That One Escalator (Sasha)

Introduction: This project was based on the Washington Naval Conference of 1920, American cryptographic efforts at the same, and a variety of other fun historical tidbits I discovered in the process of writing. The sections of the document labeled “Historical Notes” are in fact accurate, and provide further context. The project takes the form of a series of letters written by one Herbert Yardley, addressed to an unknown reader, in addition to several (fictional) telegrams and letters to other persons, alongside the historical notes.  Letters from the Truest Memoirs of Herbert Yardley and Other Sources Historical Notes-The Washington Treaty The Washington Conference of 1920 was the first international disarmament conference. Conducted in the wake of the First World War, the 5 victorious powers: the British Empire, United States, Japanese Empire, France, and the Kingdom of Italy met in Washington D.C., in order to prevent a naval arms race they believed would bankrupt thei...

At the end of Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred , Dana is permanently crippled by a touch from Rufus Wainright. While Rufus has hurt Dana before, his grabbing of her arm at the end of the novel is the first time that Dana comes to severe harm as a result of her time travel. She had been concerned about other potential forms of harm, but always either caused by the need for fear-of-death to remove her from the 1800s, or caused by the dizziness associated with her trips into the past. She did have concerns about the possibility of momentum-transfer from being in a car while going back to the past, but, while similar to what happens to her with Rufus, the effect is not entirely the same.   When she returns to 1976, her arm is physically merged into a wall in that time, a wall which obviously did not exist in the 1800s. Unlike the potential for momentum transfer, Dana was not near a wall in a way which could’ve caused the injury. Instead, it is Rufus’ attempt to hold her back, and th...

As you might have guessed if I’m in your English class, I’ve found Slaughterhouse Five a fairly frustrating book. Not because of its structure, which, while odd, isn’t too difficult to read, but, fundamentally because I disagree with what feels like the ultimate message of the book. Not the anti-war message, though I have comments on that as well, but instead what Vonnegut writes every time we observe someone die, what Billy says the Tralfamadorians taught him to believe: “so it goes”.   So it goes? Is that really all we can hope for out of this world? That there’s nothing we can ever attempt to do to change the world, that if something ultimately does get better it’ll just have been fated to be? What sort of anti-war novel is that, where even the Tralfamadorians, when asked, reveal that, in fact, with their perfect views of the future and the past, they have wars more terrible than anything we have ever seen here on Earth, and that there is no purpose to even attempting to p...

If Mumbo Jumbo is the story of the interaction between Jes Grew and the Wallflower Order of the Atenists in the first world, and we can see the flare-ups of Jes Grew across our own history, then we can also see ideas of Jes Grew and Atenism in what was known for portions of the 20th century as the second world: the Soviet Union, the Soviet-aligned Eastern bloc, and areas such as the former Yugoslavia. As a historical side note this is why we no longer really say second-world, the communist states of the second world no longer exist. So now we talk about the first world and the third and I’m sure most of us have wondered at some point what happened to the second one.   Ishmael Reed mentions in his novel his belief that Marx secularized the teachings of Jesus Christ. This strongly implies Marxism and Western communism in general, to be Atenist modes of thought, even if, like the battle between the Teutonic Order and the Knights Templar, these various branches of Atenist thought...

In both Doctorow’s Ragtime and Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo , Egypt appears to play an important role in our understanding of the main plot. Note: probably some slight spoilers for Mumbo Jumbo ahead, as, while the pieces are all there, the book hasn’t put it together for us yet.   In Ragtime , Egypt is the ultimate destination of J.P. Morgan, where he seeks to find proof of the reincarnation of the fittest, and potentially a secret society of others who understand their power in this world. Morgan sleeps overnight in a pyramid alongside the long-dead Pharaohs, attempting to establish a connection between himself and them.   Ragtime also points out a wider trend towards Egyptology in the early 1900s, an obsession with Egypt and the rediscovery of that part of the Ancient World. The family gets Egypt-themed wallpaper, and so on.   In Mumbo Jumbo , we know that at least one secret society really does exist, the Wallflower Order. We also know that they too are ...

