Macon as a Hero

There's been a lot of discussion in class recently about whether or not Macon can be considered a hero in Angry Black White Boy. For me, Macon was always sort of a confusing character and it was hard for me to really classify him, but after finishing the book, I don't think that I can truly call him a hero.

Unlike a lot of people in class, I actually really liked Macon in the first parts of the book. Most people thought he was way too cocky, and this is true, but it didn't really ruin his character for me. First of all, he's mostly cocky in his internal thoughts, and he doesn't seem nearly as overconfident when talking to Andre and Dominique or even during his interviews. Even internally, his cockiness doesn't seem that real, he actually seems like he's pretty insecure at a lot of points. I think his ego is just something that he created to help pick himself up and to balance out his insecurity. 

I also liked Macon because we can tell from the book that he honestly cares and that he's trying to help and make things change. He has a lot of really good, intelligent ideas and beliefs, though he's not the best at actually finding ways to take action, and this often leads to bad things like the taxi robbery and eventually the Day of Apology. Macon also has an interesting enough backstory to get people's and the media's attention, so it seems like he has the ideas and the influence to make some real changes and become a hero, which is where it seems like the story's heading for the first two thirds of the book.

However, the Day of Apology and Macon's decline afterwards prevent him from becoming a hero and actually make me really dislike him for a while. Just because he had one failure, no matter how huge it was, doesn't mean he should give up on all his goals. He should be able come back and try again if he cares about it as much as he says he does, but he instead gets really depressed and tried to renounce literally everything he's done for years, actively trying to "become white" again. This seemed really unheroic to me, and with so little time left in the book, I didn't have hopes for him redeeming himself.

Macon actually adjusts decently well into the extreme white culture he finds in the South, and he seems sort of able to change. The final scene of the book, though, was kind of insane and gave a new, final view of Macon. It would be possible to see Macon's decision to try and shoot the redneck guy as a point of redemption and seeing that he's still loyal to his movement and believes in it, but I didn't read it that way. I think his attempt to kill him wasn't a result of his previous beliefs, but just because he was an awful person and was trying to force him to kill someone else. This seems to be enough for Nique and Conway to think he's passed his test though, and it seems like Macon will be saved, maybe to continue work on the movement and truly redeem himself. 

However, when the redneck decides to shoot him, that chance is lost. Macon seems to think he'll die a martyr, sort of giving him a heroic death, but I don't think he does. If Macon had somehow sacrificed himself for the cause, showing all the people who doubted he could go that far at the start of the book, that would have completed a story arc and definitely made him a hero. However, when the redneck guy says "You're going to die for your cause," Macon replies "No." While this could just be a plea for mercy, I would interpret it as him saying that he's not dying for his cause. He's not sacrificing himself to keep his beliefs alive or anything, he's dying because some crazy southern racist hates him for something he did in the past and has a gun; Macon has no choice in this. This isn't redemption for him, it just cuts his story off. Though Macon has the potential to be a hero, and it seems like he would become one, he never fulfills his potential and declines instead, ultimately failing to redeem himself before his death.

Problems with the Day of Apology

Macon's idea for the "Day of Apology" always seemed really off to me from the start. Having random white people just going and saying sorry to random black people on the streets just sounds like a crazy and bad idea, regardless of what the intentions were, and the day does end up turning out very badly.

Looking at it in an extremely general sense, the Day of Apology does sort of represent a good idea. Having whites become more aware of white privilege and express that they don't support it is clearly a good thing to have happen, and it would help to lessen racist feeling. However, as with most of his good ideas, Macon really doesn't go around accomplishing this in a good way. In addition to the general awkwardness of the situation, Macon also seems to have some goals for this thing that aren't as good. He seems to be at least partially motivated by humiliating whites, as he wants them to feel uncomfortable and even wants them to get attacked by blacks, showing his hatred of white people and culture.

Macon was correct in predicting that the apologies would be very uncomfortable, as people generally don't know what to say. This is understandable, as there really isn't a good way to make an apology in this situation. Most people haven't actually done something obviously racist that they'd be able to apologise for, and those who had probably wouldn't be the people willing to apologise anyways. People more apologise for the system in general, basically saying "sorry that racism exists," without actually doing anything about it.

The apologies generally go down poorly with the blacks towards whom they're directed. The whites apologising, for the most part, don't actually seem to care that much, they seem to just be doing it just to say they'd done it; they're not that sincere and the blacks sort of pick up on that. They also seem to feel that whites apologising like this doesn't make up for or mean anything. Macon eventually does get his wish as the apologies turn violent in multiple cases, but the whole thing turns into a disaster when Macon helps start a large gunfight at the end. The Day of Apology seemed doomed from the start, and it ends up going very badly for everyone involved.

