, Hair, was put on by the school. It included dancing numbers, singing numbers, fabulous acting, but once again they never knew what to do with us. I remember them saying, “Oh it’s okay, I’m sure you can audition for te performing parts.” A few problems here. We don’t perform and those of us that did and auditioned didn’t have the training to be good enough to get the parts.

Of course there were places we could have helped. I came to the show and the entire set was covered in graffiti. Apparently the Theater kids were forced to do all that painting and even struggled with it, but I was told that the Theater Cluster’s coordinator actually said, “Don’t let the Visuals help.” It was a wreck to our reputation and our egos, while also excluding us completely from the rest of the school’s work. As much as I desire to know how the fight continued, I graduated. This was not a story of our Cluster only but also my part in it, and here after we hit rock bottom, my part ended.

Jarvis states that we “have the tools (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…) to create and join publics, establishing our own identities and societies. I see that as a purer form of the public, built not around the interests of the powerful but instead around our own interests, desires, and needs.”

I agree him when he says we have more control about the public, but couldn’t it just be that the “powerful” are simply giving us what we want? Would you consider that as us having more influence or those who control the public sphere as simply appeasing us? And do you think we aren’t looked at as “faceless poll numbers and anonymous demographics” anymore? 

Kelly states that “not every artist is cut out, or willing, to be a nurturer of fans. Many musicians just want to play music, or photographers just want to shoot, or painters paint, and they temperamentally don’t want to deal with fans, especially True Fans.” She also states that when artist aren’t cut out to deal with their fans they have mediators do it for them. I was a little confused because she states that they can still aim for 1,000 fans, but wouldn’t it make sense for their “true fans” count to go up? To make myself clearer, my question is since there are more people involved in the artist’s career shouldn’t their true fans goal be higher because they have more people depending on the artist?

My questions stem from Nancy Baym’s statement in her article that “online platforms and locales have become increasingly specialized in the functions they serve for fans”. First, what are different examples of platforms that are “specialized in functions they serve for fans”, now? Second, since there has been an emergence in youtube, vine and musical.ly fans could it be argued that different platforms or apps are for specific types of fans or creators?

Technological advances- helpful or hurtful??

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude

Throughout 100 Years of Solitude, technology plays an ironic, influential role in the building of Macondo. In our world, the objects introduced are mainstream, everyday objects but to the primitive people of Macondo, these objects are almost mystical. The gypsies and their items ignite the pursuit of wealth- wealth being defined as technology, knowledge, and gold. Each character in the novel has a different way of pursuing one of these things but there lies a major commonality amongst all of them- the more technology, knowledge, or gold they acquire, the worse off they become. Macondo starts off as an almost utopian, Eden-like place that slowly deteriorates as more and more foreign objects/ideas are introduced. There is a hint of irony in this as well, as innovations and ideas are supposed to improve standard of living, not deteriorate it.

 

“Everything Is Known”: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Time and the Novel: The Genealogical Imperative (2015): n. pag. Web.

 

Edison, K. Thomas Alwa. “The New Trends In Latin American Bloom “Magical Realism” In The Novel Of Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years Of Solitude – A Postcolonial Study.” International Journal Of Multidisciplinary Approach & Studies 2.1 (2015): 1-5. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

 

Patricia Drechsel, Tobin. “6. Everything Is Known: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years Of Solitude.” Time and the Novel: The Genealogical Imperative. 177. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Project MUSE. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

 

Dorfman, Ariel. “One Hundred Years Of Solitude By Gabriel García Márquez.” Brick 91.(2013): 113-114. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

They said what?!: Narrative voice in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits”.

Voice is a narrative technique pertinent to any good work of literature. Marquez and Allende demonstrate this in their own works, where one can see how these authors’ use of narrator is an integral part of their novels, especially when it comes to developing the themes of these respective works. This paper will explore what sort of effects the authors’ use of voice have, such as impact on the reader, and on the development of the novels and their themes. How the authors use this narrative technique will also be a point of discussion- specifically, the underlying similarities and differences in how Marquez and Allende use narration, and what sort of impact this has on thematic development in the novel and on the reader.

 

 

Works Cited:

Ronan, McFadden. “The Reliability of The Narrator in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Opticon1826 5 (2008): Directory of Open Access Journals. Web. 30 Oct. 2016.

Ciplijauskaite, Birute. “Foreshadowing as Technique and Theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Books Abroad 47. (1973): 479-484. Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 (H.W. Wilson). Web. 30 Oct. 2016.

Jenkins, Ruth Y. “Authorizing Female Voice and Experience: Ghosts and Spirits in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Allende’s The House of The Spirits.” Melus 19. (1994): 61-73. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 30 Oct. 2016.

Mandrell, James. “The Prophetic Voice in Garro, Morante, And Allende.” Comparative Literature 42. (1990): 227-246. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 30 Oct. 2016.

Scholarly Articles: Wight, Doris T. “Cortázar’s Axolotl.” The Explicator 45.2 (1987): 59-63. Web.

Bennett, Maurice J. A Dialogue of Gazes: Metamorphosis and Epiphany in Julio Cortázar’s “Axolotl” 23.1 (1986): 57-63. Web.

The short story “Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar uses the quiet, isolated behavior of the underwater salamander to mirror the narrator’s own loneliness and inability to fit in with a world that doesn’t understand him. The reader can learn a great deal about the narrator’s predicament from the first person perspective and mental dissection of his thought processes.
The narrator is potentially imbalanced as is seen in some of the things he says. An example would be his declaration of being an axolotl at the beginning of the essay, so it can be assumed that the narrator is unreliable.
He is this way because of a lack of human interaction. “I was friend of the lions and panthers.” “I hit it off with the axolotls.” He stays with them for hours with nothing better to do and chooses to be with the quiet and solitary animals.
We also see this solitude engulf him as he transforms during the passage. It is ambiguous what the real meaning is, but the reader can see the narrator as he gives into his solitude.