Hard Times

GROUP MEMBERS: Don't worry about this blog being late! I wasn't added to the group before it was due and emailed Dr. Campbell about that in advance. She said it won't be counted as late! :)

In Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, we are exposed to several themes: education, wealth, women and femininity, morality and ethics, etc. Of these themes, the first one we notice is education. In the first paragraph of the first book, we are presented with Mr. Gradgrind’s opinion of how education should be structured: “Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts” …and he continues… “Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.” Mr. Gradgrind speaks metaphorically using nature. The educational structure Mr. Gradgrind speaks of is exactly what his model is hoping to avoid. In using this educational structure, there is no room for creativity, therefore, this structure can be considered conformist.  

Dickens’s use of the nature metaphor appears as a faint theme throughout the novel. The title of each book – Sowing, Reaping, and Garnering – suggest an interesting sub textual meaning. The first chapter, Sowing, is meant to inform the reader of Dickens’s emphasis on the education structure. Typically, when a farmer (or whomever) is sowing something, they’re doing one of two things: 1) planting seeds by scattering them or 2) creating something. Mr. Gradgrind doesn’t necessarily “plant” as much as he dictates. In an abstract sense, planting (to me) suggests the object grows freely whereas a dictator controls the rate at which the plant grows. In the first book, Mr. Gradgrind assumes the identity of someone wanting to control things (hence the headmaster). Nowadays, his name refers to one that is concerned only with facts and numbers. This suggests Gradgrind is a well-grounded man in terms of morals. He learns that if students aren’t taught morality that they won’t learn it. Though a simple concept, it’s evident in the book that those that have excelled in his educational program end up making bad choices either by betraying him or disappointing him in some way or another. For example, Lousia gets involved in a terrible marriage and Tom steals things and blames others for his actions. 

Though I haven’t entirely finished the second and third book, I shall provide a few comments about their names. The second chapter, titled Reaping, traditionally means to cut or gather. This rather blunt meaning denotes Mr. Gradgrind’s attitude toward education: only harvest ripe crops, don’t take those that aren’t perfectly ready. In Gradgrind’s education ideology, he wants students to only know the facts. Essentially, facts are the core to education. Without knowledge of specifics, students have a hard time forming an opinion on the subject. So, Gradgrind pushes for students to know facts so they they’ll be ready to be taken out of the classroom and into the real world. The final chapter, Garnering, is a word used to gather or collect something, especially information for approval. This third book relates back with Gradgrind’s theory of education in that he rethinks his theory after Louisa’s emotional breakdown. So, in theory, I think Gradgrind is considering changing his theory of education.

I think that in relation to the theme of education, this text serves as valuable source to analyze in order to find out more about the educational system of the time.

09/20 Ecology and Industrialism

We see a major turn in the course pack this week, transitioning from romanticism, nature, and individualism in to ecology and industrialism. Right off the bat, William Blake's London reaches in to the grime of society. From the speaker's perspective, the town is cursed with sorrow, weakness, and woe, lining up with themes we've been discussing in class. When we are closed off from nature, submerged in societal industry, we are sorrowful sulking saps. The poetic form that Blake interestingly employs is called a "Walk Poem." The speaker, who may or may not be Blake himself, is on a simple walk throughout the town, interpreting and expressing his surroundings in a poem. I find it interesting that his voice back-talks society, surfacing the blemishes of pain and plague that is associated with city life. His specific use of the word "charter'd" is a direct reference to the way in which society attempts to upstage nature.

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

When I see that word, especially in this context, I interpret it as a mapping; claiming territory, seizing ownership, conquering nature. The extreme meaning behind this word lies with its repetition. The mapping of city streets has now turned to mapping groves of nature, over-turning nature. Repetition continues to trickle throughout the rest of the poem, deploying great force. The repetition of the word mark afflicts the common people, separated from the higher classes. The elitists of London are above the dreariness of the city streets and slums, they aren't even present in this poem. On his walk, the speaker is meeting faces of commoners, marked as commoners with weakness and woe. The only reference to the elite class in this poem is the blood running down the palace walls, an extreme image that illustrates the suffering of the lower classes while the higher class is protected.

As to the biographical background of William Blake, there are many similarities to the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Blake had a madman reputation, lived in poverty most of his life, and his works didn't gain esteem until after his death. Poe was victim to all these things as well. The most shocking fact that I uncovered is that Blake was buried in an unmarked grave in London, peculiarly relating to the debate over Poe's mysterious burial. It may have been the trend at the time to bury bodies without a means of classification, but honoring the dead by visiting graves has been a regular practice pre-dating common era. A bit of irony arises in Blake's case because he was an apprentice engraver at the age of 14, yet his grave remain unmarked.