Jack and Ma's Adjustment

Starting to read the sections of Room after Ma and Jack escape, and how Ma and Jack begin to adjust to being in the real world, I'm starting to get extremely concerned for Jack. Ma seems to be readjusting fairly well, as she was part of the world for many years before her capture, and seems very familiar with lots of things there. She does occasionally have had episodes caused by trauma, but given what she's been through that's completely understandable.

Jack, on the other hand, doesn't seem traumaticized by his experiences at all. He's still generally quite cheerful, and he is beginning to accept that Outside is a real place. He also does know a fair amount about Outside from the TV he's watched. My concern for Jack isn't that he's lost and overwhelmed in Outside, it's that he just doesn't like it as much as he likes Room. When Ma begins to get him new stuff and throw away the now useless things from Room, he often gets very upset and wishes he had all his things from Room back. He even asks to go back to Room to sleep, and wants to return there to get his old things, though Ma always refuses because she never wants to go back there.

It's obvious that Ma would never want to return to a place with such horrible memories, and I think none of us would want to either in the same situation. However we have to remember that while us and Ma see this as a prison because we know its place in the outside world, to Jack Room is his entire world. He had a lot of fun there with Ma, and she never portrayed it as a bad place to him, so he has no real reason to hate it. It's natural for a five-year old to go back to a place that he's very familiar with and has been his own life.

Another main reason Jack doesn't like Outside is that he's no longer always with Ma, though he's obviously extremely frightened of leaving her for even a second. Ma, after escaping, wants to have some time to herself and to actually live her own life. After being nothing but a mother for five years, it's obvious that she'd now want some time to rediscover herself and not to keep staying with Jack 24/7. Jack doesn't accept this, and I feel like this will lead to neither of them being able to become independent and adjust well. Ma will be unhappy as she, after being freed, is still sort of "trapped" by Jack, and Jack will become too dependent on Ma and won't be able to function by himself.

Old Nick

"Old Nick," as we know him through Jack's perception, can easily just be seen as a purely evil, one-dimensional character. But, I feel that he's actually a much more complex character, and he clearly has other motivations besides wanting to hurt and rape Ma. While he's clearly an absolutely horrible person and has committed terrible crimes, and I am in no way trying to justify what he does, I think that he was motivated by something completely human: the desire for a normal relationship; he just went around getting in about the darkest and most twisted way imaginable.

Something that's not immediately obvious about Old Nick from Jack and Ma's portrayals of him is that he clearly doesn't glorify or love violence against his captives. He has the capacity to be brutally violent when provoked by Ma trying to escape, as he absolutely cannot afford to let her get out, and we hear about several of those times, but those are only a few times, and there's nothing like that most days Ma is imprisoned. He also never tries to hurt Jack, more showing complete disregard for him with a small bit of interest once in a while (the Jeep is one example). 

It's this general lack of violence and anger that made Old Nick so unsettling to me at first. Knowing the premise of the book, I imagined that someone that would set up a prison like this would be completely brutal, and his interactions with Ma would be violent. However, hearing them talk through Jack's narration, their conversations were very disturbingly ordinary. They have normal talks about food, clothes, and other things, and Old Nick even makes a couple sarcastic remarks about how Ma's better off than him because he brings things for them. Going just by their general dynamics in conversation in the early book, you would guess that Ma and Old Nick are an somewhat unhappy couple trapped in a loveless marriage, not a kidnapping rapist and his victim. 

This domestic relationship and how Old Nick was playing the role of a husband was brought up in class today, and that really made it clear to me that what Old Nick wanted from all of this was a relationship. He was unsuccessful in doing this normally for whatever reasons, and so he kidnapped Ma to try and create one for himself. It's also not a completely dominant/submissive relationship that he was, but an equal one. He could easily just walk in each night, rape Ma, and leave, but instead he tries to engage in normal conversation with her, and keeps Jack and Ma much more well-supplied with food and clothes than we would expect. Even his rapes don't seem especially brutal, and Ma even asks him to "come to bed" a couple times when she's tired of him questioning about Jack. He seems to really care about Ma, but in a very twisted way, and wants them to have an equal relationship. This is evidenced by the way that she even seems to have some power over him. He only attacks her physically when she initiates it trying to escape, and he allows her to attack him verbally. When she's screaming at him to bury Jack far away, he even seems very timid and scared of her, which does not fit at all with his role in the imprisonment of Ma, but more with his imagined role of her partner. He's a horrible character with a twisted motivation, but maybe one that we can partially understand.

