Pantaloon in Black

So I thought "Pantaloon in Black" was interesting. It is different than Faulkner's other works because Faulkner actually addresses another side of race--sensitive and humane. A few connections that I made about the story that we didn't get to say in class were comparisons of scenes from this story to other Faulkner stories that we've read. The first connection I made is this story to The Sound and the Fury. When Faulkner is describing the interaction between Rider and the white man who sells him the liquor he writes how Rider's "left hand grasp[ed] the white man's wrist" which is almost word for word how Faulkner described the scene were Clytie grabs Rosa's wrist (146). Another connection I made was this story to As I Lay Dying. I know everyone in class saw Rider as very much like Quinten, but the last paragraph of the last page made me think more of Darl. When Ketcham finds Rider on the floor "laughing and laughing and saying, 'Hit look lack Ah just cant quit thinking. Look lack Ah just cant quit.'" this part reminded me of the ending in As I Lay Dying when Darl couldn't stop laughing once he was arrested and on the train (152). It seems like both characters experienced something so encompassing that finally they couldn't take the pressure anymore so they cracked and lost what little sanity they had. In the end, I did thoroughly enjoy reading this story. I think Faulkner caught the feeling of grief beautifully and described it even better.

Pantaloon in Black and the Tragic Nero (negro hero)

While our discussion on Wednesday was more than lively, there are still a lot of things to be said on this story, namely its protagonist. Rider was a man, a black man, but Faulkner showed us through this story that tragedy is not colorblind. Those feelings felt by Rider losing his wife are feelings felt by anyone going through such a tragic loss. But speaking of tragedy, did anyone else think of EVERY black character from any book they read while thinking of it? To me the one that Rider reminded me the most of was Tom Robinson from To Kill a Mockingbird. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Tom the "mockingbird" from the story? He was a character who was wrongfully accused and victimized by the societal stigma that those with dark skin should be treated like animals. The way I see it though, Tom's death was almost sidelined in that story, since it was from the point of view from a child, we didn't get to see a lot of his character until the trial, whereas PiB showed us Rider before anyone else. The writing from this time period usually characterizes blacks as slow talking, loud singing, hulking apes, but to Faulkner's credit he was able to describe a character and make readers identify with him, much like one could identify with Tom during the court scene in TKaM. Both characters are "strong" when we see them, but both deal with an inevitable account of weakness; both Faulkner and Lee show us that the sheriff's beliefs are dead wrong: blacks are not some human-walking beasts, rather they are humans themselves.

Judith's Passage (my redemption of blogging)

Do you ever sit out on a cliff overlooking the sunset ducking past the ocean and ask yourself, "Who am I?"

...Well given the geography of Texas I would imagine not, but the thought is still there. We all look for our place in this crazy mixed up world, and when we are searching for it, things can get very existential, very quickly. This is how I viewed Judith's passage. She is essentially realizing the inevitability of life among the place she is now, and realizes the futility that it brings. We will all die eventually, so what do the things that we do matter to anyone. Her speech suggest a huge internal struggle that she is having, like that thought we all had when we were kids that everyone else was a projection or fake living within ourselves and this is all one big fantasy **and I Know you had that thought too at some point in your life...don't lie**.  With all of this futility of life weighing on her, she makes the decision to pass on her story to someone else in hopes that it will matter. When it comes to life, we all want to change the world in some way, and this passages suggests that Judith was no different than us; she merely wanted it in a time and society that was much more difficult than we have today.

The Hearts of Wild Buffaloes

I frequently judge a story’s beauty on its ability to evoke feelings, because it seems to be that the greatest challenge in fiction is to create genuine feeling in the audience. Logic is easy, it can be planned and follows a pattern but emotion has to be organic, something that is much more difficult to fabricate. Pantaloon in Black managed to evoke some intense emotions, the two of which I thought were most powerfully written were grief and disgust.

