Native Speaker

I am so happy that it’s over. This book was so boring and dry for me. I found it hard to read it just because the action was slow. It was painful. Even when there was action it was dry.

The Native Speaker as a title threw me. Here’s an example.

If you are from
Italy and you speak Italian you’re a Native Speaker.

Henry was from
New York but his first language was Korean so he is not a Native Speaker even though he did learn English later on. Whoa. I’m confused just trying to sort this out. I think I said it the right way. If not, you get the point.

Almost the whole book Henry and Lelia have a rocky relationship. In the end they stay together. I think Lelia was a little needy. She finally got over it and Henry let her in.

I think the way Mit died was really out there. I think he could have used his imagination and thought of a better way to kill off Henry’s son. Come on. Get creative.

Hoagland is an unfeeling twit. He deserved to be deported.

I was disgusted that Kwang is married with kids and yet he hired a sixteen year old stripper. That’s disgraceful. How would he like it if she was his daughter? Not to mention she was scared out of her wits when Kwang assaulted Sherrie I think it was. She didn’t run out of the room or anything. She stayed with him. That was dumb. If she used a little common sense then maybe she would be alive still.

This is my last remark. In the book Henry said that Kwang did not know if the people in his money circle were illegal immigrants. If that is so then how could he be smuggling people in? Did anyone else think about that?

Sula’s End.

            One thing that I can not stand is when a book does not excite me at all. That would sum up Sula for me. There was no action. It did not feel like there was rising and falling action or ending kind of feeling. I had no connection to this book at all. It was really predictable and that annoyed me.

            Questions about the end could be why did everyone else see a rose above Sula’s head and Shadrach saw a tadpole? I know he’s at one with the fishing realm but it’s very strange. Secondly why in every book we read does someone want to mutilate their lover. I think it was Sula who wanted to pull
Ajax skin off him to see if he was the color underneath that she expected. Crazy woman! Another question is
Plum really talking to her about Chicken Little because no one else was around her that knew. Eva did not see it so how can this be explained? I know she and Sula were one but that doesn’t mean it was Nel’s fault. I agree she should have done something though.

            Sula was out of control. I wonder on what planet that it is okay to sleep with your best friend’s man and think its okay? Sula had something seriously wrong with her. Just because you shared everything doesn’t mean men are included. It sounds horrible but I think Sula got what she deserved when
Ajax left her. She got a taste of her own medicine.

 Sula

            I actually like this book. I know, it’s about time right. I think that it’s an easy read but it is also hard to put down. There are however, a few things that I would like to discuss.

            The author is a great writer but she put too many females in the story too fast for my taste. Until we talked about it in class I was crossing characters with others unintentionally. It was really random though how she includes the chapter about the soldier who creates National Suicide Day. I mean I thought it was hilarious and some good comic relief but it was very strange.

            I love how the author just says things with a certain tone as if they mean nothing like Hannah sleeping with a groom in the morning and washing his wife’s dishes at night. Rochelle was a strange woman. Even though I think it was Nel that went on that trip the only thing that it showed was that race is a big thing below the Mason Dixon line.

            My argument is with Sula and Nel. Okay a little boy gets thrown into the water. You expect him to come up but he doesn’t. Is there a reason that they run away instead of pulling him out? He could have survived if they didn’t act so brain dead. Then the girls say nothing about it and after the funeral they’re holding hands and all is forgotten. What the hell is this, an episode of Barney and Friends? That’s not realistic. It’s just really troubling to me.

Questions and Thoughts About Many Pages of Reading Invisible Man!

            Where we left off there was an explosion in the paint factory. So where we start the narrator wakes up in a machine that looks like the machines that cancer patients are sent through. Any way the narrator is in extreme pain. He’s strapped down. He’s clearly sick. In response what do the doctors do? They electrocute him repeatedly and ignore him. They treat him like a lab rat with no regard to his feelings. At first I thought they put some kind of mind control piece in his brain but as the book went on I doubted it… So he is in this situation and they only let him free when he can’t answer any of their questions. For a while he did not know who he was or even who his mother was. This is the point where they chose to free him. STRANGE DON’T YOU THINK? Let us not forget that they used the narrator as an experiment for some new treatment that was really bazaar.

            Okay. So he’s out. What is he thinking leaving anyway? He can barely walk. He’s talking nonsense but yet he leaves. WEIRD! So he goes on the subway and randomly starts walking through
Harlem. I think he was trying to go back to the Men’s House. Some how he wakes up on the ground and an elderly woman comes to his aid. She takes him into her house and lets him rest then feeds him before he leaves. She gives him an invitation to come back.