Norma

During last week's discussion about the ending of The Memory of Running, there was plenty of disagreement on how good/realistic the way that Norma appeared at the end was, and how well it fit with the rest of the book. However, pretty much everyone agreed on one thing: that Norma and Smithy should end up together. I was sort of surprised by this, as I personally really didn't like Norma's relationship with Smithy, as it seemed very strange to me. The dynamics of the relationship between Smithy and Norma don't actually change that much from when they're both kids to where they are at the end of the book. 

When Norma and Smithy are younger, we see that she sort of follows Smithy around a lot. She really wants his affection and for him to interact with her, though he often ignores her. She is very needy and generally annoying in how much she says he likes him. This is all very similar to the way Norma speaks during the phone calls. The way she says "I love you" to Smithy over and over again even though he never says it back is the same as how she used to say it to him before her accident and separation from the Ides. She is also still sort of searching for affection from Smithy, as she occasionally forces him into complimenting her by the way that she talks. A new part of her character is that she now often talks about how she is strong and independent, and how she can manage by herself. While this definitely shows how she's developed and how she's no longer just the little girl chasing after Smithy, I would say that there's definitely still an element of her trying to impress him by saying that she can manage by herself.

This parallel to their relationship from the past makes this seem to me like she's not the right choice for Smithy. He's come such a long way in so many other areas of his life with his journey across the country, and I was a bit disappointed that he didn't really evolve in this area of his life. He gets in better shape and stops drinking, gains a lot of confidence, and even is able to reflect on his feelings about Bethany. I understand that he wants to keep some connection to home, and Norma represents that, and that he needs help and funding on his journey, but I feel like this relationship limits his continued development. The other thing that makes me not like Smithy's relationship with Norma is that Smithy seems to feel that he has a responsibility to Norma because of how he abandoned her after the crash. It seems to me like he's sort of driven by guilt to stick with Norma and to have a relationship with her, as he clearly has a lot of regret about his earlier actions.

What do you guys think about the Smithy/Norma relationship?

Is Darl Real?

It's clear that Darl is a very weird character in As I Lay Dying. He sort of unnerves both people in his family and strangers, has almost omniscient knowledge at times, and has an extremely strange ending. I was sort of confused by many parts of Darl's story in the book, and as I was trying to understand it, I had an interesting idea: What if Darl doesn't actually exist? 

There's actually a few places in the book where it's implied that Darl isn't real. Addie's chapter, at the end, contains a section where she's adding up all of her children. At the very end, after subtracting both Jewel and the child that would have been Anse's if not for Jewel, she says she has given Anse three children that are not hers. There are actually four; Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. Darl not being real would explain this. At the very end of the book, Cash says that this world and this life weren't for Darl, and Anse completely omits him when telling Mrs. Bundren about the family. The clearest example, though, comes right after Addie's death, where Darl literally says that he does not exist. He says that Addie "was" and is not "is," so concludes if his mother is no longer "is," he no longer "is" either.

Darl not existing would actually not contradict the main story that much. He is sort of a non-essential character in terms of plot, as he doesn't make any major decisions that affect others and does virtually nothing physical that's important except for burning down the barn (which I'll get to later). His personality is also sort of non-existent, as he virtually never discusses himself, and the only thing others say about him is that he's weird and sort of freaks them out. He's alienated from pretty much everyone besides his family.

His interactions with his family are really the most supportive part of this theory. He knows things about everyone that no real person would be able to figure out, like Dewey Dell's pregnancy and Jewel's father. In addition, pretty much every single time he talks to someone, all he does is reflect their own inner doubts back at them, sometimes even harassing them. Darl's dialogue, in many cases, could easily be what the inner conscience of the person he's talking to is saying, reflecting their doubts back at them.

So, if Darl isn't a real person, what could he be? One possibility is that he's completely in the imagination of the Bundrens, and for each of them he is just a personification of their conscience. But this doesn't explain Darl's one main physical action in the book, burning down the barn. I personally think that Darl could be representing a spirit/angel sent by God to help the Bundrens on their journey. His talks with them represent him helping them with moral problems, and his occasional omniscience would make sense. This could also explain why Cora, who is extremely religious, is the only one who really likes Darl. The barn being burned as an act of God is also backed up by something Cash says. He thinks that it's possible the river flooding was a sign from God for them to stop, that they weren't supposed to get the coffin back. This would support a servant of God then burning the barn in an attempt to stop the journey.

(This theory is sort of crazy, and Darl probably does exist. But still, I thought it was quite interesting how much the story would still make sense if he didn't given how major a character he was).

