sarahzimmerman's Blog

The experience of Dorcus in the novel, Jazz, is one of the most significant experiences in the novel. Toni Morrison makes it known within the first few pages of Dorcus’ fate, to be shot and killed by her lover, Joe. What makes this experience interesting is that it is told from an outsider’s perspective, which raises the question: who is the narrator? Questions aside, the story of Dorcus is told with a lot of inside knowledge about her affair with Joe. Dorcus is a young girl, only eighteen years of age that is struggling with life and self-esteem. As Morrison writes, “by the time Joe Trace whispered to her through the crack of a losing door, her life had become almost unbearable” (Morrison, 67).  Dorcus was at a place of vulnerability in her life and desperately needed attention, which seemed to make her affair with Joe alright in her mind. Because Joe was already married, Dorcus was labeled the “other woman.”

Being labeled the “other woman” often comes with a negative attitude from others and especially in this neighborhood, where everyone knows everything about everyone. If Morrison hadn’t revealed the fate of Dorcus, she would not be a well-liked character in the novel because of her experience as a lover to a married man. But since we know that she dies, we obviously feel some sympathy for her, especially because she is so young and naive. Even though her relationship with Joe was kept fairly secret, she did decide to end her affair with Joe. Dorcus is still young and looking for fun.  She choses to have a new relationship with Acton and is “happier than she has ever been anytime” (Morrison, 189). Even though she is happy, she knows Joe is coming for her. Dorcus says many times, “he is coming for me,” which shows that she is scared of what Joe might do to her when he eventually finds her (Morrison, 190).

During the 1920s, being labeled the “other woman” would have much more harsh criticisms than it would today. Even though being unfaithful is still looked down upon, it probably affected relationships more back then because divorce was not as common and acceptable. Spouses often had to deal with mistresses and act as though nothing was wrong. Also, adultery was probably not as easily found out because there weren’t as many means of communication. Spouses couldn’t look through text messages or emails, like many do today to monitor faithfulness. It is still common for the “other woman” to receive the blame as Dorcus does from Violet. Violet still stays married to Joe but holds a grudge against Dorcus even after she dies. The experience Dorcus goes through in Jazz, is detached, yet she still has an inner struggle. The fact is, Dorcus would have had a relationship with anyone just because she was so depressed and desperate for love. Joe Trace just happened to be that someone that fell in love with her. Dorcus could not possibly be expected to stay with Joe when other opportunities arose.

I found the first 37 pages of this book to very interesting. So far, I really like how the author uses the “story” or “myth” embedded in the narrative. Like I said in class, I can’t say that I know this for sure, but the people of that culture probably think of those stories as part of their belief system. Just think of your belief system…For example, the story of Jesus turning water to wine is part of my belief system. I believe in those miracles that other cultures may see as “myths” or “stories.” The Buddhist religion also tells stories of Siddhartha which form the base of their religion. We rely on stories to pass down information and important lessons from generation to generation. Many cultures have died because the traditions and teachings were not longer passed down. We can learn about the Indian or Native American cultures from Ceremony.  I look forward to exploring this culture, because it’s important to understand the experiences of other cultures to be well rounded. Nature plays a huge role in the culture of this culture, which has been made clear just in the first 37 pages.

I can’t decide if I’m going to like Jazz. The first few pages were very boring to me until I came upon page 7 and decided to give it another chance. “I’m crazy about this City.” It reminded me of something I wrote after being in New York City just a few days. It started the same way…”I’m crazy about this City.” That’s the attitude of many people when they first arrive in the city. When I arrived at the end of June, it was very different from any other time. Knowing that you’re going to be actually living there is completely different from a weekend trip. New York City draws you in and exposes you to things you’ve never seen or felt. As I read the description on page 7, I longed to be back in New York City. My class that I took at NYU was based on literature about New York City from many different time periods. It’s crazy to think that someone in the early 1900s can feel the same way about the city as I did just a few months ago.

This week, our focus is our analytical paper. As I said in class, the thought of writing 1800 words on one of the three books I’ve read makes me really nervous since I’ve found it hard to write 500 words on them. I’m thinking about writing about the Naked Lunch since I haven’t written much about that novel. There are a couple things that make me rethink writing about Naked Lunch. I am not comfortable with a lot of the explicit content Burroughs presents throughout the novel. Also, the book is so scattered and all over the place, I think I would have a hard time keeping my essay from being scattered and all over the place. One positive thing that comes from the craziness of the novel is that the form is very interesting and provides a lot to be interpreted by the reader. Also, the scattered content has an overwhelming amount of imagery and details that could be used to connect the content to the form. The relationship between the two has to be strong to maintain some structure of the novel.  I’ve used this blog to explore my ideas for my paper topic and as of now, I’m thinking about addressing Burrough’s use of metafiction and a nonconventional narrative discourse to expose William Lee’s spiraling life that is full of the what I’m going to refer to as “the 3 d’s”…dryness, death and dispair.

