An Extra Tall Bloody Mary

A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius.  The title of the book is already a handful. 

A

Heartbreaking: “causing overwhelming distress; very upsetting.”

Work: “something done or made.”

Of

Staggering: “astonish[ing] or deeply shock[ing].” 

Genius: “exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.”

The author, Dave Eggers, was certainly paying attention in class when they gave the CCOA title workshop.  Furthermore, he is one of the few authors that perfectly captures the tone of the contents of the book in the title.  The memoir, up until the first chapter, is unique.  There is a drawing of a stapler on the first pages.  There is a sort of graphic organizer that relates to “The Deaths.”  (What deaths? Why organize what seems like an ancestry tree that only mentions death?) Lastly, there is a prelude that includes, in bullet point format, a list of what to read and what not to read.  The author, quite candidly, tells the reader what is most interesting and necessary about his work and what can be excluded without issue. 

 

Staggering

Heartbreaking

Then there’s the actual writing.  It follows the trail set by the title and the prelude like no other book I’ve ever read.  Basically, the memoir describes a truly unpleasant situation regarding his house, his mother’s health, and his father’s drinking habits.  He brilliantly narrates a story that is meant to be read at a faced pace, skipping over the distraught setting.  This makes for a sophisticated tone that screams that the narrator’s life gets so much more complicated as the memoir progresses, that if he doesn’t illustrate the beginning with a nonchalance tone, the book wouldn’t be genius and would be reduced to heartbreak. 

Genius

A Mercurial Author

Chapters nine and ten of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave finally deliver to the reader the climax that the book was missing.  Throughout the first eight chapters, the book was repetitive in its recompilation of similar stories of suffering and dismay.  In chapter ten, Douglass finally touches upon the parts of his life that set him apart from any other slave narrative: his direct motivation to escape and his troubles with abolition.

The climax of the narrative comes when Douglass decides to rebel against Covey.  Furthermore, the essence of the message he is trying to dispel is summarized in this scene.  Douglass says to the reader, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” (34) This is defiant. This is very literate. He is able to recount his feelings from this occasion and encompass the reader in several subgenres.  There is the underdog story, which Douglass has alluded to throughout the novel but has finally adopted fully, the narrative story, which he continues, and the epiphany-triggered realization of escape, which he has hinted at but never fully expressed before.  Through what seems “like a dream rather than a stern reality,” (71) he catapults the reader into ambition.  As he pursues payment, then higher wages, and finally a path towards Massachusetts, the reader is captivated by less pathos and more admirable ethos.

What better way to finish the book, rather ironically, than to break every paradigm that has been set up throughout? Douglass no longer hides behind the piety or the cruelty that were overemployed in the now distant first part of the narrative.  Moreover, he celebrates.  He takes a “joyful heart” (112) and imposes its content on the inevitably damp reader.  Perfection. 

Slavery Continues

A. Define the term glut on page 2. Glut (n) = excessive/abundant supply of something B. Evaluate this article's lead using the criteria we established in class. “Slaves are cheap these days.” It leaves the why out of it → doesn’t explain why slaves are cheap or why it is such a worrying issue. C. Create a visual organizer for some of the statistics cited. - 27 million people are enslaved right now (more than any other amount in world history) • 3rd revenue earner in organized crime after drugs and arms. - 14000-17500 people are trafficked into the US every year - debt bondage is the most common form of slavery (traps from 15 to 20 million people) - Slaves used to be worth $40,000 → they can be bought for $30 now in the Ivory Coast - 80% of the people trafficked across national borders are female • 70% of those females end up in the slave trade D. How has the United States government tried to stave off human trafficking? Cite examples. Are these measures fair? Why? Why not? The increase of trafficking in the U.S has been answered with new laws such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000, a confirmation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime which began in 2000, and an increase in the information shared between nations to fight trafficking. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act has a purpose to “combat trafficking in persons…to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.” While the UN Convention was more of an agreement between countries which had a similar purpose. These methods seem fair because they try to promise safety for the victims as well as punishments to those who traffic, to top it off, they were planned and discussed on a global scale, which makes them more useful over all. E. Why does Leach use Deng's story ? Leach uses Deng’s story to exemplify slavery today and make it more real in readers’ heads. It is an appeal to pathos from the author, where she tries to make the readers feel sympathy for a slave in this time and open their eyes in a more brutal way to the fact that slaver is in fact real in our lifetime. F. Compare this understanding of slavery to the antebellum slavery in the United States according to Douglass. This understanding of slavery seems a lot bleaker than it was in the United States during Douglass’s time because slaves are worth even less than they were before (this implies that they can be more easily bought around the world and that they need to be exported on a mass scale in order for the traffickers to make any kind of profit), and because it isn’t even noticed around the globe. Slavery now is centered more around women and children with emphasis on the sex trade, while before it was more centered around working. Certainly slavery is more restricted now than it was before: it is illegal in every country and most people around the world are morally opposed to it while in Douglass’s time it was a wide culturally accepted phenomenon.

