Django and the Legacy of the Western?

So i need one final post and i dont want to backtrack and do a previous book because it's really just my own fault i didnt do them sooner. As it happens, however, i watched Tarantino's "Django Unchained" over the weekend and i thought i would put what i've learned in this class to the test and see if what, if any, Django owes or adds to the Western tradition as I've come to understand it this semester. The first thing i noticed was the music and font of the opening credits, Tarantino uses the traditional, hokie saloon font and the Bonanza style song complete with "whip crack" sound effect to immediately tie his story to the traditional John Wayne, Ox-Beau western. Despite his "dialogue" on slavery, this movie is not as forward thinking as Tarantino would have us believe. Instead its much more a stereotype and cliche western, more at home with our early readings. When i saw the giant tooth on the German's dentist wagon i thought for a moment it might be referencing McTeague somehow and perhaps pointing at a deeper understanding of the West, but alas, the wagon is blown up with dynamite and that particular icon goes no further. Like our early readings Tarantino's West is defined by its trappings. Django becomes a cowboy the moment he puts on that dead slaver's hat. His transformation is immediate and heroic in the way only a movie montage can be. But in this moment Tarantino engages the myth of the West by rising Django to that mythical western status. He is a deadeye with a rifle and pistol, a superb horseman, and a consummate badass seemingly without justification. Tarantino even seems to wink at us when the German acknowledges this, likening Django's story to that of a German folk legend. The concern for Justice with a capital J likewise is a western ideal, that Justice is something one can know inherently and which is beyond the laws of man.

Overall there is not much that Django brings to the western genre. Tarantino shows his appreciation for the genre through his fond use of the traditional tropes and cliches, but does not expand with his own interpretation. As a western, Django is straight forward and predictable. Not so much a modern take, as a nostalgic nod.

Defining Space in the West in Tropic of Orange

This semester we have wrestled with the idea of defining space in the West. Until now the West has still been something raw; there has been an untamed element for man to conquer and that made man good somehow. In the Tropic of Orange, however, we see a western space that has been so rigorously defined (rigorously) that there is nothing left which is unknown. Man has total dominance over nature to the point where he can literally move the equator by his actions. The West is sort of like the meeting of two or more tectonic plates, representing the many cultures and peoples which sought their futures there, and now that they have met they are crashing together and changing the literal lay of the land. It's reminiscent of the "Terra forming" in Firefly. This story therefore is almost like an anti-western, or a distopian western. we see the fulfillment of the ultimate gal of all western, the taming of the West, and instead of happiness it has brought only misery and travesty. The destruction that Archangel saw in the opening of the western frontier by the great European explorers is now complete and there is going to be apocalyptic consequences for our defiling of nature. To that end, Archangel's death is almost a necessity, a martyr to stay the hand of humanity's demise. Only by relinquishing this control over nature can we be saved, as Bobby ultimately is when he lets go of the "lines".

Bobby and Language

            Though it is difficult to find a cohesive thread between Bobby’s chapters, if one examines the presence and attitude towards language within these sections, the organization becomes less confusing. One must keep in mind the first picture that is painted of the character in the beginning of the book: “If you know your Asians, you look at Bobby. You say, that’s Vietnamese…Turns out you’ll be wrong. And you gonna be confused. Dude speaks Spanish. Comprende? … Turns out Bobby’s from Singapore…Bobby Ngu…that’s not his real name. Real name’s Li Kwan Yu…Bobby’s Chinese. Chinese from Singapore with a Vietnam name speaking like a Mexican living in Koreatown. That’s it” (14-15). Immediately this is a character that is established through cultures and subsequently those culture’s languages. Whether this be through the names like the Vietnamese “Ngu” or the Chineses “Li Kwan Yu” or through actual words like “Comprende,” Bobby’s character is closely tied to a complex, woven system of languages and cultures. Through out his chapters, the sparse diction is scattered with Spanish phrases, as well as signals to how he treats languages themselves. He speaks English but doesn’t teach Rafaela, and instead she must learn through audio tapes. Although Bobby’s assortment of languages might appear jumbled or chaotic, he seems to have them separated in such a way that suits him and serves him well.

            Thus, in chapter forty when he’s viewing the television on which, his cousin is channel surfing he observes, “Tube’s got Korean channel speaking something. Maybe it’s Russian. Some’s Swahili. Spanish channel’s speaking English with an accent. Everybody in the Mexican soap’s speaking the Queen’s English. Other hand, network’s speaking fluent Castilian. Some’s even in Mandarin. He understands it. He’s thinking too it’s not a mistake; it all makes sense? But! … Who’s gonna understand all this all the time? This some joke” (232)? It is on the television that the blending and mixing of cultures and languages loses the necessary order and separation, becoming a mass of chaos. The separations that allow Bobby to understand the complexities in his life are lost within the TV, therefore leading him to wonder whether it’s a joke or not. 

