Philip Roth* Sorry!

Stranger

In the short story Eli, the Fanatic, Roth Philip reveals how societies judge and attempt to conform those who are different. Societies give people a sense of security and stability by setting boundaries and expectations. When individuals do not conform or fit in, the society feels threatened. The societies inability to trust any one outside of its idea of a social norm causes them to label these people as strangers. Roth provokes his readers to question these impulses of society through Eli, who is literally put into the shoes of a stranger.

Philip foreshadows Eli’s role as the individual who is able to step outside of the norm. This is revealed through the emotional complexities he suffers as a result of his own struggle to support the expectations of the unwelcoming society he lives in.

They protect what they value, their property, their wellbeing, their happiness—Happiness? They hide their shame. And you, Mr. Peck, you are shameless? We do it, Eli said, wearily, for our children. This is the twentieth century…For the goyim maybe. For me the fifty-eighth. He pointed at Eli. That's too old for shame. Eli felt squashed. Everybody in the world had evil reasons for his actions. Everybody! With reasons so cheap, who buys bulbs. Enough wisdom, Mr. Tzuref. Please. I’m exhausted. (266)

Eli argues with Tzuref to change the stranger’s appearance because he is socially and professionally forced to. In the process, Eli results in feeling “squashed” because he understands the unjustness of the situation. He respects Tzuref and realizes the pain and inequality the society has caused them to feel. As a result he begins to question the morality of his mission. He feels unattached to society and states, “ It’s not me, Mr. Tzuref, It’s them.” (267) Eli reflects his internal struggle of having to play the part of a civil member of society by revealing his opposition to do so.

Eli’s growing understanding of the unfair judgments society enforces on the stranger is amplified when he wears his suit and confronts him.

And in exchange, the greenie gave him an answer. He raised one hand to his chest, and then jammed it, finger first, towards the horizon. And with what a pained look! As though the air were full of razors! Eli followed the finger and saw beyond the knuckle, out past the nail, Woodenton. What do you want? Eli said. I’ll bring it! Suddenly the greenie made a run for it. But then he stopped wheeled, and jabbed that finger at the air again. It pointed the same way. Then he was gone. And then, all alone, Eli had the revelation. He did not question his understandings, the substance or the source. But with a strange, dreamy elation, he started away. (291)

This interaction between Eli and the stranger is of great significance because of the impact this tacit message has on Eli. After confronting the stranger, Eli openly defies his society as if to prove a point. Roth incites us to interpret the stranger’s gestures as a cry for help. While not directly explaining his gestures, we are able to see the pain the stranger endures for compromising his identity for societies shallow judgments. Eli reveals his full comprehension regarding Tzurefs statement, “You talk about leaves and branches, I’m dealing with under the dirt.” (267) By realizing that the stranger has had to endure prejudice on deeper level. Eli understands that the judgments the stranger endures over his physical appearance are reflective of how society is in truth judging who he is as a person.

In hopes to open the eyes of this community, Eli becomes what they fear. He proves that underneath the stranger’s clothes, he is just the same as everybody else. Roth demonstrates how a society easily allows what we wear to define who we are. We follow the trends to fit into the expectations of society. This allows society to place stereotypes on us. However, behind all of the clothes and the stereotyping, we are who we are, and society can’t change that. Eli as a consequence appears like a fanatic, when really he is able have an open mind and see the true colors of what is wrongly accused to be a stranger.

Haunted ( The Shawl)

Haunted

The physical and emotional obstacles Rosa endures in the first half of the novella The Shawl, by Cynthia Ozick, demonstrates the memories of her past that forever haunt Rosa. Ozick uses imagery of emptiness to depict the numbing of emotion resulting from the overpowering sensation of physical anguish endured during the holocaust and the emotional torment she suffers from witnessing the murder of her child. Her inability to escape these fatal memories reflects through her encounters with Stella and Dr. Tree, in the present.

In the second half of the book, Ozick reveals multiple instances where Rosa feels mentally haunted by Stella. Although time has passed, Rosa continues to blame Stella for murdering Magda.

