Author: Sam B.

Janina is really a mad women

On By Sam B.In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the DeadLeave a comment

Throughout the novel Janina is often referred to as crazy, madwomen, or a crank by the police and while that is ageist and sexist we have to look at it from the POV of the police. Say if you lived in a small town and it was the end of your shift and a lady came in to convince you that animals were the reason people were dying. You would probably also call her a madwoman because that is a very crazed thing to say. Janina also had the reputation of being a little crazy so they expected nothing less. For example, when she finds dead animals she takes them home and buries them, she thinks the deer chose her to get revenge on the hunters, and she believes that astrology will tell us everything about the future. If you look at her like this it is pretty obvious that she is crazy.

But, there is another perspective you can look at Janina through and that is her enormous care for animals. She believes that animals hold the same amount of worth as humans and will even kill hunters to show that to authorities. While that may seem very brave of her it is illegal and will put her in prison. In chapter 15, the priest talks about how people who don’t follow hunting laws are cruel. That is reasonable since those laws are in there to protect species and their environment. On the contrary, if people aren’t able to hunt, populations such as deer will become so large that they may actually start killing humans. Janina can’t seem to understand that and starts to become “Tool” for the animals.

Though she is a little crazy, Janina is feeling grief and anger after learning what happened to her dogs and that is okay. But what’s not okay is killing people, sending letters to police saying it was the animals killing the people, using astrology as justification, and running from the cops. I feel like there is a better way to deal with the grief of her dogs.

Using power in the right way

On By Sam B.In King Lear, Power and IdentityLeave a comment

It is known from the beginning of the play that Lear has the most power throughout the kingdom. When he makes decisions he goes through with them, not listening to the people who are there to tell him if he is right or wrong. In the first act, Lear makes a silly decision to ask his daughters how much they love him, and when he didn’t get the response he wanted from Cordelia he got angry and used his power to evict her from the kingdom. That was a bad way to use his power because his kingdom started to fall apart and he missed Cordiliea. Later on in the play, both Kent and the fool tell him to stop his madness and get his kingdom back in order. However, Lear does not listen, banished Kent from the castle, and starts to go crazy. If lear would have used his power to get the kingdom back to its glory then people wouldn’t have died but he used his power to do what he wanted. Finally, at the end of the play, Cordelia forgives Lear. She had every right to be angry but she used her power in the right way and forgive him. Lear started to understand his mistakes and his madness and in the end, he is deserving of his death. Power also contributes to one theme of the play which is that one small mistake can lead to chaos that cannot be stopped. If lear never asked the question of who loved him the most, none of this would have happened.

Beds Are Burning

On By Sam B.In Music Poetry1 Comment

The song “Beds Are Burning” by Midnight Oil, an Australian rock band from the 80s, wrote this song to protest the taking of native lands from the tribe Pintupi. They wrote this song in an attempt to highlight the effects it had on the native tribe. The song starts out with a description of the land, using imagery to allow the listener to grasp that they are in the desert.

Holden wrecks and boiling diesels
Steam at forty-five degrees

The lines above are from the very end of the first stanza, they are almost like an introduction. They allow the reader to infer that it is extremely hot, it would be around 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and it paints a picture in the listener’s head using imagery. This song is written from the Australian’s POV, the second stanza and part of the chorus talks about how they need the take accountability and give the land back.

The time has come, a fact’s a fact
It belongs to them, let’s give it back

Those lines are in the second half of the stanza. The use of rhyme with “fact” and “back” empowers the song and helps it flow better onto the next part of the chorus. By using these lines as the chorus, it helps reinforce their message about giving the land back. The second part of the chorus, the third stanza, puts the song in the POV of the natives.

