Lessons Learned

It seems that the primary lesson we as students have learned in Experiment Part II of this course is that it is very difficult to effectively express the experience of others. It is for this reason that secondary modes of expression must be invented and practice to display the affect of this secondarily subjective  experience. The modes we have discovered and the purposes they serve are as follows:

1.) Morrison’s Jazz- music- through the characterization of individual persons as “instruments”, the tone of their stories and the narrative as a whole may be better experienced by the reader. (Example: Violet’s narrative tones contrast greatly from each other, ranging from slow and steady to erratic, lending her the characterization of a mournful or upbeat piano.)

2.) Silko’s Ceremony- myth- the intertwining of myth and its aesthetics allow for a historical, spiritual, and cultural background with which secondary experience can be expressed and better felt by readers. (Example: The Laguna “Coyote” myth parallels perfectly with Tayo’s return from the war and the hunger he feels for belonging upon this return.)

It seems to me that Morrison’s implementation of musical tools in regards to narrative is the most useful manner in which secondary experience can be intuited by readers. This can be through a variety methods, whether it be attributing specific lyrics simultaneously with narrative, or including a musical background with which a narrative should be read. In both cases, the reader is recieving cues that allow them to experience what is occuring to the character in case, granting specific tones to their experience and lending insights as well.

Myth as a Means of Expression

“There was no telling what Coyote had done to him…Then they found the place where Coyote got him…He was suffering from thirst and hunger, he was almost too weak to raise his head…This is him all right, but what can we do to save him?” (Silko, 140) This quote, expressed by Silko in her novel Ceremony, parallels perfectly with Tayo the protagonist’s struggles after returning to his native reservation after fighting in World War II. Upon analysis, one realizes that the Laguna myth of the Coyote does not serve as a metaphor for Tayo’s plight, but allows the reader to intuit specific ideals about this plight and experience them as a result of their affect. When the character of Coyote is contributed to war, and the man to Tayo, this affect can be better sensed. In the myth, Coyote caused the man to run asunder in his path, disrupting his life, and causing him “thirst and hunger.” This sense of “thirst and hunger” was experienced by Tayo after returning from the war. His participation in WWII caused him mental disarray, making him vastly different from his civilian and even veteran counterparts, causing him to long for a sense of belonging and companionship in his home, a place in which he feels dissimilar and separate. He thirsted for it. He hungered for it. It may also be safe to intuit that Tayo feels this sense of absence or misrecognition within himself, “speaking a different language”—as did Coyote’s victim—than what he had previously spoken, before the war. Using a character description from Blanchot, Tayo “is outside salvation, he belongs to exile, that region where not only is he away from home, but away from himself.”

Upon being found, the Coyote victim’s family searched for a holy means by which to cure him, just as was done in Tayo’s case. “They ran to the holy places, they asked what might be done.” (Silko, 140) The use of intertwining myth and Tayo’s narrative displays the Laguna philosophy of healing, whether it be medicinal, spiritual, or both, and allows a link between historical Laguna methods of rehabilitation with their modern, identical practices. Tayo’s Laguna culture views holy healers as a means to embodied salvation, and Tayo’s situation is better understood when keeping this historical, spiritual, and cultural frame in mind, as is expressed through the Coyote myth.

As we have deduced at this point in our course, the expression of a secondary source’s experience is a difficult task, primarily as a result of the lack of subjective emotion in regards to their experience. Silko, however, found a useful tool in myth as a means through which secondary sentiment can be expressed and felt by others because it provides a spiritual and historical background in which the experiences have occurred, and the mind frame with which they are felt. Because myth has no specific link to any one source, it may be used as a universal narrative with which unlimited life experiences may be paralleled, and its aesthetics used to intuit concrete sentimental and emotional affect.

The Art of Intuition

I’ve learned recently that intuition certainly has an inherent connection to affect. As readers, we are striving to understand what a character is feeling, not in the clichéd “oh, wow, I’ve gone through that” manner, but through completely objective eyes, considering each experience unique. Silko allowed us, as readers, to intuit Tayo’s experience throughout then novel by transforming him from an apathetic individual to one possessing a great capacity to be affected and expressing his experiences effectively.