Tropic of Orange and the West

After finishing Tropic of Orange and sifting through the craziness of it all, I think I'm starting to see an image of the West begin to form. In the previous books we read such as The Surrounded and The Professor's House, the West was written about as a place that was undergoing change. In both of the previous narratives that I mentioned the West is transforming from an original and authentic native culture to a caucasian dominated, civilized landscape. Tropic of Orange is much more recent than both of those books and in turn has a more modern feel. I like to think of Tropic of Orange as a continuation of the West that we have previously seen. It began with native people, then it was taken over by white Europeans and European Americans, and now it has in a sense come full circle as Los Angeles is seen as a mixing pot of race, ethnicity, and culture. While there are many fictional parts in Tropic of Orange this fact seems very realistic and appropriate.

Buzzworm: Repeating image of watches/time

In class on Monday we were all assigned a character to discuss. We never got to my groups character, Buzzworm, but I really wanted to talk about what we found. Also, I wanted to hear some other takes on it because we certainly did not cover everything. Basically, we found the following images/objects repeated in Buzzworm's chapters; trees, watches, time/history, and radio. The image that was most prevalent and that I want to discuss is watches/time. Buzzworm has this unusual obsession with watches and it is said that he has collected over 200. For Buzzworm I don’t think time is a series of seconds, minutes, and hours. I think time is more important to him than just numbers. I related time to his continual discussion of history. To Buzzworm time periods are important especially those of the past. The fact that he had strangers watches or strangers “outward reflections of time” give Buzzworm a better understanding of time than most people.  I believe this advanced understanding of time is the reason why in the last paragraph of Buzzworm’s final chapter Yamashita writes that Buzzworm is solar powered and “could not run out of time” (265).

Magic Realism and Archangel

Chapter 33 between the pages 196 and 201 provides a really thorough presence of magical realism. The chapter itself begins with the bus breaking down and Archangel miraculously pulling the bus forward with his steel cables. This act itself introduces the intensification of magical realism. The moment brings into question on how a frail old man could possibly accomplish this feat of strength, defining a walking contradiction. Moving on, he gives absurd answers to the border patrol agents, claiming he is Christopher Columbus, over 500 years old, and studied at Harvard, Standford, and a secret in Annapolis, which most likely refers to the U.S Naval Academy. As he moves forward with the orange, he yells how the orange is a native orange with an elaborate history. I believe in this moment, the author is trying to symbolize Archangel as a culture that combines American and Mexican aspects. Recognizing that when the agent says California has a no-orange policy, Archangel is saying this is absurd because the native orange cannot cross, despite the shared history and culture. This dispute in itself symbolically raises a critical point in that despite the similarities in culture, these artificial and cultural national borders are unnecessary, yet they are the only entities that divide everything. It is this political creation that disembodies an expansive culture that should naturally coexist. Overall, I thought using the elements of magical realism where we aren't sure if Archangel is being serious or not and the symbolic representation of a shattered, disoriented culture due to political creations ultimately shows the fragmentation of the idealized West.

The Dichotomy of Superhero Figures in Tropic of Orange

There are two characters in Tropic of Orange who could rightly be defined as superheroes, or at least perceiving themselves as such: Arcangel and Bobby. Arcangel, of course, represents the more traditional idea of a superhero: he’s immortal, for the most part, he’s impervious to pain, and he’s willing and even eager to go above and beyond in service of other people without seeking recognition for it. More interesting as a superhero figure, then, is Bobby, who works tirelessly in pursuit of being the perfect father and husband. He recognizes his weaknesses, such as his smoking addiction, and tries to eradicate them entirely. Furthermore, like Arcangel, he has a disconnect with the rest of the world, both his own world as a character and the world of the novel itself. He is disconnected with his own world through his separation from his family and his failure to understand why, and he is disconnected from the novel’s world because he is not as intertwined with the central linking narrative as the rest of the characters, only becoming involved when his family needs saving. The fact that these two superhero figures meet in the novel’s last section, however, proves their importance to the book as a whole. Although the scale is vastly different, Bobby and Arcangel have the most epic stories in the book, and the only stories which have any sense of closure, as Bobby is reunited with his family and Arcangel finally dies. While their personal connection is brief and distant (they exchange Sol but not words), the parallels between their stories make them one of the more interesting character pairings in the novel.

Arcangel as a knight errant/cowboy figure

During Friday’s class we discussed the idea of Arcangel acting as a knight errant during the course of the novel. When this idea was brought up, I remembered that Arcangel was described as ‘quixotic’ on page 47, which is a reference Miguel de Cervantes’ character Don Quijote and his quirky personality. Additionally, on page 48, Yamashita references Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author whose works tend to deal with magical realism, a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy. The reference to Don Quijote allow us to picture Arcangel as a man out of his time period trying to pursue a life of doing good deeds, very similar to Quijote. By adding Marquez as well, we are more apt to accept the idea because the theme of magical realism is already in place and we can take a character out of one time and put him in another. Arcangel’s main ‘deeds’ are when he physically moves two different buses, once on page 73 and once on page 197, both times doing so in the face of doubters and in dramatic fashion. “I will myself move this vehicle. What is it to you to see such a feat?”(73). Much like Cervantes’ knight, Arcangel gains the attention of those around him before performing his deeds so that others may know as well. An interesting comparison might also be a knight errant to a cowboy, because both live a kind of solitary life, whether it is out on a quest or on the range. Because we lack a clear Western cowboy character in this novel, labeling Arcangel as such might provide clarity when reading the novel.