Anse's Journey

There has been a lot of discussion in class over whether or not the journey the Bundrens take can be see as a heroic journey, and whether or not Anse can be seen as a hero in the story. Personally, I think that Anse turns out to be a very selfish character and isn't much of a hero at all, and the Bundrens' journey is more of a series of misfortunes than anything heroic.

I do respect Anse for his desire to take Addie all the way to Jefferson. Even though they weren't very close at all while she was alive, he did really try to love her and wanted to respect her memory by honoring her last wish. He even overcomes his great fear of moving to set off on the journey, which I suppose can be seen as heroic in a way. However, it's not the intention that makes Anse not a hero, it's more the way that he goes about leading this journey that's the problem.

Anse proves to be an extremely selfish and stubborn man. He refuses to give up when almost any normal person would, which does show good perseverance but also causes Addie's body to rot and people to disrespect him for what he's doing to her. The worst part of Anse though, is the way that he endangers and hurts many of the other members of his family while on the journey. Anse refuses to do any work himself and makes the others do it, often putting them in danger as we see during the river crossing. As a result of continuing the journey, Cash breaks his leg and nearly dies, Jewel is almost killed in a fire, and Darl is sent to an insane asylum. If Anse had just given up on the journey when it started to become more and more dangerous, he could have saved his family a huge amount of trouble.

One other bad trait of Anse is that he appears to be extremely selfish. We know that a side motive for his trip to Jefferson is to get some false teeth on the way, and we know that many of the other characters have secondary goals as well. Anse seems to prioritize his goals over those of the others, which is best shown in how he buys the new mules. First of all, this trade is only necessary because he's being ridiculously stubborn in refusing Armstid's offer to use their mules. He trades away some family equipment, Cash's money, and Jewel's horse without asking anyone about it. He does throw in some of his money he'd been saving for his teeth, but this isn't overly impressive as he steals Dewey Dell's money to replace it later in the book.

Finally, the moment at the end of the book where he returns with a new wife makes the entire journey just seem sort of dumb. Anse, after all of his talk about not wanting to disrespect Addie, and after dragging all of his children through an insane, dangerous, painful journey that nearly killed two of them and got one of them locked up, turned out to just have wanted to go to town to get some new teeth and a new woman. Not very heroic at all.

Odysseus's Revenge

Well damn. 

We finally got the climactic battle scene today, the one that we've been waiting for throughout the entire second half of the book, and it was certainly worth the wait. We got to see Odysseus finally take out all of his anger at being away from home for 20 years on the suitors, who all died. Pretty much everyone at the palace died actually, except the main characters and some of the servants. While I was happy for Odysseus at first when he killed Antinous, his later actions were extremely brutal, and highlighted some of his main flaws that make him unsympathetic for me as a hero.

Throughout the entire story, people have pointed out lots of flaws with Odysseus's character; his aid from Athena, unfaithfulness to Penelope, and his excessive pride. But, for me, the thing that makes me like Odysseus the least is that he's often extremely violent, especially after he returns to Ithaca. Since he usually does such a good job keeping his emotions in check, it was surprising to me that he wants to kill Melanthius for kicking him before stopping himself, and comes very close to killing Iros.

In "The Slaughter in the Hall," we see a lot of Odysseus's violence and his need for revenge. He's actually offered a pretty fair compromise from one of the suitors at the beginning of the chapter; they apologize and offer to pay him back for everything they took. I feel like a real, truly just hero would have taken this deal, but Odysseus instead kills them all, showing his need for revenge and to let out all of his anger. For me, the most disturbing part of the chapter was when Odysseus tortured Melanthius. Melanthius was actually much less of a "bad" character than some of the suitors; all he really did was insult Odysseus a couple of times and support the suitors; but he still gets a much worse death. I think it's sort of absurd for Odysseus to expect him to remain loyal after 20 years away, so he does what he does pretty much just out of personal revenge. The way he kills Melanthius, when he's no longer a threat, is very calculated. He ties him up, and then cuts pretty much everything off of him (I mean everything), and then just leaves him to bleed out. For me, this action was the most brutal committed by anyone in the Odyssey, and to see Odysseus, our supposed "hero" do it, made me really rethink how much of a hero he was.

In Defense of the Suitors

Throughout the Odyssey, Homer clearly labels the suitors as the bad guys, perhaps even the main villains of the story. Many people are outraged by what they're doing, and it seems pretty clear that most or all of them are going to be killed in the upcoming book, "Slaughter in the Hall." While most of the main characters (Odysseus, Telemachus, Athena) seem to be convinced that being killed is all that they deserve, I personally think that a lot of the suitors aren't that bad.