How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

These lines are repeated twice in the stanza. That, along with the use of “ing” at the end of each line signifies that this conflict is still going on. The song title is also used in the chorus to reveal the effect the stolen land had on the Natives. Their beds weren’t literally burning but when eventually forces back to their native county, the Kintore ranges, which are extremely hot. This has the double meaning that it is so hot they can’t sleep but also the meaning that they are angry with the Australians and want their land back. Finally, the use of “dance” in the first line also has a double meaning. At first, it means that they literally can’t dance because of their uprooted lives but it also means they can’t be happy since they were forced to leave their homes. In the second to last stanza, Midnight oil changes one line in the chorus.

It belongs to them, we’re gonna give it back

They change the original line “let’s give it back” to this and it also changes the tone of the song. By the end of it, they seem determined to hold Australia accountable for the things they did to the Pintupi tribe. The use of the pronoun “we” blames the whole country not just the people in power which is a part of their message. Overall I really like this song because the use of rhyme and repetition really adds to the meaning of it.

How “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads connects to “The Stranger”

On By Sam B.In Albert Camus, Existentialism, Music2 Comments

The song “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads was released in 1980 and is centered around the idea that life keeps moving you along with no explanation. The verse “Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down/Letting the days go by, water flowing underground” is not only repeated throughout the song but also represents that as days go by the forces(water) will keep you moving. Also in the song, there are questions such as “Well, how did I get here?” or “Am I right, am I wrong?”. These questions represent the unknowingness of life and how random it is. In the story “The Stranger”, many bad things such as death and conviction happen to Meursault and he just accepts it as life and keeps moving on. He asks question such as “I thought how peculiar she was?”, but then follows it by saying “but forgot about her a few minuetes later”. This shows that he understands that life is random and there is no time or way to stop the flow and ask irrational questions with no answer. Another example from the stranger is when Meursault is in prison and is refelcting on the tradgic times of his life. He begins to accept his fate after he screamed at the chaplain and was going to die happy even though many people hated him. He again realized that the flow of life can’t be stopped and there is no way to prevent his death.

Giving a voice to the Vanishing Elephant

On By Sam B.In Short Stories2 Comments

The story “The vanishing Elephant” is narrated by a man who is very invested in the vanishing elephant and works throughout the story to try and understand why the elephant disappeared. The man starts off this with a detailed background of the elephant and his keeper, both old but very unified with each other. We don’t ever read about their thoughts but I think that the narrator is their voice, especially the elephant. It shows unity between the keeper and the elephant in a very divided community because some want the elephant killed. We can see through the narrator’s thoughts, “They[the elephant and the keeper] had been together for more than 10 years, and you could snse their closeness in every gesture and look”(313), that the keeper cares a lot for the elephant and vice versa. When the elephant vanished we learn that the narrator would watch it from afar and the day before it vanished we learn that the narrator thought he saw the elephant shrink. I think it is not that it shrunk but that the narrator actually saw the keeper and the elephant as equal. Because the community saw the elephant as either a burden or a symbol of the town, it wasn’t really seen as equal to people and therefore not seen as having feelings. This is why the narrator gives us insight as to why he imagined the elephant as shrinking. He may have seen them as both having feelings and both equal.

Can you read well and for fun? Nabokov

On By Sam B.In Vladimir Nabakov6 Comments

After reading Vladimir Nabokov’s “Good readers and good writers” I found the passage that explains how you cannot read well if you identify with a character or event in the writing very interesting. When I read for fun I usually relate to a character or event to sort of put myself in the position of the character to understand their thoughts and feelings. But after reading Nabokov I understand his point of view. He argues that when you relate to a character you may become biased or immersed in their story so much that you may miss important details about the rest of the plot. I understand this if you are trying to fully understand the book or if its for an assignment but I wonder if this apply’s to when you read for fun. After I reread the passage I don’t think that it does because if you read for fun you usually read for the story, you read to get that tingle down your spine and maybe, when reading for fun, to get that tingle you need to relate to a character to get inside their head and feel what they are feeling. Also when you read for fun you don’t necessarily read to understand all of the content of that book unlike you would do for school. When I read a book I try to imagine the plot like its somewhere i’ve been to, as Nabokov said, “get clear the specific world the author places at his disposal”. This helps me imagine the characters as if I am in the world the author has created.