What Manzanar can teach Gabriel?

A lot of our classroom discussion, as well as posts on this blog, has been centered on the fascinating character Manzanar. With this in mind, one of the most poignant scenes I've found while reading has been the scene on page 111 when Gabriel speaks of interviewing Manzanar. I think it's safe to say that up until this point of the novel we are lead by Yamashita to have a soft spot for Manzanar, recognizing that his existence is more profound than crazy. In this scene, it struck me how easily Gabriel, our only first-person narrator, comes to realize Manzanar's profoundness. Here, Gabriel claims to feel that Manzanar some how knows "the way." I think that this "way" that Gabriel speaks of has to do with Manzanar's ability to make something whole out of the chaos of our society, or in his case, the L.A. freeway. Gabriel makes distinct reference in this scene to the fact that he, as a current events journalist, could not categorize Manzanar as anything but a crazy old man. To me, this reference is a commentary on the idea of "current events." Gabriel, and others in society, seem hellbent on current events and projecting this events to the masses. In doing this, there seems to be some sort of unifying principle lost between these events. Every event becomes it's own story. With Manzanar, Yamashita seems to show a character who does not look solely at individual events, but rather a larger picture, one where all events, or in the symbol, cars, flow together in a harmonious way. This is what I think Gabriel wishes to learn from Manzanar. It seems that Gabe needs to understand more fully how our society is intertwined and how better to relate to the connections that are unclear. Manzanar is a crazy homeless man, but he also sees something unified where disunity exists. Gabriel wishes to see the same.

The Tightening Noose in The Surrounded

In chapter twenty-three of The Surrounded, Modeste speaks to the absence of moral justice that occurs once old Indian laws are replaced. He says, “…since that time we have not used the whip. Yes, I think it is bad. In the old days it was a good thing because it kept the people straight…Well, they gave us new laws and now nobody is straight” (207). White laws smother the people’s urge to confess, thus making them act in sneakier and secretive ways in order to avoid white imposed punishment and justice. The tension between old traditional justice forms and new justice forms is palpable in this section as Modeste contrasts the past willingness to confess and accept punishment with the present neglect to adhere to the law.

This tension is further developed when Catherine speaks of why she wishes to be punished with the whip. “I prayed for [my sons] and tried to keep them from going to hell,” she says. “It would have been better if they had been given the whip” (210). In this section the failure of justice sparks disillusionment within Catherine towards other areas of belief: specifically religion. Catherine’s abandonment of the Christian priets’ teachings mirrors Archilde’s own feelings of religious dissention.

Overall there is an ever-building tension between the traditional Indian way of life and the ever-imposing white culture. Portrayed through the contrasts in the ways justice was and is administered, as well as attitudes towards those justice types, old Indian beliefs are shown to be increasingly smothered by white culture. McNickle therefore develops the idea of a surrounded West: one that is being strangled by the suppression of old cultures and traditions. The only way in which to escape the sense of surroundedness is to embrace one’s Indian side, just as Catherine does.

From Skilled Surgeon to Homeless Musician

I found that Manzanar's decision to simply walk out of his profession as a surgeon was quite intriguing. The author goes into such great detail how his work as a surgeon could have been that of an artist, whether it was pottery, painting, or anything else artistically related. However, it is important to see how the art of surgery could be an art in itself. Being able to perform careful incisions is similar in the sense to it takes the same perfection, practice, and skill like playing an instrument or creating a masterpiece from clay. I think Manzanar become too overwhelmed with his linear progression in life, where he would perform his music (his surgery) but it only leads to affluence in terms of material items. On page 56, the author writes "there are maps and there are maps and there are maps." Manzanar one day had that epiphany that the path he was following on his map did not satisfy his life, leading him to abandon it and end up being a homeless man. However it is in this status he is able to transcend the mindset of an "everyday working man," being detached and physically distant. This allows him to be able to have a much more clear sense of matters at hand, with accurate visions of what happens and what is to come, as he conducts his highway symphonies.