In E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime , the Father accompanies Peary on his polar expedition. But why does Doctorow have a random businessman in the patriotism industry accompany Peary to the North Pole? Is it, like the appearance of Houdini in the car, a way to show that Doctorow can do whatever he wants with history? Or is there more to it than that? For one thing, Father obviously comes back from the expedition seriously changed. His family notices radical differences in his character when he returns, and he himself does as well. As we see these changes, Doctorow also begins putting us into Father’s perspective more and more. His begins to replace the varied perspectives we get earlier in the novel. As we go on, more and more chapters are from his perspective, and from the perspective that he represents. Father begins thinking more and more about himself: about the fact that he has not taken his son to a ballgame, about how he thinks of his place in the world. His perspective, wh...

Posts from this point forward will be for History As Fiction, Spring 2020

At the end of The White Boy Shuffle , Gunnar discovers the existence of a third atomic bomb meant for use against Japan. This bomb, codenamed Svelte Guy, was ultimately stored in the basement of the Smithsonian, from which Gunnar encourages its deployment against Hillside, obliterating the neighborhood and the thousands who have come to die there. The US government agrees to this obliteration, and the residents of hillside begin painting targeting circles on their roofs.   With this, The White Boy Shuffle reaches perhaps the peak of its absurdist, biting criticism of American society. The government is willing to deploy weapons last used in the largest war the world has ever seen against an angry and depressed civilian population. The weapon which it plans to deploy, and which Gunnar tries to convince it to use, was one built for use against Japan 50 years earlier, while Gunnar reads ever more Japanese suicide literature. Hillside and all those who come there are so ...

In Beloved , the central scene of the novel, Sethe’s killing of Beloved herself and her attempt to kill the rest of her children, is first narrated from the perspective of “the men without skin”, Schoolteacher, his nephew, the slave-catcher, and the sheriff. But why? Why change our perspective to that of a character completely isolated from everyone else, who believes our characters to be profoundly inferior and worth only what he can extract from them?   And then, why does this happen again at the end of the novel? Why does Morrison switch again to the perspective of a (very different) white character for the scene of Beloved’s disappearance? In both cases, the radical switch in perspective massively alienates the readers from the characters we have spent the rest of the book with. We are forced to see Schoolteacher’s thoughts from his perspective, forced immediately to understand why he makes the decision to abandon all of the children along with Sethe. This is i...

       Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God has 3 primary community settings: Janie’s hometown, Eatonville, and the Muck. Janie’s independence and self-realization is closely tied to her engagement in these communities, which increases over the course of the novel. In Janie’s hometown, we learn almost nothing about the wider community. We know that Janie was raised in close proximity to the single white family, which we know may have isolated her to some degree from the rest of the town. We also know that a major party was thrown for the town when she and Logan were married. Other than that, however, we know essentially nothing about the community. After her encounter with Taylor, one of only a few named characters in the early chapters, Janie is shipped off to Logan, who lives far away from the rest of the town, and does not interact with his neighbors much if it all. Janie, as we know, quickly runs away with Jody, and settles in Eatonville,...

        I’m back with yet another Invisible Man blog post. Why have I not written on any other book? Not really sure. But, this is a topic that I’ve been wanting to do a blog post or essay about for a while now, because it was extremely noticeable and interesting for me, but never figured out how to turn into a coherent longer form argument. I’m here to talk about clothes in Invisible Man , and their relation to the characters we see and the story overall. As stated in the documentary we watched, Ellison himself paid very close attention to his clothes, and dressed in a very particular, “Ivy” manner. That Ellison paid careful attention to formal clothing is quite apparent throughout Invisible Man , and Ellison repeatedly uses the narrator’s changes of clothes, as well as the clothes of those around him, to send messages about the character’s state and current role in society.   The first mention of clothing in the novel comes during the Battle R...

To me, in all honesty, Invisible Man still has a strangely and profoundly dreamlike character. Our main character continually tries to establish himself, but is undercut in bizarre and nonsensical ways throughout, while even his attempts to slip away from the world provoke strange responses.   The narrator’s experience with the brotherhood exemplify this pattern extremely clearly. He is promoted to a high office in an organization he does not really understand (nor ever understands or is allowed to understand) and is then repeatedly criticized and shamed for failing to uphold the proper ideals of said organization. Only after one such failure for which he is criticized is he sent to Hambro, to be educated, but we, like with his college experience, see none of this. We learn only that he is successful enough in his education to be given his job back, followed by it being taken away again, and him reassigned to “The Woman Question”. This chapter too, is bizarre. We are...