            He goes to the Men’s House and hallucinates that he sees Bledsoe and “Baptizes the Rev.” He gets band from the house and has to go back to Mary the old woman.

            She lets him stay with her. Then time passes and he does a whole lot of nothing. Finally we come to the part where he makes a speech and moves a mob into action.

            Brother Jack finds him and reels him in for the cause of a common equal world for all races.{Or is it? No one ever actually says what the mission is of the Brotherhood. They just talk a whole lot of fluff while explaining it.}

            He gets a chance to speak at a rally and wins the crowd but does not impress the brothers. He’s sent to get trained with Brother Hambro for four months and then is appointed head of the Harlem District. {Sketchy. They don’t like his approach or speeches but they start him in a leading position. Not to mention he’s black. I sensed this might be a set up from the beginning.} All goes well for a while but then he gets accused of working for his self interest after falling into a trap that another Brother made. He gets sent away on another assignment as the Brothers investigate. He then goes with a white woman to her home to discuss the ideologies of the brother hood. {Is he stupid? Red flag. HELLO.} After his district fails the brotherhood calls him back to
Harlem.
Clifton a close brother goes missing. All the other members of the Harlem District left or fell out.
Clifton turns out to be selling dolls after going under the radar and then gets arrested.

            This narrator disturbs me considering he still tries to justify the brotherhoods work. Something is clearly not right and he goes back and throws himself into the lions den. HE IS NOT TOO BRIGHT! Why doesn’t he ever just go home? If he did then none of these things would have happened. There are other colleges that he could go to and it wont be the end of the world if he gets a job and is a normal human being. No! He will drive himself to madness with a room full of light bulbs. LOONY? I think so.  

In class we talked about the paint scene in invisible man. I have my own out landish theory. When I was in one of my other classes we had a conversation about stupid racists. My Professor told our class that historically it has been proven that the origins of civilization are traced back to
Africa. So people who are racists hate black people when we all in a sense are black. That’s how I look at this.

            The paint starts out as a dark tint. This is the start of our civilization. Then the paint changes to a different color. People spread out all over the world. This occurred causing their skin tone changed and they became different tones and colors. So then people turned white from little droplets or hints of the African Culture.

            People forgot about
Africa for some time and white people became rich powerful and educated. Then they find out about blacks again. They forget that they came from blacks so they fear the blacks because they are so different. The white when the mixture is finished dominates so everyone think white is right and black is just a means for whites to achieve their highest success.

            I kind of believe in this theory. However I do not know how true the historical theory is. It brings a different perspective and it totally coincides with the book. One can see the sense in this if they think about it long enough. People, what do you think?   

I think that this paper will be a good way for me to connect the non canonical and the canonical books. I think I am going to take Middleton’s suggestion and compare Dilsey to Clare or Irene. I think that it would be interesting to see how both compare to her but I don’t know which to choose.

            Dilsey was such an attentive, caring, soulful character. She was the care taker of the house. Dilsey tried to protect each of the children she raised that were white. She didn’t care how they acted she still defended them. What I found humorous though was that she did not treat him the same way. Dilsey was not shy to threaten her son at all when he upset Benjy. Dilsey also took care of the up keep of the house.

            Irene was a home maker. She took care of her house. She raised her boys and tried to protect them from the cruelness of the world. She had more luxury time and acclaim to her society. She was a hypocrite also. Irene looked down on Clare for Passing but then

Irene
Passes when she is alone in public so she could drink tea in nice restaurants and shop in the high style stores.

            Clare is the opposite of both Dilsey and Irene. Clare had a love hate relationship with her ethnicity. She kept switching roles from a black woman to white and then the reverse. She was a modern day example of the grass is always greener on the other side. It’s quite sad. Clare was also all about the materials and wealth. It was really a shame.

            Maybe I’ll do a paper comparing the three. It would fill the pages more.   

The Passing was a great book in my opinion. I think this was the first book that we have read that I really like. The passing is basically about an African American woman whose friend is passing as a white woman. Irene is the main character. Clare is her friend.

            The book takes us through how they interact with one another. Irene tolerates Clare even though she doesn’t really like her. The book has two major twists which are great.

            Our group has been working on the wikki project. The Passing is about 115-120 pages.  There are five of us in the group. I think that the project is easy. We divided our work up so we did almost all of it at home. There weren’t enough pages that were strictly dedicated to the book and not Nella Larsen.

            Over all I think that I am the only one in my book that liked the ending to the book also. {For more description, go to the Passing wikki page.} I thought it was hysterical that Encounter three had a good twenty seven pages without action then BAAM at the end you’re hit with the greatest ending.