Faulkner’s descriptions of grief are subtle and so well written that the reader has to take a step back from the novel to realize that it’s even happening. As Rider is walking back from the funeral he talks about looking at the wagon tracks on the path that “somewhere beneath them, vanished but not gone, fixed and held in the annealing dust, the narrow, splay-toed prints of his wife’s bare feet…”That single line sums up the entire process of grieving a loved one, of looking at time passing on after their absence, of knowing that they are no longer present but realizing deep down that they aren’t gone and never will be. The grieving process of course continues and the reader just gets sucked in along with him, we feel everything that Rider feels because the way Faulkner describes it, it evokes memories of our own grief.

The feeling of disgust is not so much guided by carefully structured empathy but by showing the exceptional ignorance and hatred of racism. We didn’t read my favorite passage in class, and looking at it I realized that taken out of context it makes me look like a racist myself. However, the passage I found to be one of the best in the story was the Sheriff telling his wife that he is done with “Them niggers…Because they aint human. The look like a man…but when it comes to normal human feelings and sentiments of human beings, they might just as well be a damn herd of wild buffaloes.” That passage caused my heart to shrivel up and my stomach bubble with that sick feeling you get when you look at the wounded puppies on those awful Humane Society commercials. The sheriff was so WRONG. Beyond being morally wrong Faulkner had just shown how much “them niggers” felt, how much Rider grieved Mannie, how much he cared and how truly human he was. I’m not sure if Faulkner was a part of any civil rights activism, but this piece is a really subtle slap in the face to all of those ignorant racist comments. It’s brilliantly executed. This was by far my favorite work we have read in this class

Pantaloon in Black

In class, I wanted to discuss more of what the sheriff and his wife were discussing in part two.  I thought it gave a clear view of what happened to Rider. Even though this section wasn’t very long, I feel like I got more information from the Sheriff’s narration than from Rider’s part.  One thing that the sheriff said, that really bothered me was that he didn’t think African Americans had any feelings. He also said although they looked human and stood up like humans, they didn’t act like humans.  This section really made me think WHOA, how could people think that of others just because of their skin color. Faulkner allows us to see the thoughts of whites vs. blacks back in that time period.  Another thing that I liked about Faulkner’s Pantaloon in Black was the detail and imagery he gave.  When Faulkner was describing what Rider looked like and what he was wearing, it gave a full image in my brain as to what Rider really looked like.  Also, the way he describes the nature and use of dialect struck my attention.  It really gives readers a glimpse of how people talked back then. 

Shadows

The passage on page 80 is one of those that added to the hypnotic effect of the novel. It is beautiful, and above all it’s true. In many ways the reflection on this page about the shadows of the past are a perfect snapshot of the novel in general. Rosa tells her story to Quentin, Jason tells his stories to Quentin and Quentin tells stories to Shreve and in doing so they keep the Sutpens alive. But they aren’t real anymore, they’re no more real than a fictional character because their existence has been reduced to faded words on crumbling bits of paper. They depend entirely on the memory of the living to keep them from fading into the past, forgotten forever. Faulkner once again attacks time, showing it as the crashing waves wiping footprints away on the beach wiping away all traces of a person’s life.  “We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection…”People fade, their stories become legend and they are no longer humans but shadows, ideas, lessons to be learned, and a name to be remembered. 