Sometimes Rosa had cannibal dreams about Stella: she was boiling her tongue, her ears, her right hand, such a fat hand with plump fingers, each nail tended and rosy, and so many rings, not modern rings but old fashioned junkshop rings. Stella liked everything from Rosa’s junkshop, everything used, old lacy with other people’s history. To pacify Stella, Rosa called her Dear One, Lovely, Beautiful; she called her Angel; she called her all the things for the sake of peace, but in reality Stella was cold. She had not heart. Stella, already nearly fifty years old, the Angel of Death. (15)

Rosa believes that Stella is truly as heartless as the Angel of Death and dreams of being vengeful towards her. Rosa stresses Stella’s desire in taking things that hold a sentimental value to her. Which reflects her beliefs that Magda’s death was an intentional ploy for Stella, to pull yet another important thing away from her. Because Rosa already has so much negative connotation towards Stella for “killing” her baby, she can never avoid her past when she is around Stella.

Rosa tugged, and the dress wit the blue stripes slid like a coarse colored worm out of twisted bed sheets. The whole in the armpit was bigger now. Stripes, never again anything on her body with stripes! She swore it, but this fancy and with a low collar, was Stella’s birthday present, Stella bought it. As if innocent, as if ignorant, as if not there. Stella, an ordinary American, indistinguishable! No one could guess what hell she had crawled out of until she opened her mouth and up coiled the smoke of accent. (33)

The gift Stella gives to Rosa becomes a tangible example of Rosa’s incapability of avoiding her past with Stella. In this quote, Rosa suggest, that Stella intentionally tries to remind her of her past by buying her a dress with stripes on it, similar to the uniforms they wore in the concentration camps.

Dr. Tree also reminds her of her past by writing a letter asking if he can do a study on her about her past.

Disease, disease! Humanitarian Context, what did it mean? An excitement over other people’s suffering. They let their mouths water up. Stories about children running blood in America from sores, what muck. Consider also the special word they used: survivor some thing new. As long as they didn’t have to say human being. It used to be refugee, but by now there was not such creatures, no more refugees, only survivors. (37)

She is treated differently for enduring such extensive pain in the past, and recognizes his motivation to study the damage it has caused her. This makes her feel disgusted by their “ excitement” over her pain. She suffers, unable to move forward when being haunted by Dr. Tree’s intentions of making her his lab rat. She despises him, ignorant of the effect it has had on her and criticizes him for describing her as a survivor. If he had truly understood, he would realize that she doesn’t feel like she has truly survived her past. Inside she is not a survivor, and feels empty inside. Like a soulless body, she is unable to connect to the people around her.

The combination of the hardships she faces with her lack of ability to escape her past, conveys she is driven into madness because she is haunted. Rather than labeling her so quickly as mad, Ozick shows us the difference of being driven into madness by exposing us to all of the hardships Rosa has had to endure. Her inability to escape the memories of her physical and emotional pain causes her inability to adapt to the new world. The people around her treat her differently for enduring pain making it hard for her to connect with them, or anyone at all. Stuck in the past, and unable to connect with the present and appears to be mad, when really she is repressed from being haunted by the people in her present life. Ozick writes this novella to show us that madness is merely and easy way for society to label those who have faced extreme complexities in their life. Giving an individual a chance to explain their story, provide us with an opportunity to put ourselves in their shoes.

How is it going to end?

First, I'll start by saying that I have only read up to page 178, and that from hearing today's discussion I have a little better idea of what is yet to come. Still, with what I've read so far, I can't help wondering, how are Dana and Kevin supposed to find each other in the past? And how are they supposed to make it back to the present together?

Rufus hasn't sent Dana's letters. As far as I can tell, he has no intention of sending them. After Dana's failed attempt at escape, I don't see her future and the prospects of ever finding Kevin looking very bright. We know from the epilogue that they eventually do make it back to the present together, Dana without an arm. This makes me extremely curious to know how Butler will lead Dana and Kevin back to each other. Will she run again? Will he come for her? Rufus makes a good point, however, on page 163 when he says that the two of them have been separated now longer than they had been married. And Kevin's interest in going west and experiencing firsthand that time period makes me wonder if he will come for her or if she will have to seek him out.