Manzanar

So far, I think that Manzanar has been the most interesting character. I think we can read the fractured structure of Tropic of Orange as Yamashita’s attempt to explore society from a variety of perspectives. In other words Yamashita explores the effect of parallax, and investigates its function in describing a space. Thus far, each character seems to be positioned at a different angle. But Manzanar seems to be positioned as part of a distinct space: commenting on and “recycling” from the structure of the other characters, but occupying a completely different realm. We can point to Manzanar’s transition away from society in the description of his leaving work: “One day, he left a resident to sew up a patient, removed his mask, gloves, and gown, strode through the maze of corridors, down the elevator, through patient waiting, to become a statistic under missing persons” (56). The language of this passage places an emphasis on Manzanar’s intentionality. This complicates my idea of the homeless. Manzanar intentionally changes forms, from a surgeon to a statistic. In so doing, Manzanar becomes a “recorder” of society, rather than a piece of it. He recycles the sounds and maps of society, abstracting it, changing its purpose, and assigning it new meaning. Manzanar’s passage also references ridesharing. I read this as part of the practice of consolidation that is critical to society’s functioning. “Ridesharing, when it was practiced in greater proportions, alleviated flow, increased rhythm while enhancing and deepening tone” (55-56). This practice gestures towards a tendency to “alleviate flow” throughout the novel. This ties back to the idea of lines that we have seen repeated. Yamashita seems to suggest that we try to alleviate flow by organizing, assigning and consolidating. I find Manzanar so interesting because he seems to complicate these lines, assigning his own meaning and instead aligning himself with the “artesian rivers” and “web of faults—cracking like mud flats under a desert sun” (57).

Moths and Spiders, Lizards and Beetles

At first I was thrown by the jumping narrative of the novel; every section introduced a new character and a new setting with little hope of ever bringing them all together. The more I read, however, the more i was reminded of the opening scene, where every morning Rafael goes through a ritual of sweeping out all the animals that have, as if by magic, snuck their way into the house overnight. The wash of ethnicity  cultural backgrounds, and languages in the novel seems to me very similar to this opening scene. All the characters, seemingly unconnected, find themselves linked by some cosmic force beyond their own understanding much the same as the animals find themselves bound by the broom. Manzanar seems to have been able to tap into this connectivity in a way that no other character yet has. Rafael feels it for a moment when she finds the "line" and Gabriel hints at it when he "feels" the sun from the solstice despite being in LA at the time, but Manzanar for all his craziness is able to understand the human link that is lost on the other characters. In many ways this seems to emanate from his relationship to nature or rather his distance from technology. He seems to have gained his power/understanding when he gave up the rat race and became a street musician. Even this resonates with the first scene, where we see technology ie. the vacuum cleaner not only fail, but ultimately inflicting harm (on the crab), as opposed to the broom which seems instead to facilitate the natural order of things.

Arcangel's End of the World

Arcangel spent time predicting the end of the world and oncoming doom, though was unable to pinpoint a specific date, because “perhaps there were a series of small dooms in consecutive fifty-two-year cycles.” (48-9) I found this scene to be poignant, partly because of recent events and also because of how disconnected it seems from the rest of the Monday section.  All of the previous scenes depicts snapshots of everyday life, but Arcangel is different because he has a mystical and seemingly timeless presence, he has performed for countless historical and literary figures, and adapts various personas.  Yet, despite the ordinariness of the scenes we see with Rafaela and Bobby and Gabriel, the talk about the world ending gives them more importance.  Also, it kind of reminds me of the discussions on the loss of the West that we’ve had on other novels.  In those cases, it is losing an imaginary space and way of life, but that connects in my mind to the idea of the world ending, because ordinary life continues even when things are lost.  Things that are happening are immediate for the people involved, but because it is a constant threat of cycling dooms, Arcangel’s predications just seem to echo the loss of space that we’ve seen, especially because they all relate back to “discoveries” in the Americas.

Identity and society in Tropic of Orange

Yamashita seems to be muddling and confusing people identities and the traits that are normally used to identify others. This is seen early on when she describes Bobby’s demographic background, “Bobby’s Chinese. Chinese from Singapore with a Vietnam name speaking like a Mexican living in Koreatown. That’s it”(15). Yamashita’s description of Bobby makes him seems really out of place and like he does not really fit in with any part of society because his identity is so confused. What was also interesting was that a few pages later we see Emi trying to pressure Gabriel into “blending in” by drinking sparkling water (Perrier) instead of tap water. Gabriel declines, but we can view Emi as a point of comparison for judging how much people identify with their society. It is also interesting that Bobby’s identity is inherently detached from American society and Gabriel chooses to be detached, which makes me wonder if maybe Yamashita is providing a commentary on American society that paints in an unfavorable light. Emi clearly wants to conform and encourages Gabriel to do the same, but he declines, showing his lack of appreciation for American society.

Immigrant Experience in Tropic of Orange

In almost every book we've read this semester there seems to always be a character, or characters, who struggle with identity or sense of who they are. After reading the first section of The Tropic of Orange, 
I once again saw a struggle for identity in the section on Bobby. Although Bobby is 100% Chinese, he represents an interesting early theme of the novel: melding of culture. I thought the fact that Bobby had to pretend to be Vietnamese in order to come to America, speaks Spanish, and lives in "Koreatown"is an interesting way to set up a sort of shared immigrant, or non-american, experience in this novel. The section on Bobby seems to ask the question, "how do we really see others?" This sort of mixing of identities for Bobby made me feel as if the book sets up Immigrants as it's own conglomerate cultural identity. I don't necessarily think this creating strips immigrants of their individual identities, but rather creates a sense of community and togetherness amongst those who share in the immigrant experience. The proud tone of Bobby's section suggests that the man's mixing of cultures is something to be revered and acknowledged as admirable.