Beautiful expressions of such feeling can be seen throughout the conclusion of the novel, most notably upon his interaction with Tseh. “She was with him again, a heart unbroken where time subsided into dawn, and the sunset gave way to the stars, wheeling across the night. The breaking and crushing were gone, and the love pushed inside his chest, and when he cried now, it was because she loved him so much.” (Silko 227) These depictions allow us to intuit to the fullest extent Tayo’s sense of love and devotion to Tseh, and this innate connection this love has to nature.

The Experience of Jazz

As we all know by this point, it is extremely difficult to express secondhand experience. This, however, did not stop Toni Morrison from striving to achieve this goal in her novel, Jazz, a narrative set in the 1920s New York, dealing with a myriad number of events and emotions. As can be agreed upon by many, one of the most significant constituent events of the novel occurs when Joe shoots Dorcas. There are many theories about why he committed such an act, one being that he gained a strong sense of desire as a result of the emotional separation between him and his wife. In either instance, Morisson did not simply account to us what this experience would have been like, she told us what this experience was. Joe’s desire for Dorcas was not simply like enjoying a piece of candy, something that can be savored for a while and then forgotten, Joe’s desire was concrete. Joe’s experience was this: he had become emotionally detached from his wife as a result of her feelings of regret of not having children, he meets Dorcas and finds something in her that rekindles old feelings of love in his heart, she rebuffs him, he seeks her out, finds her, and kills her, and now she is forever with him. That is Joe’s experience, and there is no other simple way to put it. Morrison understood that the emotions Joe was feeling should not be generalized to other situations. Joe’s desire had a specific hunger, a specific flavor, primarily in the mode of belief. As we have discussed in class, belief is not based on reason or science. Shooting Dorcas was obviously not a rational action to keep her love and his emotions, but he believed it nevertheless. “You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden…Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” (Morrison 133-135) As can be seen, emotion (pleasure/pain, experience, aesthetics) have no place in the realm of reason, but have everything to do with motive founded in belief.

As can be seen from the referenced chart on the categories of both belief and reason, aesthetics plays a large role in the former class. Morrison conveyed the experience of Joe shooting Dorcas by implementing the simultaneity of two artistic modes at once, music and narrative. By lending the work and various characters themselves a “rhythm”, “beat” or “instrument-like quality”, we are able to better ascertain the emotions of the characters themselves while going through their own experiences. For this reason, our newly found definition of Joe’s experience would have to be altered slightly to include his emotions leading up to and at the time of the shooting. Joe’s experience was this: He felt himself aging with the emotional detachment between him and his wife as a result of her feelings of regret over not having children, he “can’t stand the quiet” (Morrison, 49),  he meets Dorcas and swears he “became new” (Morrison, 130-135), she rebuffs him, he seeks her out, finds her, and kills her, “wanting to stay right there…catch her before she hurt herself,” (Morrison, 130), forever feeling her love.

Morrison’s implementation of “beat and rhythm” while striving to express the experiences of other individuals serve a myriad number of purposes. It allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the personalities of the characters themselves based on the instrument in which Morrison has lended them qualities. For example, Joe has a very upbeat personality and friendly demeanor, and can be best characterized as a drum or even playful sax, while Violet’s varying violent and mournful demeanor seem to me characteristic of a piano. This instilled me with the understanding that art may borrow qualities of other modes of art to serve the same primary function and in fact bolster its assertion. And it is through this emotional emphasis brought upon by the simultaneity of these modes that greater subjective understanding of the character and their motives can be gained, thereby allowing Morrison as an author to better express their experiences, and we as readers to better understand these experiences as well.

 

Experiment Number II

“The anecdote seemed to me redolent of the proud hopelessness of love mourned and championed in blues music, and, simultaneously, fired by the irresistible energy of jazz music. It asserted itself immediately and aggressively as the seed of a plot, a story line.” (Morrison, xvi)

This epiphany on behalf of Toni Morrison on the manner in which she would begin writing the experience of Jazz immediately brought to mind the discussion our class held on creating a new mode of expression for experiences we ourselves have not been through. Just as it is impossible to express a disaster, the expression of experience of another entity must be done in an indirect manner. In this case–and this is just a prediction, I’ve only read through the “Foreword”– Morrison clings to an ideal that can be juxtaposed with the one which she is striving to express. Implementing the “beat” in which jazz music is written and experienced, she creates a “beat” for her novel, changing the tone and message as she goes, much like in a song.