http://jbrousseau.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/the-childrens-crusade/

First off, I would just like to say that I really enjoyed reading this, Jessica. I’m about to write mine, and you definitely inspired me to get the creative juices flowing. Just like when reading Vonnegut, when I read your vignettes I felt this negative feeling towards the war and the fact that soldiers were merely children. You were able to bring that out without being in your face about it, which Vonnegut does flawlessly. I especially like the vignette about the dead child that was found. It would fit into the novel perfectly and reinforce “The Children’s Crusade” part of the title. Yes, many of the soldiers that were killed were young, but people don’t think about the babies and children that were killed or left without parents.
Although there is an unconventional discourse presented in these vignettes, they all three tie together in that they all address children. In the first vignette, Billy thinks of his future son and daughter, which is a happy thought, compared what he is experiencing in the bunker. In the second, as a child Billy experiences probably his first memories of what war does to people. His mother says, “all those men out there who died had mothers just like you…I was thinking about what it would be like if I lost you.” This statement ties directly back to Mary O’Hare’s opinion towards Vonnegut writing this book and brings sadness to the reader. Then the third scene brings the emotion full circle when Billy cries over the dead child. Jessica was able to create these ties, just like Vonnegut does in his writing, which makes the unconventional somewhat scattered discourse easier to follow.
We learn from Vonnegut that it is important for readers to be open to unconventional discourse. This book would not be the masterpiece that it is if the story of Billy Pilgrim was told from beginning to end with the events all written in order. We also learn that it is important that all the pieces be tied together to make sense. In my opinion, that’s the difference between Burroughs and Vonnegut. Burroughs has all these random incidences and stories put together in a novel, and to me there aren’t any ties between them. Vonnegut also jumps around, but the ties make the novel have a plot that the reader can follow and relate to.

In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, death is not seen by Billy Pilgrim or any other character as traumatic. The death of one character isn’t given any more importance or attention than another person. Whether it is the mention of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the methane poisoning of Billy’s own wife or something as tiny as opening a bottle of “dead” champagne, death is followed by the Tralfamadorian phrase “So it goes.” Billy finds comfort in the way Tralfamadorians view death. His trauma of experience of death is consoled by the idea that people who are dead in one moment are alive and well in many other moments. For example, Billy assures one  of his twelve-year-old patients that his father was “very much alive still in the moments the boy would see again and again.” (Vonnegut,172) The importance of acceptance is evident when Vonnegut writes “So it goes” after every mention of death in the novel and according to some research, the phrase appears one hundred and six times throughout the novel. This implies Vonnegut’s feeling that life goes on. It is important that we learn that Vonnegut views experience as just a moment in time and we should reflect on the happy moments and all will be well.

I find it interesting that Vonnegut uses the representation of death in the novel in such a peculiar way. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Death is portrayed without sorrow or guilt and it embraces the inevitability of the event without regard for its cause. According to Billy’s theories that he has adapted from the Tralfamadorians, inevitability is key in understanding time because death is inevitable, but not permanent. As a time traveler, Billy experiences his own death many times. In the novel, Billy “experiences death for awhile. It is simply violet light and a hum.” (Vonnegut, 182) In this way, Vonnegut describes death as something that isn’t something seen as an unpleasant experience or an important experience, but rather and experience that one is required to go through but isn’t a big deal.

Death makes its appearance in many vignettes throughout the novel, and along with death comes acceptance or coping. The themes that the novel revolves around are not just based on war, but the aftermath of the war and how it affects the characters. The Serenity Prayer is referenced twice in the novel. For example, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always to tell the difference” is framed and hanging in Billy’s office as a way to keep him going, “even though he ways unenthusiastic about life.” (Vonnegut, 77) Billy knew that when the Serenity Prayer says to accept the things you cannot change, he was referring to the past, the present and the future. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut uses a combination of these things to accept death and accept Dresden. His main source of comfort comes from the Tralfamadorian way of thinking, but the Serenity Prayer is a religious way of accepting the past, the present and the future.

Montana Wildhack looked was staring at Billy as he opened his eyes. He was back on Tralfamadore in his so called “bubble”, laying on the floor with a pillow behind his head. It was light out and the Tralfamodorians were looking in at the Earthlings to see what they would do next. Montana had grown very attached to Billy since he was the only other human she was able to talk to or see.  She always did more of the talking than Billy. She spent her days asking him questions, which Billy would always seem to avoid. This day, after about 3 months with him, Montana decided she would ask him about Dresden.

“What did you see there?” she asked.

She got no response.

“What was it like? It must have been a horrendous sight.”