First, we should look at the reasons that the suitors are viewed so badly by Odysseus and the other characters. Odysseus clearly personally hates them because he thinks they're trying to steal his wife and throne, and they are generally disliked by the public for staying too long at Odysseus's palace and abusing their hospitality. They are also accused of treating some servants and "lower-class" people poorly.

Though some suitors are undoubtedly guilty of all of these things, I think it's important to make distinctions between them. I don't think that all of the "suitors" are completely obsessed with marrying Penelope seizing power, which is what Odysseus hates them for, and a lot of them are there for completely different reasons, though I definitely think the people that started it, such as Antinous, want power. Let's look at this in context. You're a 20-year-old son of a noble in the Ithaca region. There's not really much going on around you, no wars or major events, so you don't really have anything to do. You hear that dozens of other people your age, probably just about all of your friends, are all hanging out at a palace having lots of fun all day. It just seems like pretty much anyone would go, if just to hang out with other people, not to try to marry Penelope. It seems like hanging out at Odysseus's is just kind of what people at that age do in Ithaca at that time.

I also that their overstaying their hospitality is greatly exaggerated as a crime. First of all, they were clearly welcome there at first. Odysseus had been away for years, Penelope was expected to take a new husband, and Telemachus didn't do anything about it. I would say that the fact that they stayed so long is Penelope's fault, since she keeps leading them on. She pretty much tells them "Just stay here for a while until I make my decision, I'm not ready yet," for years while actually trying to delay this decision. The suitors are in a very good situation; they're getting served, it's pretty much an endless party, and nobody's asking them to leave or seems to care. Some of them clearly want to exploit their hospitality, but I don't really think we can blame the ones who are just hanging out for not leaving. Some of them even want to leave once Telemachus begins taking charge and there are rumors that Odysseus is coming back, though the leaders keep them there.

As for the final accusation, their rudeness to the servants and others, I think that definitely has some truth. Though some are worse than others, we see in the scenes with Odysseus as a beggar that virtually none of them have any respect for people they see as lesser than them. This is definitely bad, but I think that, for many of the suitors, it's their only huge offense. And while this group should be punished for being mean, there's no way that they all deserve to be killed because of it.

The Strange Story of Eumaeus

In the readings for the past couple days, the character of Eumaeus has seemed really weird to me, and his history makes by far the least sense of any story in the Odyssey so far. He actually seems like a pretty nice guy in general when we first meet him. He's very kind and hospitable to Odysseus when he thinks he's a stranger, makes sacrifices to the gods, and is extremely loyal to the royal family of Ithaca. Just a normal, "loyal swineherd."

But when he tells us his backstory, his character begins to make absolutely no sense. He says that he was born the prince of another city, but a slave (his nurse) decided to take him with her as payment to some sailors for helping him escape. Laertes, Odysseus's father, bought him as a slave, and he was raised with Laertes's children, even being considered of equal status to Odysseus's sister. They then make him a swineherd when he grows up and, because of their kindness in raising him, he remains pretty good friends with them.

First of all, a lot of elements of the story just seem very strange. Eumaeus's nurse steals him for the sailors because he will apparently get a very high price when he's sold as a slave, for no reason other than he is a prince. Is there any particular advantage to having a prince as a slave? It seems like either whoever bought him wouldn't know/care, or, if they did know, would try to find out where he was from and return him to his parents. It's not clear whether or not Laertes knows, but even with him, it's strange that he raises a slave that he bought alongside his own children like he was one of them, and also that he bought a 2-year-old for no apparent purpose except to have him. Also, after raising him with his kids, Laertes just sends him out to be a normal swineherd, without giving him any special status or job even after he lived with them for years. It seems kind of weird to just throw him out to do some random manual labor job.

What makes even less sense is how Eumaeus reacts to all this. One would think that he'd be pretty unhappy that, although he's a prince and was raised along with Odysseus and his sister, they were able to get a lot of social status while he was just sent off to take care of some pigs. He seems to show absolutely no resentment towards Laertes for this decision or jealously of Odysseus for getting such a better position in life than him. He remains very admiring of both of them, as well as of Telemachus, who he has a sort of father/son relationship with (this also raises the question as to why Telemachus is apparently spending a fair amount of his time with someone who is, at least to him, a random swineherd). Eumaeus also makes absolutely no effort to go back to his home city, though it seems like he'd be free to do so. He knows what city it is/where to find it, so he would probably have thought at some point "Hey, if I go back there, I would be a prince and eventually the king, which seems a lot better than what I'm doing now." But instead of going and taking advantage of his royal blood, he stays right where he is, herding pigs. Something's definitely wrong there.