It isn’t surprising that music would be a method of thought in which to create a new form of writing. Differing types of art intrinsically all work to express the same ideals and experiences, just with slightly differing modes, appealing to varying senses and awarenesses on our part as the reader. In our struggle to invent a mode of thought and expression, this is something significant to consider.

Analytic Outline

Book: Slaughterhouse Five

Thesis: Through the implementation of nonlinear narrative discourse, metafictional citations, the creation of multiple worlds, instances of repetition, and the absence of closure, Vonnegut asserts the ideal that it is impossible to live a normal life after participating in warfare, thereby associating a negative connotation with combat and deglamorizing war itself.

Outline:

I.) Introduction- Thesis

II.) Nonlinear Narrative Discourse

A. Displays PTSD tendancies

B. Disjointed Life = Disjointed Narrative

III.) Metafictional Citations

A. Tralfamadorian literature holds not beginning, middle, or end, and allows for one simultaneous picture of event

B. Vonnegut forms novel in such a fashion–trying to create meaningful picture from meaningless disaster

IV.) Multiple World Creation

A. Tralfamadorian situations in novel are not real, displaying “hallucinogenic” PTSD

B. Mixup of nonreal world with real world–instances of Trout’s books that collide with real life

V.) Repetition

A. So it goes- displays situational apathy, and equalizes death

B. Children’s Crusade- emphasizes ludicrousy of sending young men to war and war itself

VI.) Absence of Closure

A. novel does not end with definitive closure —absence of closure in novel displaying insignificance of war itself

VII.) Conclusion

Speaking on Massacre

I’m not at liberty to speak to Kurt Vonnegut. I will never know the exact reason he has created and published, Slaughterhouse Five. I am at the will of my own inferences and beliefs, all of which point me to believe that Vonnegut wrote this novel with the intention of deglamorizing every aspect of war.

In the body of the novel, Pilgrim states, “There is nothing to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is…” (Vonnegut 19) Reinforcing this statement is the fact that the novel was written and published during the Vietnam War, one of the least supported actions in American history. It is only logical that one would believe this is an antiwar novel based on the era in which it was published.

This novel actually reminds me very much of the modern movie “Across the Universe,” a movie in which the main characters express their protest of the Vietnam War through famous Beatles songs. It conveys the uselessness of war through dramatic yet matter of fact images of wounded soldiers, protest, etc, just as Vonnegut describes in his novel. Also a similar point between these two modes of expression is the ideal that the individuals shipped into the war are not grown adults, brave and noble at heart, but simply children, barely out of school, immature and naïve to the vast carnage of war.

The Truth with a Capital T

Although confusing to say the least, Burrough’s novel Naked Lunch does force us to perceive the world in a different light. Throughout the novel, one is assaulted with harsh depictions of very graphic content of drug abuse and sexual activity. However, the fact that the narrator of the work, William, is a “junkie” brings up questions as to the reliability of what we are experiencing as a result of his narrative expression. There are scenes in the book that are obviously hallucinations. There are circumstances in the book that have no logical stance in today’s world. There are depictions of characters in the book that are so incredibly negative that they cannot be true. Or can they? Because we are seeing these events from the perception of a junkie, we cannot come to a valid conclusion on what is real, imaginary, or in between, causing great frustration for readers simply trying to figure out, “what’s going on?”

This book reminded me very much of the movie, “Donnie Darko,” in which a schizophrenic boy tries to prevent the end of the world that he has been warned of in intense visions.  Various scenes of the movie are shown through his eyes, including those containing aspects of his mind that simply cannot be reality. Although because it is shown through the eyes of a schizophrenic, one cannot make heads or tails of the truth. It is simply unknown. The interpretations will continue, and the Truth will never be known.

Defining Experience on the Basis of Autonomy

The frame of Plath’s The Bell Jar is very determinant of the manner in which one is inclined to define “experience” in regards to the fictional world she expresses and the one in which we live as real individuals.

Significant notes in regards to this ideal can be witnessed through several events that occur to Esther within the framework of the narrative. In the beginning and certainly towards the body of the novel, Esther endures significant anxiety in regards towards her indecision, leading to developed insomnia as well lethargic tendencies. Seeking help for these conditions, Esther is referred to psychiatrist Dr. Gordon. Following this referral, several key points need to be acknowledged. (1) Esther has voluntarily sought help in the form of a psychiatrist, (2) significant individuals around Esther do not seek to treat but simply automatically cure her, and (3) at some point, formal psychiatric agencies take over Esther’s life and means of self-control. These facts all assist us while defining personal experience in this fictional world, while also allowing us to gain insight to define experience in our real setting.