“It was,” responded Billy. All Billy could think of was the child he had found horribly burned under the remains of an old metal door.  The child’s eyes were still open. Billy could still see the look of fright in those hazel eyes and began to hear the screams that he had heard the night before. So it goes.

—–

“Billy—“ said Valencia.

“Hm?”

“How do you feel about starting a family?”

“What about it?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were ready for something like that to happen.”

“Sure.”

“It isn’t something we should rush into,” she added. “I mean this is a decision that this going to affect the rest of our lives. Starting a family is a big responsibility.”

Billy looked up from his book he was reading. “Yes,” he said as he looked into Valencia’s eyes then looked back down to his book.

 —–

Billy looked up from his book again when he heard a knock on the door. He was now in the same house just about sixteen years later. He went to the door and opened it. There stood his son, Robert. Robert was wearing a dingy, wrinkled t-shirt and a pair of denim jeans with hole on the knee. His hair was long and wild like a savage. His eyes looked to floor and his posture was a dead give away that he was guilty. Billy looked next to him to see that a police officer has escorted him to the door. The policeman a short and squatty man, with a beard of silver bristles.

“Mr. Pilgrim I presume?”

Billy sighed and nodded. The police officer proceeded to tell him of how Robert had been arrested for tipping over hundreds of tombstones in a Catholic cemetery down the road with some of his buddies. The officer said goodnight and left Robert to be dealt with by Billy.

Billy returned from seeing the officer out and sat down at the kitchen table next to Robert. He remembered sitting here years ago watching him do his homework like the innocent well-behaved child that he once was. Robert finally looked up at his father. Looked into his eyes. Billy could see the look of fright in Robert’s hazel eyes.

“Just go to bed,” said Billy. He couldn’t bare the thought of looking into those eyes for any longer.

Today in class we discussed what an experience is to someone. We were also asked, “What is trauma?” In Slaughterhouse-Five I think that is important for someone to understand what trauma is and what it does to a person. I definitely think that Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim’s experience with Tralfamadore and the paranormal not only as a way for Pilgrim to get over the trauma from WWII and Dresden in the novel, but also as a way for Vonnegut, himself, to cope with it in real life. Many soldiers have come back from war a different person and doctors say they suffer from posttraumatic distress or have gone crazy. I have friends that have come back from Iraq completely different from the people I once knew.  I think that this idea of coping with war is something every soldier faces. Just like Vonnegut, people have to create a reason that what they did was ok. If that means making up a planet and a theory about death and time, then so be it. Maybe the soldiers that return from war aren’t crazy. Maybe they’re just coping with trauma so they can keep on living.

Naked Lunch. I don’t really know where to begin with this novel. My mind is trying to think of a topic, but all it seems to do is jump around from one vulgar scene to the next. Vulgarity is one thing that I definitely wanted to address in this blog. The crudeness of this novel evoked many emotions from me. At some points I was laughing, and at some points I was so disgusted I thought I was going to throw up.  Reading this novel made me think back to my junior year of high school. In my IB English class, we were assigned to read Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa, that tells a story told through the eyes of a young girl experiencing the partition of India in 1947.  A formal complaint was filed by a parent of one of my classmates due to a page long description of oral sex that she said was “pornographic”. Camera crews came to our school, my mom served on a committee to review the book and our teacher began to be heavily scrutinized by other parents. After I read a few chapters of Naked Lunch, I called my mom and reminded her of the Cracking India saga. Then I proceeded to tell her that if they thought THAT was pornography, they should check out Naked Lunch.  Although Cracking India did not get banned, I do agree that the book required a mature reader.  I can say the same for Naked Lunch. What that mother didn’t understand, is that just because a student reads a book with oral sex in it, doesn’t mean he or she thinks oral sex is appropriate or okay to participate in. I may have read Naked Lunch, but that doesn’t mean that I condone drugs, sex or the language used in it. Literature is literature regardless of whether you are offended by it. Readers need to look past the vulgarity and appreciate the novel for taking you out of your comfort zone and exposing you to a culture or world that was previously unknown to you. If novels were just Cinderella stories and you felt comfortable with everything ever written, that would uninteresting and students would never grow as readers.

My mind and also my body have been absent from class a lot lately. My strep throat came back for round two, my mother was taken to the emergency room because of chest pain and my father saw five cancer doctors all in same 10 days. I’ve never been so overwhelmed in my life and I wanted to apologize to my classmates and my teacher for not being in class and not leading my discussion as effectively as I had intended. I know this is meant to be an academic blog, but on my other blog that I have, I’m able to express my feelings freely. I’m not going to continue to use this blog in such a personal way, but writing this is the way I feel most comfortable communicating what I need to say, regardless of whether anyone reads it. I’m looking forward to class now that I’m back on track and see you all on Friday.