Narrative Voice in Tropic of Orange

By the time I finished reading the "Monday"section of Karen Tei Yamashita's "Tropic of Orange,"I realized that the 7 sections with 7 different main characters were all told in the 3rd person except for one character: Gabriel Balboa. Gabriel's chapters are narrated in the 1st person, unlike the rest of the chapters. Because of this discrepancy, I'm beginning to see Gabriel and his association with oranges as the connection between all of the other characters. Firstly, he owns a home in Mexico that lies on the Tropic of Cancer, where he has attempted to plant different trees and plants, including an orange tree. Rafaela Cortes is the housekeeper of this home, and she is fascinated by the one pathetic orange that grows on the tree. Rafaela left her husband, Bobby, in Los Angeles and is comfortable working in Gabe's second home. Emi is Gabe's on-again/off-again girlfriend who works for a news station, and she  tells Gabe of a huge accident on the freeway involving a semi and a porsche, in which (allegedly) the driver ate a piece of orange and passed out. The entire accident was viewed (or rather, orchestrated) by Manzanar Murakami, who was on top of the Harbor Freeway overpass. Gabe had been asked by Buzzworm to interview Manzanar; Buzzworm tips off Gabe for various news stories, and at one point purchases an orange from a street vendor. Lastly, the character Arcangel has a scene where he pulls an entire cartload of oranges by himself.
The importance of the orange in Gabe's backyard seems to be the strange catalyst for all of the extreme weather changes and occurrences that happen during the summer solstice, when the sun is the highest over the Tropic of Cancer. I have only read the Monday and Tuesday sections, so I'm curious to see how Gabe's connections to the other characters (along with the recurrence of oranges) are further developed.

Disillusion and Disorientation in Tropic of Orange

What I find interesting in the first section of Tropic of Orange is the pervasiveness of disillusion and disorientation. The quote from Michael Ventura that Yamashita uses to preface her novel introduces these ideas that are present from the opening chapters. Ventura describes Los Angeles as “a city named after sacred but imaginary beings, in a state named after a paradise that was the figment of a woman’s dream; a city that came to fame by filming such figments.” Connecting this to Gabriel’s dream house in Mexico, I can begin to understand how this novel fits into the western ideas that we have been discussing. Gabriel imagines a potential Eden that can satisfy his “sudden passion for the acquisition of land” (5). Upon this space, Gabriel hopes to impose a home and cultivate trees. Yet the land proves unfitting for his plants, and the house has been in the works for eight years. The difference between Gabriel’s dream and the reality of the house at the novel’s outset is distinct and undercutting. Rather than a place of “timeless vacation” (5), Gabriel has a place occupied by things sometimes dead and sometimes alive, but ultimately unproductive. We learn that Gabriel “tried not to be discouraged when they [his trees] died, telling Rafaela, ‘They gotta take care of themselves. Survival of the fittest’” (10), yet this mantra only further commits Gabriel to his disillusionment. Gabriel wants to cultivate his trees, yet blames nature for his own neglect and absence. Gabriel’s dreams are described as “nice ideas” (10), holding little weight in the face of the harsh Mexican landscape, and connecting to Ventura’s idea of the disconnect between dreams and reality. Furthermore, within this space, the lines of orientation fail the human inhabitants. For example, we learn that “there had been two trees, one on either side of the property—two points on a line, but one had died” (11). These trees formerly served to mark the Tropic of Cancer, but now that line has been obscured: turned into a singular point through which any line could pass.

the West as a white myth

This semester we have been addressing the idea of the West as "American Mythology" and looking into the themes and motifs which make up the rules of this genre. Increasingly, however, it appears as if one of these rules is that you must be white, and that the West, as we know it, is not a myth but rather a delusion of white-anglo culture. Both The Plum Plum Pickers and The Surrounded tell the story of the American West from the prospective of an oppressed, indigenous minority: Mexicans fruit-pickers in California and American Indians in the Midwest respectively. In both books we see the attempts of these minority characters to take part in the ideals of the West only to be excluded for their ethnicity. Archilde attempts to enter white culture only to find himself hindered and ultimately undone by his Indian blood. Similarly, Manuel and the other pickers try to better their lives in the spirit of the West through hard work and manly labor. Like Archilde, however, their efforts are thwarted by the white man, in this case Turner, who single-handedly  ends Westward expansion and owns literally everything, preventing Manuel and all the others from ever making anything of themselves. The white perception represented in "classic westerns" casts these minorities as hostile or inept, depending on the mood of the author. In these books, like The Ox-Bow Incident, whites travel West to face the savagery of the wild. They must either fight the demon savages or care for the indolent natives, but either way they are just another obstacle to conquer. The Plum Plum Pickers and The Surrounded offer a different view, that the West is simply a pipe-dream of Eastern, white, redneck, racist, city-slickers, who wantonly attack, displace, and subjugate entire populations in the name of progress.