Of Dogmas, Rhetoric and Frederick

As I was reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, I came across something that surprised me.  While Douglass had made a few comments regarding the religious beliefs of characters in the memoir, he hadn’t explicitly expanded on the effect that these could have on a slave’s life.  That all changed in the chapter I last read.  In realizing that religion did have an impact on slaves, and a negative one at that, I was taken aback.  Could it be that religion teaches people to be mean?

I have read most of the Bible, and still, I’m surprised.  The translation that I read doesn’t speak about starving people, whipping people with cow skin, or insulting people as something that the common believer should be doing.  Then again, I guess I’m the idiot here.  When it comes to organized religion, could it be that what Douglass refers to as a, “sanction for cruelty,” (64) is nothing more than a white man’s interpretation of God’s will?  Yes it very well could.  Furthermore, in my constant pursuit to understand Douglass’ reasoning while writing, not while living, I have come to the conclusion that we have to take what he says and handle it with care.  This means that although it’s probably true that someone actually did make “great pretentions to piety” (63) only to become more “cruel and hateful,” (63) Douglass uses religion as a means to further pursue his own interests.  He wants to surprise his reader with the fact that even believers hated slaves, no God was there to ease the burden created by the white man’s fury, if you will.  As I continue reading, I’ll be sure to take Douglass’ constant rants about meanness with a watchful eye, as I feel that he can sometimes be blinded by an absolutist appeal to pathos.

As a conclusion, I’ll leave the reader with food for thought.  If it is true that Douglass’ masters hated him, would it still be viable to use his dogmatic principles toward slavery as an everlasting truth?  “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (John 4:20)

The Forbidden Ell

Frederick Douglass insists on telling the reader about the deep dark not-so-secrets of the 1800s in the US.  However, in the midst of all the whipping stories, the hunger stories and the lack of clothing stories there is the story of his campaign to become literate. This provides the reader with material that transcends the rhetoric behind the tales and engages in the day-to-day grapples with wanting what you can’t have.

Douglass says that at a time when he was, “wishing himself dead” (52) and “regretting his own existence” (52) he was intrigued by the “fruit of abolition” (52).  In a particularly involuntary allusion to the Book of Genesis, the author perfectly encompasses the nature of abolition.  Furthermore, much like a forbidden fruit, reading “had been a curse rather than a blessing” (51).  This plays in with his societally imposed naïveté regarding the meaning of the word and the prohibition of reading to make him the perfect slave. As long as he didn’t know what he was missing, he wouldn’t miss it.  Therefore, while all his stories do tell the reader how horrible it was to be a slave, all he really has to mention is his writing process and the reader will comprehend his woes.

ell 1 |el|nouna former measure of length (equivalent to six hand breadths) used mainly for textiles, locally variable but typically about 45 inches.

His writing serves a purpose: providing fuel for the movement that wanted African American rights. Yet, he became an activist by default.  As he learned to read, and to take the infamous ell of literacy, he had no choice but to realize that he wanted to fight for a better lifestyle.  In realizing that reading was prohibited and that talking about abolition was prohibited, he was pushed toward reading and toward finding out what abolition meant.  As a reader, I am delighted to see something other than a constant plea for sympathy from the author.  While I do understand that it may be necessary for him to illustrate the ruthlessness of his overseers, I would much rather just hear about the forbidden fruit of literacy and abolition.