        In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man , we are presented with several different characters whoa attempt to push our narrator to become a “race leader”. Of these, the most important so far are probably Mary and Mr. Bledsoe. These two characters present similar views, but treat the narrator in radically different ways. Bledsoe is a terrifying force in the narrator’s life, who punishes him repeatedly for harming his interests and what he believes are the interests of “the race”.   Mary, on the other hand, while also a profound force in the narrator’s life, which he describes as such, is infinitely more caring and less hostile. She allows the narrator a place in her home for free, where he is allowed to stay for months on end, without fulfilling his obligations in terms of rent to her. She believes in the narrator, and in every previous person who has stayed in her house. Bledsoe believes in no one except for himself. For him, the narrator, like for ...

       In class this week, we talked extensively about Chapter 1 of Invisible Man as an extended dream sequence, a nightmare that our main character is entirely unaware of, and instead processes as completely normal. I will propose, however, that essentially every chapter has been like this, even the prologue, where we see a seemingly awake and self-conscious character. I think the nature of the dream-like state is different in each of the chapters, but overall each gives off the same feeling of semi-reality.   We begin in the prologue, where our main character, the narrator, describes himself as an invisible man, who no others can see, and explains that he discovered this for himself. Throughout the chapter, however, increasingly bizarre things come to light about the characters position and actions. First, we learn that he has installed 1,369 lightbulbs in his secret apartment, with which he wages war against the local power company, and is plann...

Well, new year and a new English class so from here on out I'll be using this page for African-American Lit blog posts.

    We spent quite a bit of time on the ways in which Song of Solomon is a coming of age novel, and also on the ways in which Milkman, despite his age, continues to act like a child or a teenage boy. I believe that the final scene of the book shows Milkman as he finally comes of age, and, more importantly, is recognized by others as having come of age.       Pilate is one of the first to recognize Milkman as having come of age, when she hits him over the head and throws him into a cellar. Now, this may seem like a bit of a reach, but it makes sense in the end: Pilate has previously spent her time humoring and protecting Milkman, but now Milkman has killed her granddaughter, and so she recognizes him as an adult, capable of adult actions, and hurting others in ways that adults would. Milkman’s previous hostile actions towards Pilate (asking about her navel, stealing a bag he thought was full of gold) were childish ones, which she could forgive and ...

While Rochester spends much of his time accusing or suspecting others of insanity, it is actually he who acts insane throughout the book. While he has clearly lost it completely but he end of Part II, Rochester actually begins to go mad much earlier in the book, perhaps as a result of his severe illness. Rochester’s mistrust of the West Indies develops rapidly into severe paranoia, and possible hallucinations.  Rochester does not quite understand the West Indies, which is understandable for someone who has just arrived there, and does not quite trust them either, which is also understandable for someone who immediately got a fever so bad he was confined for 3 weeks. However, this initial mistrust and understanding opens up an avenue for Rochester to to manifest all of his worst character tendencies, culminating in his state-endorsed kidnapping and false imprisonment of his wife.  Rochester’s mistrust begins to grow increasingly paranoid, believing that people are hid...

         Albert Camus’ The Stranger is, along with its other philosophical explorations, an exploration of the concept of neutrality, and what neutrality means. Meursault is portrayed as a character who does his utmost to preserve his “neutrality” in the face of all the actions and words of the other characters in the story, especially Salamano and Raymond. Camus’, in what is not much of a surprise, given his active participation in the French Resistance, seems to side with the view that neutrality in the face of evil is itself evil. This view is most evident through the first half of the book, while Meursault is a free man.  In the second half, the message on neutrality changes slightly. Not only will it make one complicit and ultimately directly responsible for evil, it will also fail to save oneself. Meursault is sentenced to death by guillotine, the standard method of execution in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981 (the other ...

        If we accept the premise of the article about Gregor’s transformation being a metaphor for aging, a number of interesting possibilities emerge. For instance, while we talked briefly about Gregor’s parents acting like his children, we did not talk so much about Grete.  Gregor, I think, acts like a proud and over-protective grand-parent to Grete throughout the novel. Or, since he can’t really act much, thinks like one. What do we see of Gregor’s interactions with Grete? Probably the most notable incident comes at the very end, when Gregor believes that Grete is not being properly appreciated, and that if she joined him he would truly appreciate him. This has all kinds of creepy vibes, but also vibes of “no one else sees the specialness of my grandchild , who is clearly a violin prodigy.” Gregor takes offense at the lodgers not appreciating Grete, like a grand-parent who feels their child has been insulted. He feels like he would truly appreciate e...