What is a Symbol?

Firefly is one of those shows where the episodes that do not directly relate to the season plot have some sort of overarching message that is explored and reflected in the plot of the particular episode, and the subplots.  In Jaynestown, the lesson of the day is that a symbol is more than the sum of its parts. Each time I’ve seen this episode, my favorite line is always when River is holding the Bible pages and she says, “I took these out of your symbol and they became paper.”  Not only is it funny, but it emphasizes that a symbol is not powerful inherently.  The Bible after all is just paper.  No one worships paper or Staples would be some sort of holy place.  Instead, the value of the Bible is what people attribute to it, and the meaning and faith that it represents.  Interestingly, River wants to try to ‘fix’ the symbol, but her request shows that she still does not understand what the Shepherd was trying to explain to her.  The symbol is still intact despite the fact that the physical object is broken, but River seems to believe that her destruction of the Bible has destroyed the Shepherd’s symbol.  River’s mistake is the same mistake Jayne makes at the end of the episode.  He can’t grasp why the mudders would worship him even after they heard the true story.  He can’t see how the Hero transcends his own self, that in fact, the Hero is a separate entity entirely from himself.  Jayne may be a selfish thief who accidentally helped the mudders, but the Hero’s power is in his story, not in the physical body that first inspired the story.  That is what Mal means when he says the mudders just need something to believe in.  In reality, the perceptions and beliefs of people are stronger than the objects that inspired them.

Civilization in the Wild

There were a couple things that caught my attention in Jaynestown, the quick discussion of language at the beginning, the idea of Jayne as a kind of hero that isn’t really all that heroic, and the doctor’s need to act proper out in the wild.  While it was only a quick discussion between Kaylee and the doctor, his line about how acting properly out in the wild was more important than acting properly anywhere else stood out.  It seems to fit in well with a lot of the books we’ve read, because in the midst of the Wild West, there has always been some source of what is good and proper or simply more befitting of modern city standards.  In the Plum Plum Pickers, Margarita gazed longingly on the statues and was excited to have the refrigerator.  Also in that book there was the control Mrs. Turner had, because of her husband and her ability to set the standards propriety followed. 

In regards to Jaynestown, the doctor was fascinating because he did fit.  He was useful on the job in the episode, because his dress and attitude portrayed that of a buyer, which was something the others desperately needed so as not to attract too much attention.  It is his contrast to the others that makes their actions mean something, I haven’t watched the entirety of Firefly yet, but I thought I recalled something about the Dr. Simon having worked within the Alliance before helping break his out sister.  I like this way of bringing “proper” society to Serenity, because all of our books have had shadows of the things that were left behind or that the protagonists were trying to escape.  

Separation between the Pickers and the Capitalists

The passage on page 158 of The Plum Plum Pickers demonstrates how Manuel begins to question his own identity as a picker. He question what he is not, rather than what he is to show how difficult it is to narrow down what it means to be a picker. He finally comes to the decision that he is “a box. That’s it. A box. And another. And another box. And a box. A man. A man. Is. A man is a boxer. A bb box filler” (158). This contrast greatly with how Mrs. Turner identifies herself as the wife of a capitalist. She is able to be a wealthy individual without ever having to work a day in her life or contribute to the cycle of picking. Manuel comes to the realization of how unfair this truly is. “A picker earns two dollars for two thousand cots worth forty dollars on the market shelf. Uncanny. Uncanned. Count count count. J. Somebody sure making something. Not the picker. Two dollars for the picker – and thirty-eight dollars for somebody else” (158). He is baffled by the horrible process, because in his eyes, the picker is the most important part of the process. More important than the planters, the truckers, the grocers and the advertisers. The pickers are the ones doing all of the hard work, and yet they are spending the majority of their money buying back the very food that they picked. This cyclical process keeps the pickers submissive to the wealthy capitalists because they are unable to escape the process and rise above to something better. In the end, Manuel and the other pickers are giving the money to supplement their own wages and are never able to more forward economically. 