It is duly noted that Esther sought voluntary medical attention after her referral to Dr. Gordon; After all, she was referred not forced into his office. Upon their first and second meeting, however, it is apparent that Gordon’s method of treatment is not treatment at all, but simply a form of medicine in which the patient is not understood and instead is jolted back into “normal” behavior through horrifying means. “Something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant. I wondered what terrible thing I had done.” (Plath, 143) At the time in which this novel takes place, medicine was not so advanced, and the benefits of shock treatment had no “medical” foundation. This treatment was simply a way in which patients were scared into behaving in a normal societal fashion, forced to behave in a manner which society deemed appropriate, forced to conform to the “norm”.

Following the failed shock treatment, feeling as if no person is seeking to understand her, and understanding that no psychiatric facility can cure her, Esther slips into a manic bout of depression and plots her own suicide, the most significant attempt occurring when she swallows a bottle of sleeping pills and is taken to the city medical center, and then to a public mental health facility. There is a crucial element to these occurrences that one must understand to better define “experience”, and that is that Esther did NOT voluntarily move herself from the ER to the psychiatric center, it was done out of automatic accord and circumstances that were completely out of control. “I had pretended I didn’t know why they were moving me from the hospital in my home town to a city hospital, to see what they would say. ‘They want you to be in a special ward,’ my mother said. ‘They don’t have that sort of ward at our hospital.’ ‘I liked where I was.’ My mother’s mouth tightened. ‘You should have behaved better then.’ ‘What?’ ‘You shouldn’t have broken that mirror. Then maybe they’d have let you stay.’ But of course I knew the mirror had nothing to do with it.” (Plath 175-176) It can be inferred from this passage that Esther was moved by doctors to the city hospital because she was still not acting in a way in which society thought appropriate.

Based on these facts, that Esther began life with self-control and this control was slowly taken away by formal agencies of the fictional setting when she did not conform her behaviors to those of the “normal population,” help us to identify “experience” for persons in this fictional realm as such: the undergoing, recounting, or observation of events deemed appropriate to the norms of society, acting within set and proper bounds, with failure to do so resulting in the loss of one’s autonomy.

Because instances of such abstraction of independence can often be seen through the interactions of formal governances and the common population in today’s society, I would count this definition as accurate of “experience” in the modern era as well, although perhaps not on such a dramatic scale. Individuals may be held involuntarily on the basis of physical threat to themselves in today’s society, as well as those acting out of accordance with the formal rules of common society. These formal deviants are held in total institutions such as prisons or psychiatric hospitals upon the foundations of nonconformity, lending more emphasis to the given definition.

The Anxiety of Indecision

As college students, it is likely that we have experienced the strain of anxiety in regards to making significant decisions in our lives. Decisions that will, in fact, shape our futures in considerable ways. I recently felt this burden when deciding what college I would be attending in the fall semester of my freshman year. In my family, it’s expected that you’re to go to college; I never felt I had a choice in that regard. However, I had something that no one in my family had ever held before—straight A’s and internal academic motivation. Aided by these traits, I was accepted to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I thought it was the school of my dreams. Ivy college, one of the sister schools, it was exactly the type of institution my family had always dreamed I would attend. But therein lied the problem: my FAMILY had dreamed I would attend. However, as the days after my acceptance turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, I realized I was unhappy. I was unhappy that I would be without my family, I felt like I was being pressured into this decision, and I didn’t know what to do. I had also been accepted to the University of Florida, a school closer to home with an impressive academic standing as well. In the end I decided against Smith, and thereby rebelled against my family’s wishes.

On a somewhat smaller scale, I understand what Esther was feeling when she just couldn’t decide what she wanted out of her life. Everyone around her held expectations as to what she should adopt as a career, who she should marry, and how she should fill her role as a subservient housewife. I had no idea what was going to happen in my future as well. I very much felt like I was “…Sitting in the crotch of a fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.” (Plath, 77) In the end I chose a fig that best suited me. It’s tragic that Plath couldn’t do the same in her own life, and expressed this pain through her literary persona, Esther.