Peter's Blog

The end of Part 1 of Beloved  reveals a rather shocking moment in Sethe's (and Beloved's) history. Sethe is caught in the process of killing off her children to save them from a life of slavery. I find it interesting that this scene, unlike the other books we've read this year, greys the morality of both black and white characters. In Native Son , we root for Bigger as the protagonist as he resists the antagonists: Jon, the court, etc. In Invisible Man , the narrator faces the evils of multiple organizations that try to use him. However, in this part of Beloved , Morrison leads us to question if Sethe is completely good, and the four horsemen are completely bad. Up to this point, we've seen Sethe's struggles as she escapes Safe Home, which painted her as the protagonist struggling against slavery, an evil practice. Here, though, as she tries to murder her children, we question her judgement. Even if her intentions were good, was this horrifying scene really nece...

Countee Cullen's "Thoughts in a Zoo" is basically one huge analogy, relating the racism between blacks and whites with zookeepers keeping animals trapped in a zoo. Oddly though, in his poem, the conflict doesn't seem as one-sided as the white/black conflict was. Right off the bat, Cullen starts with "They in their traps, and we in ours". Are both sides equally trapped? Zookeepers are definitely less trapped than their animals... A little further down, he refers to a "gaunt eagle whose raw pinions stain the bars", some animals that "delve down like the mole", and snakes, who watch with a "changeless slothful eye". These seem to refer to different types of reactions from blacks' oppressed state. The eagle has been fighting futilely for freedom, the mole has been hiding (like Invisible Man's narrator), and some have been simply watching, neither actively accepting or denying the oppression. But once more at the end, h...

Throughout Invisible Man , the narrator is forced to move from one organization to the next, each of which have a different idea of what part Blacks should play in society. Near the end of the book, the narrator comes to realize just how easily manipulated he has been, and how following his grandfather's advice only made things worse. Despite his constant movement from setting to setting, the narrator's briefcase remains with him as a treasured possession. The items inside, meanwhile, are various trinkets obtained throughout his journey: his high school diploma, the shattered Jolly N bank, a paper with his Brotherhood name... In Chapter 24, though, the narrator is assaulted by a flock of birds and their droppings. He uses his briefcase to shield himself, quite unlike how careful he has been with the briefcase in the past. Later, when he falls into a manhole to escape Ras, he burns the briefcase's contents for light. What does all this mean? By burning the briefcase...

Cornelius Eady's  The Wrong Street  is formatted oddly: line breaks are placed seemingly haphazardly, cutting statements in half more often than not. In class, we briefly discussed why Eady chose to do this. Someone (I forgot who lol) suggested that Eady intentionally tried to make his poem look unorthodox, messy, and unprofessional, to convey a tone of desperation, as if he wanted to get the message out as quickly as possible and didn't have time to format it properly. Or maybe he's writing out the poem while words come naturally to him, not bothering to go back and format them. Looking more closely, each individual line break actually provides a minuscule sense of mysteriousness to the poem. For example: If you could shuck your skin and watch         (Watch what?) The action from a safe vantage point,           (What vantage point?) You might find a weird beauty in this,          ...

In Chapter 9 of Invisible Man , the narrator discovers what Bledsoe has written in the letters he's given him. Specifically, Bledsoe requests that Emerson (and the other letter-receivers) keep the narrator away from the school, while keeping the narrator himself oblivious and hopeful. Later, alone, the narrator recounts the letter, speaking aloud to himself. "Please hope him to death, and keep him running," he paraphrases. Back in the first chapter, after the calamity of the narrator's high school graduation, the narrator has a dream with his deceased grandfather in it. He opens his briefcase and opens letter after nested letter, eventually reaching a short message: "To Whom It May Concern, Keep This N*gger-Boy Running." Up until the boiler explosion and the narrator's memory loss, he's constantly hopeful about his future, letting higher authorities control him. His grandfather planted a seed of doubt all those years ago, though, and it seems h...

Invisible Man 's first chapter contains some very strange events. Black students are forced into multiple events that have no place in a graduation ceremony. Looking deeper, this entire chapter is filled with metaphors that Ellison is using to show the extent of segregation between Blacks and Whites. Shortly before entering the battle royale, all contestants are blindfolded. They proceed to attack each other indiscriminately, swinging wildly until someone comes into range. Considering all contestants are Black, and the event seems to be planned exclusively by White people, it's fairly obvious that the Whites are turning the Blacks against each other for their own entertainment. Adding to this is the fact that the blindfolds used are colored white. Although in this particular scene the Whites are manipulating the Blacks merely for entertainment, Ellison might be suggesting that, in the real world, Whites tried to prevent Black uprisings and riots by turning them against each o...