Location & Wealth

There is a moment that stuck out to me in Chapter 10 of The Plum Plum Pickers where Manuel is compared to Gaspar de Portolá, the man who first laid eyes on the San Francisco Bay. Sweeney Ridge happens to be my favorite place to hike, and my home is maybe 5 miles away from the International Airport that can be seen from the top of the ridge. Barrio's description of the magnificent view and the overwhelming sense of unimportance that Manuel and Portolá felt is something that I can personally attest to. To the west, the Pacific Ocean spans to the horizon and beyond; to the north, the top of the Golden Gate Bridge can be seen peeking out over the Park, with the Marin Headlands on the other side spreading onward; to the south, the Santa Cruz Range spikes upwards and Linda Mar beach in Pacifica calls out on a sunny day; and to the east, the expanse of the Bay Area from San Francisco to San José fills the land. I always stand at the top of the ridge for a long while and have trouble leaving.
     Looking all around from the top of Sweeney Ridge, "both don Gaspar and don Manuel were landlords and landless at precisely the same instant of viewing all this heady beauty. And both were equally dispossessed (91)." I found myself thinking back to the description of Sweeney Ridge near the end of the novel when Mrs. Turner has a gathering with lots of wealthy ladies and they are saying such things as "Most people just can't afford three cars these days." The contrast is unsettling to me. The land surrounding the pickers once belonged to Mexico and the raw beauty is awe-inspiring and brings a sense of hope of what could come in the future, even though their present situation is likened to living like animals, or rather, worse than animals. At the same time, the WASPs who have invaded and taken over are complaining about how hard it is to keep more than two cars. The land that once was valued for its beauty is now nothing more than an investment to keep the rich happy. Turner mentions that he wants the Bay to be filled in so there could be more land to plant fruit and vegetable crops; it is clear that the natural splendor of the Bay means nothing to men like Turner. To Turner, the location of California is all about the wealth that he can suck out of it by any means necessary.

Struggle for Identity: Margarita, Archilde, and John Grady

At the beginning of class today (Wednesday) Nick asked us if we had noticed any similarities between "The Plum Plum Pickers" and any of the books we had previously read. We didn't come up with an extensive list as a class but right as class ended I thought of something that we have seen in multiple books. Today we briefly discussed the chapter dedicated to Margarita where she explains her experience at school.  There is one point in that chapter where Margarita discusses her difficulties at school and struggles with her sense of identity, "Where did she belong then? Back in her mother's hometown? Her father's? In Salpinango? In Guadalajara? Would they send her back there? But what if she wasn't from there, from any of those places either? . . . She was California born" (102). In this scene Margarita is struggling with her sense of national identity. She doesn't feel American despite being born in America and she doesn't identify with Mexico (describing that Mexico is as foreign to her as Belgium). This struggle with identity reminded me of Archilde's struggle. Archilde had trouble finding a sense of place outside of the compound (because he was Indian) and inside the compound (because he was mixed race). I also noticed a similarity between Margarita and John Grady Cole. John Grady left Texas because there was nothing left there for him. He didn't own a ranch and despised the city where his mother lived. When John Grady traveled to Mexico he fit in on the ranch but was still a foreigner in the eyes of his boss and the other Mexican citizens. All three of these Western characters lack a sense of identity and question who they really are.

Classic Justice in Plum Plum Pickers

In Chapter 11, there was a small instance where classic justice played itself out. Barrio introduces a man named Roberto Morales and describes him in a very peculiar and interesting way. He defines the man as "a gentlemanly, friendly, polite, grinning, vicious, thieving brute" (92). The stark contrasts that are juxtaposed create some sort of unbalance and suspicion that sets the tone and environment for this setting. He talks to the group of people smiling and friendly yet he has his other thieving characteristic, where it is clear that all he wants is the group's money. As a two-faced character, he tries to take two cents from everyone's bucket but Manuel steps in and does not let him proceed. He told Morales that he promised he would not take any money and showed strength and courage by kicking the bucket of cots, revealing his steadfast nature. As a result, Morales leaves and Manuel saves the group of pickers from losing their money. It is important to point out that the author could have also specifically chosen to name Morales the way he is. Taking apart the construction of his name, Morales can be broken into moral-less. Thus, the author subtly hints at Morales' thieving, two-faced nature and how greed and selfishness turn men into moral less beings.

Space, the outsider, and the middleman

What I have found interesting in The Plum Plum Pickers is Barrio’s use of space. In particular, Barrio creates a structure in which space is controlled and inhabited by outsiders. While tied to Turner’s land in what is described as a system of “slavery” (88), the pickers are immigrants, outsiders. Furthermore, in the first mention of Turner, he is somewhere else, occupying a different space, yet controlling the fields and the lives of his workers. This structure then relies on a middleman, an interpreter, in order to execute Turner’s control. Quill fills that role of the middleman, and thus poses the risk of misinterpretation. If we make the connection between Barrio’s character, Turner, and Frederick Jackson Turner the historian, then Barrio’s structure serves to comment on the dangers of interpreting Turner’s frontier thesis. Frederick Jackson Turner is removed from the space of this novel, yet his theories on American expansion and democracy are pervasive in its social structure. It is through the very frontier-thesis-mentality that the Turner of Barrio’s novel justifies his exploitation. Yet the frontier thesis is far removed from this setting. It is only through one man’s interpretation of those principles that they maintain relevancy. The same is true when considering the Turner of the novel. While removed from the fields, Turner’s presence is felt through the various vehicles of interpretation and representation. For example, the driver in the last scene of chapter eleven is described as “one of Mr. Turner’s regular hands” (99). Despite Turner’s distance, his power is invoked by his representatives, who have become a physical extension of the man’s body. The idea of the outside control continues in Lupe’s fears of deportation. She is haunted by the idea of the “border patrol “arriving” in neatly dressed swastika uniforms” (63). In this example the idea of suppression becomes enveloping. Not only is she controlled by the outsider in Turner, but she is also terrified by the larger system, which could take her at any time. Returning to the idea of the middleman, Roberto Morales plays an interesting role in the economic structure of the novel. In playing the middleman for the outsiders, the “anglo growers” (93), he absolves them of any guilt. Morales operates from within the group, yet serves as a buffer for the outsiders to remain removed from injustice while still reaping its benefits.