            I am tired of predictable endings and it was great that this books ending was unexpected.

            If we get the chance I’d love to do another project like this. The only thing is I don’t think we need as many class periods as we were given. Personally I think the wikki we made is awesome. Go Check It Out.

The Sound of the Fury was, well I don’t know exactly what it is. The Sound of the Fury was without a doubt the hardest book that I ever read before in my life. I think it was exactly what it was titled. It was a fool’s tale about nothing. We reached all the way to the end to find out that it was simply just that.

            I don’t see the purpose for Faulkner to write this book. There was no moral lesson in it. For those of us lucky enough to keep the book straight most of us are happy that it’s over but have no clue why we read it. I personally thought it was a waste of time and energy but that is just me.

            The good part of this is that we got to add to our list of canonical themes in each book. Things such as inappropriate love, loving and losing, love of materials over people, and so on.

            The ending was really quite crazy. We found out that Benjy was OCD. We found that Quentin could not take anymore of Jason’s nonsense. She took off with Jason’s money. Caroline we learned is a self righteous self victimized character who we have all had enough of. Something in me tells me that Benjy was ironically the only normal person in the story other than Dilsey. Benjy was free from fault.

            I just wish I could say I had an over all reason for reading this book. It’s driving me absolutely crazy.  

Dawn Jarvis

night of her life since she was big enought to sleep by herself.” [Even though we love Dilsey sheshould know the woman she works for is crazy and never makes any sense. If the topic of

“You don’t know,” Mother says. “To have my own daughter cast of by her husband. [She was cast out by her husband for a good reason. The baby was not his. Caddy in a sense had it coming and

to stop it.] Poor little innocent baby,” she says, looking at Quentin. “You will never know the suffering you’ve caused.”

[How can she blame Quentin for what her mother did? Quentin was just a baby. She had no

innocent baby.] “Hush Caroline,” Father says. [The father seems to be the only one that cares enough to make sense half the time in this book. He also cares for his children and grand

“What you want go on like that fo Jason fer?” Dilsey says. [Dilsey seems like she should bethe mother in this house. She's got more heart and character then the actual mother.]

“I’ve tried to protect him,” Mother says. “I’ve always tried to protect him from it. [Caroline never did anything in that house except complain that she was sick. She did not shield Jason from anything.

let her favorite go so she sent Quentin instead.] At least I can do my best to shield her.” [She doesn't sheild the baby either because the baby grows up to be just like her mother. I'm sorry but I

What does this tell us. It tells us that Caroline is a lyer and a hypocondriac.

Why do we need to know this? The book is about the family and all these things help us understand

February 9, 2007

            “Air you satisfied the gal aint took any hurt, you, there?”

            “No hurt now,” Julio said sullenly.

            “You quit work hunt for her?”

            “Sure I quit. I run. I run like hell. Looka here. Looka there, then men tella me he seen him giva her she eat. She go weetha.”

            “H’m,” the squire said. Well, son, I calculate you owe Julio something for taking him away from his work.”

            “Yes, sir,” I said. “How much?”

            “Dollar, I calculate.”

            I gave Julio a dollar.

            “Well,” Spoade said. “If that’s all—–I reckon he’s discharged, your honor?”

            The squire didn’t look at him. “How far’d you run with him, Anse?”

“Two miles, at least. It was about two hours before we caught him.”

Okay where do I even begin? In this scene a young Italian girl followed Quentin out of a bakery. He tried to help her find her home because he thought she was lost. As it turns out the girl’s brother was looking for her. Quentin was taken to the judge when they were found. He explained everything and yet he was made to pay. HE WAS MADE TO PAY MONEY FOR TRYING TO HELP A LITTLE LOST GIRL FIND HER HOUSE! Does that sound off to anyone else? I think so. Maybe that is just me.

            Check this out. Not only did he have to pay but the brother quit his job to find his little sister. He has to pay Julio only a dollar. Get this. The deputy, who was on the clock, on duty and was already getting paid to do his job. He spent two hours searching for the girl and Quentin had to pay him I think it was six dollars. He still kept his job. Shouldn’t Julio get more money since he doesn’t have a job any more? The official shouldn’t get paid at all. That’s a part of his job.

            Again it was a miss understanding. Quentin should not have paid.

            Lastly this part of the book does not fit into the story at all. I think Faulkner was just trying to fill up the pages with his massively long chapters. The only purpose this part of the chapter has was that the other story characters pick Quentin up from the court house.

Complete waste of paper.

                                                Dawn