Extra Credit

On Thursday, I attended a forum on the subject of the reading habits of teenagers. It took place on the 7th floor of the Student Union. I was not much of a reader when I was in high school. I read the Harry Potter series, and a couple of other books for pleasure, but that's about it. I always hated being assigned reading in high school to be honest. In the forum, the importance of reading at a young age was discussed. Teenagers who read for fun are more likely to do better in school than teenagers who don't read for fun. I also learned that teenagers are into reading books that come in a series (like my experience with Harry Potter.) We also discussed the current popularity of vampire books, like Twilight. Several other authors have hopped on the vampire train, and it's earning them quite a bit of money. The topic of teenagers reading with their friends also came up. As I said, I never read much in high school, but my friends were also into the Harry Potter books, so we would buy them as soon as they came out, read them individually (which only took a couple days) and discuss them to no end. Several of the other students in the forum had similar experiences. Most of what was discussed was not surprising to me, because of my own experiences, and because of what I see in the media (ex. the popularity of Twilight), but the talk was interesting nonetheless.

"Better Half" by Sana Krasikov

After reading this short story, I was filled with a sense of confusion and disappointment. Perhaps I am missing some essential underlying themes, but this story seemed completely empty and pointless to me. Just a boring story filled with shallow, stereotypical characters. The hard-working, personality-lacking, single female lawyer; the pissed-off, moderately-abusive/moderately-respectful-based-on-his-mood, swears-he's-gonna-be-a-better-man-tomorrow husband; the pitiful, young, somewhat-helpless, trying-to-improve-her-life, unhappy girl.... Girl's stuck in a necessary, though, for the most part, unhappy marriage. Husband isn't very nice to her. They separate. They briefly un-separate. They separate permanently. Girl sort of misses him, but has a better life now. The end. I can only assume from the fact that it was assigned in my college level literature class that this story receives at least some level of recognition and critical praise. This is baffling, though not surprising; I have seen this before many times over my career as a student of language arts. I wish I had my 45 minutes back.

Such are my opinions on this work.

"The Lazarus Project" by Aleksandar Hemon

The last part of this novel is intensely violent. Hemon doesn't skimp on the graphic, gory details of this violence either, and I believe this helps to create a more emotional response within the reader. At least, it did for me. The scene in which Lazarus' family is beaten nearly to death while their house is ransacked and raided filled me with disgust and anger. It is disturbing how sick these people are. They are like animals. Olga even refers to one of them as "the swine," a fitting, if not too complimentary, name.

There are similarities and differences between the raw violence in this scene, and the raw violence in the scene in which Brick and Rora assault the driver, Seryozha, in the bathroom of the train station. This similarity is in the graphic violence that is illustrated. The following is a quote from Brick after breaking his hand breaking Seryozha's jaw.

"My hand was throbbing with beastly, thrilling pain."

The word "swine" from the first scene and the word "beastly" from the second scene give rise to thoughts concerning the animalistic nature of violence. During their moments of violence, these people are, in a way, subhuman.

The difference between these two scenes is that, while reading the first scene, I was filled with anger and disgust. But while reading the second scene, I was filled with different emotions. The violence of Brick and Rora was righteous violence. Seryozha deserved what he got, both for what he had done in the past, and for what he would have done to Elena had they not acted.

I'm not trying to say that violence is sometimes the answer, but I'm not saying the opposite either. All I am saying is that, sometimes, it certainly feels right. Though often, it certainly feels very, very wrong.

"The Bridegroom" by Ha Jin

The biggest thing that stuck out to me when I was reading this passage was the ignorance of the people in the society in which the story took place. Their ignorance is childlike even. Some of the things they say sound extremely childish to me:

"It's a social disease, like gambling, or prostitution, or syphilis."
"Homosexuality originated in Western capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle."
"Some believed [Baowen] was a hermaphrodite, otherwise his wife would've been pregnant long ago."

I would like to know the year during which this story takes place. It can't be too recent, can it? The ignorance of what I can only assume to be an accurate cross-section of China's population at the time says a lot about the government that prevented it from understanding the true nature of homosexuality. I find it hard to believe that the highest ranking members of China's government actually believed that homosexuality is a disease, curable by electroshock treatment. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

From the perspective of a 21st century American, the ignorance of these people is astounding. We are made to feel so much more advanced in our understanding of sexuality, culture, acceptance, diversity, and the world in general. And perhaps we are. But who's to say that 100 years down the road, people won't look back on our society and marvel at its ignorance and barbarism? It is naive to believe that we, as a society of Americans in 2011, have "figured it all out."