The theme of destructive knowledge in Frankenstein

Destructive knowledge is a reoccurring theme in Mary Shelley’s 1818 text, Frankenstein. There are instances where a character gains knowledge in some way, and that knowledge ends up having irreparable repercussions. The main character, Victor Frankenstein, creates and brings to life a monster out of dead body parts. Frankenstein is disgusted by the monster, causing the monster to run away, eventually killing most of Victor’s family and friends. Even as a young man he had a lust for learning, especially when it came to science. One day, Victor stumbles upon a book about natural philosophy by Cornelius Agrippa. Victor was excited about his discovery and eager to read it, but when he tells his father what he had found, his father dismisses it as “sad trash”. Victor decides to read it anyway, and by doing so, it opens up his mind to the science, giving him a preference for it. Years later, Victor verbalizes his regret of this decision while telling his life story to Robert Walton, the Captain of the ship that saves his life. Victor wishes he would have focused on a different theory of science all together because of what that science had eventually inspired him to; which was constructing a corpse from dead body parts and then bringing it to life. Victor says, “It is even possible, that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin” (Shelley, 1818). Victor is conveying that if he never would have gained the knowledge from that book, he probably wouldn’t have created the monster that murdered his family and friends.

Although it never fully explains how the monster is actually brought to life, you can infer it was by a lightning strike or electrocution. Victor recounts the time when his house was directly underneath a powerful lightning storm that ended up disintegrating an entire oak tree right in front of his eyes. He says, “The catastrophe of this tree excited my extreme astonishment; and I eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning” (Ibid). Victor’s father goes on to explain the power of lightning through a series of experiments using a kite made with a wire and a string. I believe Frankenstein held on to this knowledge for years and used it to bring his monster to life. I infer this because Frankenstein even mentions that there was a great storm the night his creation first awoke. Thus, this knowledge of lightning was detrimental to Frankenstein because it brought his creation to life that ended up murdering his friends and family. All in all, certain things that Victor Frankenstein learns throughout his life end up hurting him and the people around him than actually helping anyone or anything.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Minneapolis: Stone Arch, 2008. Print. 

Joaquin Murieta's Hero Classification

What type of hero does Joaquin Murieta fit in with during the era of Romanticism?

The excerpt, From The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit by Yellow Bird (John Rollin Ridge) in my personal opinion leaves us to interpret him as whichever type of hero best suits him, if in fact he fits into a specific category.

Byronic heroes present many different qualities also aligned with other heroes during the 19^th century. It is safe to say that Joaquin possessed many characteristics and qualities of the Byronic hero such as intellect, self respect, respect for his community, dark qualities—master of robbery and murder, his certainty of self-identity, moody, and confident.

Joaquin’s mood is displayed throughout excerpt in different forms—one being his frustration with the countries lack of support for Mexicans in the mining industry. It is logical for any human being to be flustered because the people who should have a say in the occurrence of events, are those who are in the midst of things. “The country was then full of careless and desperate men, who bore the name of Americans, but failed to support the honor and the dignity of that title.” Since he himself has a great deal of respect for the community he lived with during his time as a miner, he felt (according to the narrator) the need for all Americans to be respectful.

Even though Joaquin’s life isn’t being told in first person, the reader is able to get a sense of his frustration, at least I did. His mood becomes over taken by emotion after they refused Mexicans a chance to speak or have rights because prejudice “offered [Americans] a convenient excuse for their unmanly cruelty and oppression.” And shortly there after, Americans rape his girlfriend to establish their superiority.  Emotion then becomes a great part of what construes a romantic hero. 

After this happens to Joaquin’s girlfriend he rebels and loses respect for others, but it only shows his pain for what has happened to him since he has been under the control of the dominant culture. At least he didn't go all Romeo and Juliet on us and kill himself after witnessing such thing. I know if my significant other was to be ravished before me, I might shut down completely, but he doesn't. He's also a very young man and is sure of what he wants. Not very many young people know how to act accordingly after given situation. His feeling and emotions are in third person narration, therefore it is difficult to establish what type of hero he represents based on his personal feelings towards the whole fiasco. He might not even be a hero; he may just be a vicious desperado seeking revenge. But then, that is exactly what gives him the ability to be seen as a hero; his need to avenge his girlfriends and his own sufferings.

Although it is not explicit in the excerpt, I found it reasonable for Joaquin to seek revenge and become over confident in doing so. As he shouted, “I am Joaquin! Kill me if you can!” the narrator as well as myself, felt it to be “perfectly sublime to see such super-human daring and recklessness.” If i'm angered by something I am more prone to act foolish then to sit around while others  

I personally see him as a hero of his own kind, just like Frederick Douglass would be viewed as a hero to slaves who have endured the same types of brutalities he did, but nevertheless, they are both heroes of with characteristics of a Byronic and Romantic hero.

-Lily