I know how strongly Dana appears to need and seek Kevin, but I also can see her becoming attached to the plantation and accepting her role as the mammy figure, as we talked about today in class. Especially after her failed escape attempt, and the beating she receives, and she comments to herself about how easily slaves are made. She also tries to tell Alice that she will run again, though its not clear if she really believes that herself. Like we talked about today, I think she feels needed on the plantation, and has found a sense of home through her family connections there. She has limited to no family in the present time, and I think she finds comfort and purpose in helping them on the plantation. After her will has been broken by beatings and disappointments, I can see her accepting her mammy role, which would make a reunion with her and Kevin even more unlikely, unless he returned at some later date for her. There isn't much evidence in the prologue, unless I overlooked it, to show how much older the two of them are when they finally return, but I wonder how many years they will spend in the past before they are finally returned? Will Rufus have to die in the past before Dana and Kevin can return to the future and be safe?

I'm going to keep reading and find out.

Women in Old China During the 1920’s

“To be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste of time enough.” (6)

In the short story The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong-Kingston portrays the lack of value and expendability of women in early 1920’s Chinese society. This is exemplified through the relationships between Kingston’s Aunt and the men in her life. The treatment she receives from her husband, the father of her baby, and her family members reflects the unjust society that existed in Old China.

The relationship she has with her husband reflects a typical disconnected husband and wife connection of the time. In describing their relationship, Kingston writes,

“She was lucky that he was her age and she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now. The night she first saw him, he had sex with her. Then he left for America. She had almost forgotten what he looked like. When she tried to envision him, she only saw the black and white face in the group photograph the men had taken before leaving.” (7)

This quote exemplifies the typical customs of the time where husbands with multiple wives and detached relationships as a consequence were of commonality. Kingston’s aunt’s family poverty forces her to marry strictly for financial reasons causing her to view their relationship with a sense of desperation. This feeling of desperation derives from her “duty” to keep him, which in turn allows him to own her and still act freely with no boundaries. While this freedom that men posses may be socially accepted, women in similar circumstances would be looked down upon and unjustly penalized.

“My aunt could not have been the lone romantic who gave up everything for sex. Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. I wonder whether he masked himself when he joined the raid on her family.” (6)

Kingston’s Aunt’s becomes a victim of impregnation and is then turned on by the father of the baby reflecting the exceedingly twisted sense of entitlement that men felt they had to abuse women at the time.

“The other man was not, after all, much different from her husband. They both gave orders: she followed. ‘If you tell your family, I’ll beat you. I’ll kill you. Be here again next week.’ No one talked sex, ever. And she might have separated the rapes from the rest of the living if only she did not have to buy her oil from him or gather wood in the same forest.” (7)

The complete control that he can have on her is used to illustrate the little value women had. A male stranger of that time would be able to have the same power over a woman as her own husband. When this stranger impregnates Kingston’s aunt, he uses her as a scapegoat to take any form of responsibility off of himself.

Her family experiences a castigation of such disgrace that even they being to depreciate her as well.

“In a communal tradition, where food is precious, the powerful older people made wrongdoers eat alone. Instead of letting them start separate new lives like the Japanese, who could become samurais and geishas, the Chinese family, faces averted but eyes glowering sideways hung on to the offenders and fed them leftovers. My aunt must have lived in the same house as my parents and eaten at an outcast table.” (7)

Her family shuns her, and treats her like how most would treat a dog. Enduring the pain of such actions from all of those around her, she feels she can no longer serve purpose for her husband, the father of her baby, and her family. Having nothing more to live for, she kills herself. The expendability of women is exemplified through her families’ decision to pretend that she never existed, after her suicide.

Kingston illustrates the lack of value of women in Old China, by revealing the similarities of the relationships she has with different types of men around her. Family members, and strangers were able to treat women degradingly. Her husband making love to her and leaving her, a stranger destroying her family’s home after impregnating her, and her family erasing the very existence of her life are all examples of the harsh reality of the inequality between men and women of that time.

The public's Pleasure in Pain

The Public's Pleasure in Pain

In the bible, Jesus brings back one man from the dead, and his name is Lazarus. The title of Sylvia Plath’s poem Lady Lazarus suggests her own experience in being brought back to life time and time again after her constant attempts of suicide. The poem as a whole is executed like a flashy performance and envelops a sarcastic tone targeted towards a bloodthirsty public.