Have we progressed relative to the society described in Ha Jin's "The Bridegroom"? I would argue that we have, and I'm sure ~99% of Americans would agree. But would that same majority of Americans agree that our society will one day appear to have been just as ignorant as the one in the story? I doubt it. And why is it that we are, well, ignorant of the ignorance that runs rampant through our minds as individuals and through our policies and attitudes as a society? It takes an idealogical revolution to change the mindset a society. One person must see the wrongs that exist in our world, then edify others, in order for us to advance. But this is a slow and grey process. People resist change. And it's hard to tell whether any particular change is for the better or for the worse while it's happening.

"Glengarry Glen Ross" by David Mamet

I believe one of the major themes in this play is the fact that so much of the world around us has no value or meaning except that which we as human beings assign to it extrinsically. The title itself, "Glengarry Glen Ross" is a juxtaposition of two properties whose perceived values are on opposite ends of the spectrum, yet are both intrinsically worthless. The play explores the phrase "perception is reality".

In Act One, Scene Two, Moss talks to Aaronow about what starts out as a presumably hypothetical plan to steal the promising leads from their company and sell them to Jerry Graff's rival company. Aaronow attempts to determine the nature of this talk:

Aaronow: Yes. I mean are you actually talking about this, or are we just.

Moss: No, we're just.

Aaronow: We're just "talking" about it.

Moss: We're just speaking about it. (Pause.) As an idea.

Aaronow: As an idea.

Moss: Yes.

Aaronow: We're not actually talking about it.

Moss: No.

To Moss, and especially to Aaronow, there is a fundamental and substantial difference between "talking" hypothetically and "talking" with the sincere intent to act. This difference exists only in the minds of the two men. Extrinsically. The act of "talking" in and of itself bears no intrinsic meaning.

Levene makes a similar distinction between "talk" and meaningful "talk" in Act One, Scene One:


Levene: That's 'talk,' my friend, that's 'talk.' Our job is to sell.


He insists to Williamson that there is a difference between "talking" and "selling". That one is meaningful while the other is not. But the only real difference between the two is in the way people perceive them. Intrinsically, neither carries more meaning or value than the other. They are the same action.

In Act 1, Scene 3, Roma goes on a rambling philosophical tangent that questions whether anything has meaning at all. This is ironic, because we know that he is just bullshitting Lingk in order to trick him into buying property, but one of the major themes of the play appears to mirror some of his sentiments.

This play, on a deeper level, is highly philosophical. It questions the nature of reality. One could argue that it is, in fact, existential.

"River of Names" by Dorothy Allison

This was a pretty tough short story to read... It's hard to believe so many awful things and awful people are connected to this one girl. The environment in which you grow up really makes you who you are. The narrator has been emotionally scarred time and time again, and it's causing her relationship with her lover to fail. Her lover has never experienced anything close to the horror that the narrator has experienced. She doesn't understand just how awful the narrator's early life was. And it's ongoing. She can't forget what she's seen, though she wishes she could.

The story made me reflect on how fortunate I am to come from a loving family. It also made me reflect on the hatred I feel for people who treat their children the way the narrator's relatives treated theirs.

The narrator's sister was transformed into what she hated by what she hated. It's a sad cycle that's been perpetuating down the generations of the narrator's family. And it's sickening. This family is almost sub-human.

"Emergency" by Denis Johnson

This whole story has a strange feel to it. It feels like you can't believe everything you read, everything the narrator tells you. It's like he's describing a trip he's having. He probably is! Some of the events he relates are pretty extraordinary. Like how Georgie was able to successfully remove the knife from Terrence Weber's eye, or even the story of how he was injured in the first place. His wife stabbed him in his one good eye for ogling their neighbor, at 3 in the morning... This seems like an extremely odd and, frankly, effed up circumstance. Then the narrator and Georgie run over a rabbit and Georgie tries to save the baby rabbits, and the narrator accidentally kills them, then they pick up a hitchhiker who is AWOL and Georgie promises to take him to Canada. Doesn't this account resemble that of someone describing a dream they had last night?

I think it sounds like someone recounting a drug trip. It's not a stretch.