DON'T batter my heart...

Act gently with my heart, three-personed God,

For while sinning others beg for your wrath,

Believing death the quickest to salvation’s path,

I request of You, that my deeds will be laud.

My devotion to You, never has your enemy thawed.

Sinners see God’s imprisonment as freedom; hath

I, like a sovereign village to your commonwealth,

Shall repent myself for my characters you see flawed.

Yet, I should hope that you may love me even still,

For my unchanging loyalty you have seen, I possess

Delight in my free will and faith in your just skill.

Still, fear in You consumes many I must confess,

Because even though a dog may treat life as a game,

It shall always strive to please its master just the same.

Part II

Part II of Waiting for the Barbarians introduces the "barbarian girl." The Magistrate's relationship with her is the center focus of this section. One "side event" is when the Magistrate buys the fox club, which may have been intended to give the girl some company. The Magistrate notes that, at first, "she took it with her to the kitchen, but it was terrified by the fire and noise" (34).

The magistrate will "dispose" of it when the fox is old enough, but the fox is not mentioned again in the section, so what exactly is its purpose.

The magistrates inability to domesticate the fox is apparent when he says that "it cannot be house-trained." He calls the fox wild and jokes that "people will say I keep two wild animals in my room, a fox and a girl" (34).

The girl's reaction indicates that she is offended: "her lips close, her gaze settles rigidly on the wall, I know she is doing her best to glare at me" (34).

What is the importance of the fox club to their relationship? Is the fox something like the barbarian girl?

Initial reactions

The magistrate’s relationship with the barbarian girl is a strange one that I still don’t understand.
He is obsessed with knowing what happened to her, when he says “it has been growing more and more clear to me that until the marks on this girl’s body are deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her.” (31) He genuinely seems to care about her when he starts to ask guards about what happened to her, and his bathing her can be seen as an act to clean the barbarian girl of both her scars from the guards and her own barbarianism.
His relationship with her has complicated his views on the Empire. He rants on about how the empire should leave the frontier and let the barbarians have their land to the new officer. The new officer is obviously pro-empire, so why would the magistrate discuss “pro-barbarian” views that he himself isn’t entirely sure of? The discussion still does not clarify what the magistrate’s view are, but it indicates a level of indifference to the subject. He seems to know that what he is doing is detrimental to his reputation, yet he cannot make himself stop taking in favor of the barbarians. As he opens up, he says that he feels a “barrier between the military and the civilian,” so are these views that most of the civilians living on the frontier share?
After all of this, then why does he take her back to the barbarians? She had indicated that she missed her sister, but she had never talked about returning. She seems to have grown accustomed to the way of life in the frontier, and she has even made friends with the other woman. When she is finally taken away, she tells him that she didn’t even want to go back in the first place. The magistrate regrets his actions, wishing he would have spent more time with her. He realizes that she was a “witty” girl, and he almost feels “proud” of her, yet he lets her leave.
Their relationship is like one that many barbarian women have had with other officers; however, their relationship is still different as it is complicated, and it is the most interesting part of the story so far.
(378)

Peter Brooks, An Unreadable Report: Conrad's Heart of Darkness

• Narrative and organization is in the tradition of nineteenth century literature; however, it has a modernist twist because it includes "inconclusive solutions to... the problematic status."


• Framed story restricts us from completly understanding Marlow and Kurtz


• There is a disproportion between the ordering systems used and their effect, and that suggests that the realtionship between story and narrative plot is uncertain.


• Marlow's narrative is like a detective's in that it attaches itself to another's story, retraces another's path, and repeats a journey already taken.


• For Marlow, Kurtz is like the authority or "sanction" of narrative, so that Kurtz stands to help make sense of Marlow's life. Then end of the journey= ability to talk about the experience, a voice.


• "The horror, " can represent the reversion to savagery (the fall of language) and/or express just how "unspeakable" the horrors are.


• The nature of the frame story give it a never-ending quality, in that there is no end for Marlow. Since Marlow is "too late" in following Kurtz, the narrative suggests that no one can actually know the end.
• Heart of Darkness has moderinst qualities because the story is being retold. the repetition of the story is "the product of failure" in the original telling ( Kurtz can't tell his own story and Marlow lies to Kurtz's Intended).
• Emphasizes that Kurtz's story never ends, as it will continue to be retold.

