Mrs. Reilly's Terminale OIB Class 2011: October 2010

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Is it better to be locked out or locked in?

Monday, October 11, 2010

Bluest Eye Notes week of 09/08/10

self-hatred, not about racism
narration: multiple, have to piece each one together
different than poisonwood bible, white people refusing to understand black people, more about racism
Pecola feels different than other people wants blue eyes: hates herself but not because of her skin color (not entirely)
piece everything together only at the end of the book: Cholly, has no perception of what a family should be like.
Structure is backwards
Morrison focuses on the how and not the why
Cholly (aka Charlie) is a tragic hero
Pecola’s outcome is determined so is Cholly
Choly’s inner turmoil has no boundries, he functions on hatred and tenderness.

09/09/10

Nathan, Troy and Cholly don’t have the ability to provide and protect his family.
Nathan feels guilty, didn’t want so many girls, was tormented.
Nathan is ignorant, selfish and an egomaniac, he is naïve, refused to try and understand the natives
He is ignorant, ignorance is a major theme of the book
Ignorance: to deliberately shut out knowledge
Nathan, Troy and Cholly have intimacy issues, all have a childhood trauma, translates through sex
Lea and Mother evolve the most out of the family, Rachel remains ignorant
Nathan is arrogant, also ignorant of what manhood is. What is the role of a man?
Epistemology: What is knowledge? What is ignorance? What can we know? What should we know?

09/13/10

Bluest Eye Notes:

Lorraine, Ohio -> no segregation, 1941
True story
This is not a book about racism, it is about black is beautiful and self-hatred, she is the most ugly, she is the “blackest”
Claudia felt guilty
They never speak about pecola “quite as its kept” they can’t even say her name

09/16/2010

Introduction loses value third time because no spaces between words.
Less and less meaning from version 1- 3
Symbolizes Pecola’s evolution, her mind, her lifestyles, she can’t even focus on what’s the ideal and what she wants, everything is mixed together: words put together represents her reality.
Juxtaposition between what it means and its inverse: IRONY
Texts become more and more perverted: goes from natural to unnatural
They have everything but there’s complete perversion
IRONY: Pecola named after Peola character from movie “Imitation of Life”

What goes on in the mind of Cholly, Soaphead and Mr. Henry?

"Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice as many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets." [...] But let us be civilized. Humbert Humbert tried hard to be good. Really and truly, he did. He had the utmost respect for ordinary children [...]. But how his heart beat when, among the innocent throng, he spied a demon child, "enfant charmante et fourbe,"dim eyes, right lips, 10 years in jail if you only show her your looking at her. So life went. Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with the EUve, but it was Lilith he longed for. The bud stage of breast development, [...] the first appearance of pigmented pubic hair [...]. My little cup grins with tiddles."

Lolita, Nabovok. 16, 20.
Story of a pedophile, who explains his cravings and adventures with his Lolita, Dolores.

There is obviously a "glitch" in all four of these men's minds. They have unnatural desires. Mrs. Reilly was saying that Mr. Henry was a worse offender than Cholly. I however disagree because in all cases these men use little girls as substitutes for their unrealized fantasies:

-Cholly: his inability to love, his longing for past happiness and freedom,

-Soaphead: his homosexual desires blocked by his hate of people, ...

For Mr. Henry, it is harder to discover but he is the one I associate most with Humbert Humbert: they seem nicest on the outside but are predators on the inside. The intricate workings of their mind are most dangerous.

The question here is whether what makes their offenses appalling is that they abuse a child's trust or that they are directed towards children. I lean towards the latter and that is probably why I find that there is no saying that one offender is worse than the other. What makes the offense bad for you?

Friday, October 8, 2010

Civil Disobedience

Click here for an annotated version of the text:

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/civil/

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.