She expresses her frustrations of being unsuccessful with suicide by referring to it mockingly as an art.

“Dying

Is an art, like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell

I do it so it feels real

I guess you could say I’ve a calling.”

Although advocating that the public eye curiously watches her attempts as a form of entertainment, she exhibits that her intentions behind each suicide attempt are real and not done with the expectation to fail her attempt. She fails repeatedly. Surviving suicide against her wishes illustrates the work of the hereafter.

“And I a smiling woman

I am only thirty.

And like the cat have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade

What a million filaments.

The peanut crunching crowd

Shoves in to see”

In this stanza she shows that she feels like she has been cursed with a gift of life that she doesn’t want, and finds it a waste of “each decade”. Feeling stuck on earth she feels the burden of the never-ending attempts of suicide she must perform before she can reach her final destination of the silence she craved in death.

Plath utilizes her poem to convey a message about the true nature of the public she experienced. Presenting her struggles ironically in the form of a “freak show” she is able to make us realize that the public is capable of finding entertainment in an individual’s pain. Unfortunately this is exponentially increased in contemporary times (2009). The audience, drawn to the ugliness in her life, reflects the reality of an ugliness that lives deep within the one’s who eagerly watch.

In the article “ Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper” Charolette Perkins Gilman states, “ It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.” in reference to her motivation behind writing this story. Inspired by her own suppression of having “ but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again", Gilman constructs a story that allows us to witness the gradual changes and internal struggles that occur within the mind of an unstable individual. By exposing us to the diary of this mentally disturbed woman, Gilman is able to help individuals in her audience who feel personally connected with her story, through their struggles. Gilman portrays the gradual decay of her heroine’s mental stability exemplified through external forces such as mental and physical restrictions that her husband strictly enforces upon her. Inadvertently, rather than helping her through her mental complexities, the power that he has over her causes her to loose a sense of who she was, driving her over the edge.

We are immediately introduced to several occasions suggesting the complete mental control that he has over her. As if to give her husband an excuse to have so much power over her, she writes,

“If a physician of high of standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do?”

Her husband’s official title gives her a sense of obligation to abide by his decisions on her health. This obligation to depend upon him becomes so overwhelming that she in turn suppresses any ideas that she has for her own health.

“I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus- but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house.” (Page 2)

She constantly mentions her husband through out her diary and talks mostly of his opinions on any decisions that revolve around her. Exemplified by the quotes above, she values her husband’s ideas more than her own. Her inability to confront him by vocalizing her opinions gives her husband full control. This lack of self-confidence to become independent of her husband eventually makes her a stranger to herself.

Her physical entrapment was also a very impacting factor that played a large role in pushing her over the edge. In addition to her opinions constantly being suppressed, he isolates her from society by keeping her locked up in a room. Although she normally silences her feelings, she decides to actually address her inability to feel comfortable in her new room.

“At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.” (Page 4)

After writing this, she then goes on to talk about the positive aspects of the room completely disregarding her original feelings of discomfort. Even after finally building up the courage to express her feelings to him she ends up completely replacing all of her own emotions with the emotions that he wants her to have.

The discomfort that overcomes her when talking about her own emotions is symbolically depicted through the woman that she sees trapped in the wallpaper. The first impression of uneasiness she experiences when encountering the wallpaper acts as a symbol of her uneasiness to confront her true feelings. At the end of the story when she “releases” the woman behind the wall, she hysterically tells her husband,“ I’ve got out at last,” said I, “ In spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”(Page 15) After all of the constant suppression and containment she is finally able to physically liberate herself by letting the woman in the wallpaper, the symbolic form of her suppression, out. By unleashing the woman behind the wallpaper, we would like to assume that she would no longer allow herself to be bound by the boundaries that were once enforced upon her.

Gilman focuses on demonstrating and exposing various internal and external factors that influenced her into dependence. The lack of confidence that her friends and family members have in her, influence her to constantly doubt herself causing her to loose a sense of who she is. Similar to most of the novels we have read in this class so far, Gilman attempts to challenge our definition of insanity. These novels leave us to contemplate whether the insane actions of these characters define them as crazy or if their insane actions can be justified.