Quentin Compson's issue with time

I read "The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury," by May Cameron Brown. It was published by Duke University Press in American Literature.

What was most interesting to me was that the author makes a direct connection between Quentin's breaking his grandfather's watch and his suicide. The watch represents the past, and "the breaking of the watch as the first action of the last day of his life represents his suicide"(546). The watch represent the old traditions of the Compson family, and ultimately, the old South. I had thought that Quentin's breaking the watch only represented his frustration with time in general, but Brown's interpretation is that Quentin is more frustrated with the present, since he "lives in the past," (545) and he expects to "continue the Compson line and preserve the tradition which is central to the Southern experience" (544).

Quentin's frustration also comes from his failures as a brother and as the eldest son of the Compson family. His old southern views are no longer relevant in the present, and his “inability to find and express a meaning in his experience—all reflect the decaying world which is at the heart of the novel,” (544) drives his depression and ultimate suicide. Brown views Quentin’s experience with the Italian child as a parallel to his relationship with Caddy, just as he “fails the Italian girl as surrogate brother in the present, so Quentin has failed Caddy as a real brother in the past” (546).

In class, we had discussed the significance of the word temporary during Quentin and Father’s conversation in the final days of Quentin’s life. We had concluded that the word temporary drove Quentin to suicide, as he felt guilty and upset his feelings were not important enough to last longer. Brown mostly agrees with this theory, adding that his anger with his temporary feelings also comes from the realization of the end of the old Southern values that had defined him for so long.

(332)

April 6, 1928

Part three of The Sound and Fury serves to answer many of our questions from the previous sections. We now know for sure that Quentin is Caddy’s daughter and that Quentin lives with the Compsons because Caddy was “cast off by her husband” (198).

We learn more about Jason, who is a greedy, bitter man. Jason certainly is more Bascomb than he is Compson as he shares his mother’s self-centered personality, a trait that is very different from the other Compson children. He is still angry at Caddy because the dissolution of her marriage to Herbert resulted in Jason losing a job. His puts the blame on Caddy and Father for his own financial failures and lack of opportunity. His bitterness and greed drives him to steal from his own sister and mother. Jason’s relationship with his mother is an interesting one because Jason “puts up” with her, but still makes her feel like he is suffering. Jason is similar to his mother in that they both look for pity.

The most stable character in Part three is Dilsey. Although Jason thinks he is in charge of the house, it is really Dilsey that takes care of everyone and runs the house. She had “raised ev’y one of” the Compson children (198). (212)

Update on Short Story Assignment

I have read three more short stories from The Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories of 2009: Substitutes, by Viet Dinh; Isabel's Daughter, by Karen Brown; and The Camera and the Cobra, by Roger Nash.

Isabel's Daughter is about a man's relationship with his first "steady girlfriend," and how her daughter from a previous relationship reminded him of her. He is never able to express his feelings to Isabel, and feels regret when she dies (suicide). I thought the story was really interesting in that it dealt with such a dark ending with casual language. The story is strange because although it discusses emotional topics, the narration is really devoid of emotion.

The Camera and the Cobra made me laugh because it reminded me of my family when we travel. We are constantly taking pictures, but sometimes forget to actually enjoy what we are seeing, just as the narrator does. The narrator realizes this when he is taking pictures of ants, but finds that the ants are probably observing him more than he is observing them. I think the story was about trying to get people to live life to the fullest.

Out of all the short stories I have read (6 in total), my favorite is Substitutes, by Viet Dinh. It is about the fall of Vietnam, but it is told through the events in a classroom in Vietnam. The class goes through a series of substitute teachers since they all begin disappearing. In the end, once the communists finally take over, the last teacher is a general. The general tells them that there is not point in being a scholar and staying in school. All the children leave school, and the schools turn into "re-education" camps, where they see scholars such as their old teachers. This is a story about the power of education and how it is something feared. Also, the author, Viet Dinh, was a Vietnamese refugee whose family escaped to the United States. He went to Harvard Law and was the Assistant Attorney General under the Bush Adminstration. He also was the chief architect of the USA Patriot Act. (352)