Quality of Life and Significance of Prunes

This post is sort of an extension of the previous post that John wrote. As he described, the quality of life for the pickers is extremely low. They live in small almost uninhabitable shacks and they make very little money. They work hard and have no time or money for luxuries. Right from the beginning of the book Barrio's descriptions of nearly everything in the Compound has a negative connotation. The second paragraph on page 39 is a good example of this as described by Lupe. Because of this description of the quality of life I found it interesting (and not coincidental) that the workers are picking prunes and not plums. Prunes are dried plums, meaning that they lack juice, life, and freshness. They also are black and wrinkled in appearance. I found the description of the workers to parallel the prunes they are picking. The workers are being exploited and similar to prunes they lack life and freshness. Even their culture is being "dried up" which Barrio makes clear by the mix of english and spanish that is often spoken.

Competition Between the Pickers

On pages 88 and 89, we are given the description of the competition between the pickers. They constant fight each, struggling to pick more, eat more, and earn more money. The description Barrio gives of Manuel, one of the pickers, and his experience is “total immersion, the endless, ceaseless, total use of all his energies and spirit and mind and being” (88). They have little time for enjoyment, and do not even have spare time to eat their plates or clean the house. The pickers gulp down their food and use paper and plastic plates. The pickers bring their lunches with them in pails because they cannot afford to buy food, let alone the time to go and get it. Barrio describes how the competition is so fierce between them, that they are their own slave drivers. No foremen were needed, because the pickers kept their own pace, constantly pushing themselves, worried that they would be out of a job and not be able to support themselves and their families. “That was the cleverest part of the whole thing” (89). The bookkeepers paid the pickers very little, so they would work faster and continue the vicious cycle. 

Passage of Time in The Professor's House

In class today, we discussed how Willa Cather used images to pass time in the novel as opposed to other examples. In earlier novels that we read, the characters were just described as waiting around as in the case of The Ox-Bow Incident, making it seem as though time were passing in real time. On page 195 in The Professor's House, after the burial of Henry, Father Duchene stays with the family for a week to provide support and comfort. Cather describes him as one day cutting "down one of the old cedars that grew exactly in the middle of the deep trail worn in the stone, and counted the rings under his pocket microscope" (195). Cather uses this image to describe the passage of time, but also to symbolize death and remembrance for Henry. Father Duchene looks at the rings in the tree, counting to three hundred thirty six, looking back at all the memories of Henry's life.

The Significance of Mother Eve in The Professor’s House

Book Two of The Professor’s House marks a significant departure from the beginning of the novel.  Not only do we have a new narrator and a new protagonist, but we have moved in time and space.  Tom Outland’s past takes us to the West and there we experience his adventures in Cliff City.  Cather included this departure for a reason.  She wanted the reader to get to know St. Peter and the future before Outland.  One of the images in Book Two that resonates with the rest of the novel is Mother Eve.  On page 191, Tom and Roddy “came upon one of the original inhabitants – not a skeleton, but a dried human body, a woman” (Cather 191).  Interestingly, she is referred to as an ‘original inhabitant’ which simultaneously gives the impression that she still has ownership over the mesa, and that she is somehow previous, and not currently in charge.  Tom also specifies that she had dried up because of the air, as if the mesa itself preserved her.  In this way she is still present, and not dead or gone the way that a skeleton would be.  She is not a shadow of a human, but a real human.  They name her Mother Eve, which matches the way that her existence is connected to nature and the mesa.  She is also found high above the rest of the mesa, as if she is watching over it.  I get the impression that Mother Eve is meant to be a guardian of Cliff City. However, Mother Eve had not just died, she was murdered.  Tom and Roddy see that she had been stabbed, and that her mouth was frozen in a perpetual scream.  Just as man had destroyed Mother Eve, Roddy destroys the mesa by selling it.  In the process Mother Eve falls off of a cliff.  Because she symbolizes the mesa, the loss of Mother Eve represents the way that the artifacts become lost once they are purchased.  They no longer hold the value that they once did.  Mother Eve becomes a significant image in the rest of the novel because she represents the way that human interaction with nature somehow causes a change in that nature.  St. Peter felt that autumn improved when a human intervenes and sculpts it.  However Mother Eve would argue that the intervention of humans ultimately destroys that which makes nature valuable in the first place.