Thus, with(out) a kiss, Rider dies

   Wow! For the first time, I throughly, and without confusion or doubt, enjoyed one of Faulkner's works. It honestly mesmerized me. That's the only word for it: mesmerized.
    I'm thinking when I'm older I will appreciate Faulkner's works more, but I can honestly say that the age and mentality I have right now fully appreciates "Pantaloon In Black."
   The first thing that surprised me was the narrator - a strong, black, male. He was intelligent, willful, and, most importantly, he had a full range of emotions. He was deep. He felt a grief that some people in reality cannot feel or even begin to comprehend.
   Faulkner's black characters are so rarely empowering. They have a limited range of emotions/intelligence/personality. They either idolize a white person/family like Wash Jones and Dilsey or they are entirely focused on a single aspect like Clytie or Dilsey's sons. But Rider is wholly different. He seems more human than the stunted black characters before. He works hard for what he wants. He takes care of his family. He doesn't have some huge, fatal flaw (until Mannie dies that is). He feels love, happiness, regret, and grief.  He is a very round character. I would venture to say that even when he is spiraling towards his end and going crazy in the end, he is still a round character due to the huge range of emotion he has.
   And I would like to take a stab at the idea that he could not express his grief properly. I think that what Faulkner was trying to get with the self-destruction, was not that he couldn't deal with the grief but that his love for Mannie was so great, so infinite and consuming, that there was literally no life without her. Rider says that he had to make up reasons to keep breathing, because without Mannie in his life there is nothing, there is no will to live or even a true reason to. It is only his body's unwillingness to die that is keeping him from her.
   This love astounds me. It astounds me because I really did not see Faulkner writing about such a mythical and noble love. Most of the love relationships that his characters have are stunted and deformed. There is incestuous love, disillusioned sibling love, hate-love, I-have-to-get-married-so-it-might-as-well-be-this-person love. But nothing like this. The mythic/greek aspect is always there in his writing but like I said in class, this reminds me more of a Romeo-Juliet type thing.
   It has Faulkner's beautiful writing and his characteristic self-hate/self-destruction, but the love aspect seems so foreign to his writing. Maybe I'm just not well read enough? I don't know, but it really surprised me, and as you can tell I really liked this story. 

WWQD?

What would Quentin do?

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-10-most-racist-moments-from-song-about-ending-racism/

Ridin' the Myth

I loved "Pantalones in Black"! I thought the 'bigger than life' love Rider showed for Mannie exemplified the love my husband and I share. I also could identify with his grief. Many times after my father died, I wondered why God had taken such a great man? What had my Father done, except be a caring, loving, example of Godliness and love and why did God take him? Incidently, he died from Parkinson's disease and spent his last days starving because he could not swallow. I like that Faulkner questioned God, I think we should. God is not only God, He is our Father. I am his daughter. My daughter asks me questions quite often. I had quite a revelation one day when I realized I wasn't God's servant, but his beloved daughter. Who wouldn't give their all, life or limb for their child or loved one? Rider loved Mannie this much. I wanted to give Rider back his life with her and for them to live happily with children. Unfortunately, real life is much more like a Faulkner life than my wished for fairy tale endings.

History is Fiction

via bestofcalvinandhobbes.com

Quentin much?

Absalom - Discuss!

To me, Quentin hearing this story only served to magnify his own problems with his sister and his personal ideals. Throughout the novel, he forces himself to experience the story through his own struggles in his life. He continuously reminds himself of his own downfall, comparing himself to Henry. I can't help but wonder if Henry going up in flames sent Quentin's mind rolling towards suicide. Would he have considered suicide before he witnessed the house burn down on top of Clytie and Henry? Is it possible that Quentin might have not killed himself if Miss Rosa had not called on him?

His last words in Absalom, Absalom, are just him reassuring himself that he is still loyal to the South--that he doesn't hate it. Yet he sits in that room with Shreve, many miles away. Yet he ran from it, from his birthplace. If he is thinking that he was born from something inherently impure, then surely he sees himself as a reflection of that impurity--which is also magnified with Sutpen's "innocent" desire, design. While he may or may not have felt this way before hearing Sutpen's story and seeing his legacy, would he have considered suicide before hearing it?

Or am I going around in a circle? What do y'all think?

Col. Sutpen and Car Wrecks: the Subjective Nature of the Objective

After reading Absalom!, Absalom! and discussing it, I can't help but feel that the story of  Col. Thomas Sutpen is little more than Quentin (and Shreve to an extent) projecting his own psychological torment onto the inhabitants of Sutpen's Hundred.  Tabling Quentin's own internal issues for the moment, I think there is something more universal being played out in Absalom!, Absalom!: the overwhelming power of the subjective over the objective and the mind's need to create something where nothing existed.

When I worked as a private investigator, my boss would send me out to interview witnesses and involved parties in order to determine liability in a particular accident. The task seemed innocuous enough: if ten people see a car accident involving two vehicles each carrying two passengers, it would seem logical to assume that fourteen people would have fourteen similar stories describing the accident, all of which should line up neatly with the police report. However, the more people that got involved, the greater the disparity between events became. The stories varied as widely as the backgrounds and culpability of the witnesses: some people didn't see anything yet made details up that they couldn't have known or simply didn't happen, others recanted to adjust their version of events as time went on, and some simply lied to save their own or their buddy's / lover's / kid's ass. Motive, education, age, and sometimes even caprice drastically affected the sequence of events. And this was a car wreck: a recent event that was thoroughly documented and had physical evidence to weigh against testimony.

By contrast, the Sutpen tale, by virtue of Clytie (at least we assume), had no physical evidence: just the testimony of a bitter old hag and the son of a man with limited contact to the central character. Not only that, we cannot discount the effect time had on Rosa's and Compson's memories. Ironically, the more detailed the story became, the more enigmatic it became. No longer was the tale of Col. Thomas Sutpen an objective spreadsheet of dates and events; instead, he (and his family) became a reflection of whoever was telling the tale, and even the town of Jefferson itself. In fact, so much of the story was built of the preponderance of "maybe", "might have", and "I like to think" that the Sutpen family ceased being real people and instead were molded by storytellers and listeners simultaneously to suit contradictory and at times conflicting values. Absalom!, Absalom! is not just a story about man and his family's misfortune, but more importantly it is a lesson in how history is perverted to suit the needs of the both speaker and listener and how these perversions become perverted themselves as the story gains a wider audience.

If Faulkner was trying to get to the heart of Southern legacy, then Absalom!, Absalom! was undoubtedly an attempt to unravel to subjective mechanism of storytelling to reveal the universal truth that there is no objective truth. Instead, like a good PI, we must wade through the psyches of several characters as well as the story itself in order to find something closer to truth, but also admitting that we cannot ever truly come to a succinct, objective truth.  

All My Sons: Masterful Exposition

This may or may not be "legal" in terms of our guidelines for our blogs, but I this play struck me in a way that Absalom, Absalom could not.

Plus the play had two of our own, so that's all the reason I need.

 Faulkner's technique of storytelling is universally recognized, especially whenever it comes to The Sound and The Fury and Absalom, Absalom; it has a certain knack for throwing you into the middle of a situation without explaining all of the backstory or details. I enjoyed learning about Caddy's misgivings and Quentin's fall from grace; it was fun learning more about the charcters in that way.

Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" had a very similar fashion of showing you all of these characters in a seemingly innocent storyline. Somewhere along the line though, one line shifts the entire tone of the story, gripping you to the point of shock. After Act 1 ended I found myself on the edge of my seat, needing to relax during the ten minute intermission. Each of the characters were portrayed perfectly, accurately reflecting the strong opinions and beliefs of each one, culminating into a proverbial "shit-storm" as the play ends. This play is the epitome of the "dark secret" trope used in many stories today, and it was wonderfully shown by our more than capable theatre department. With your knowledge of archetypes and after getting a good feel for the exposition, you will more than likely be able to anticipate the ending, but that doesn't change the emotional effect; I laughed alot and teared up even a bit.

Whether or not you're getting extra credit from another class, you need to see this play. It is exposition in its prime with unforgettable emotion. I can honestly say it's the best production I have seen at McMurry in four years.

Absalom, Absalom...Oh how I love thee

So I'm really sorry if I offend anyone, but I just don't care for Absalom, Absalom. I never really got into this book as I did with the other Faulkner novels. Honestly (and I'm sorry Mr. Andrews) Sparknotes was a lot better because it skipped over all of the sections that the speakers would repeat and instead gave just the meat of the story. Actually, I found the plot very interesting and thrilling; it was just the way that Faulkner wrote it that made it so boring and hard to sink into. I did like the ending though when we got a glimpse into the inner conflicts of Quentin and an even stronger characterization of the hold that the Old South has on people. I think that he kept repeating, " I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!" because it's like his mantra whenever anyone talks about the South (303). Even though he is seeing the flaws in his culture he still doesn't want to believe that his way of life is flawed as well.