Hi Everyone: Read the choices below and choose one story to discuss in a paragraph, using at least one quotation from the text. To enter a blog post, scroll to the bottom of this post, CLICK ON BLUE COMMENT ICON; enter comment in box and click post! Think of the blog post as, possibly, the beginning of an essay :). PLEASE POST BY MONDAY EVENING, MIDNIGHT.
ANSWER ONLY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. "The World's Greatest Fisherman"-- how does Erdrich capture June's emotional condition--what details and/or symbols help us understand her feelings and what is happening to her?
2. "Saint Marie"-- What is your interpretation of the relationship between the nun, Leopolda, and the Native-American girl, Marie? How does each see the other? Who is trying to do what to whom and why? (If this story is confusing to you, here is a little context; question to think about: Chrisitan missionaries working in poor areas in the U.S.: what would be their agenda? their attitudes toward Native American subjects?
3. "Boys and Girls"-- how does the narrator in the story show us how gender is socially "constructed"? What are some of her important responses to being treated as a "girl"? (Note: on p 292-297 of our coursepak, there is an essay on this story that is very enlightening :); on p 299 there is a theoretical discussion of gender and identity which we will refer to in class.)
The narrator in Alice Munro's Boys and Girls illustrates that gender is socially constructed by beginning the story with distinguishing what kind of job the father does out and then stating what the mother does inside of the house. It’s true when children are first born they are categorized into male or female but they are not born into a gender role category, these roles are imposed on them from society. From the very beginning the narrator wanted to be outside helping her father with chores. In fact when she once had a job in the kitchen she said “ I hate the hot dark kitchen…” (44.) Even some of the descriptive words she uses to describe the kitchen are depressing like dark, same old oilcloth, and bumpy linoleum. It’s clear she’s not fond of the kitchen. Whenever her mother makes remarks about the narrator helping her in the kitchen it upsets her to the point where she feels like she can’t trust her mother. She says “My mother I felt, was not to be trusted. She was kinder than my father and more easily fooled, but you could not depend on her, and the real reason for the things she said and did were not to be known” (44). The author also later mentions she doesn’t feel safe and all of the sudden in the minds of others she’s seen as a “girl”, not girl as in female, girl as in the behaviors and roles expected of females. She does everything a girl doesn’t go in order to feel free and not restricted to women's roles. At the end of the play, the narrator lets the horse escape and her father who once introduced her as helping hand said the reason she let the horse go was because she was a girl.
ReplyDelete-Marjon Rahyab
good analysis--we'll talk about what you think of the ending today!
DeleteIn Alice Munro's "Boys and Girls", because the narrator is a girl, she is expected to behave dometicated and childish,like a girl, and help her mother with the household chores and not work in the farm like the men in her family. This story portrays the stereotypical views on the gender-roles and how women are treated as an inferior gender. The fact that the narrator is nameless tell us that she has no identity; she is asked by mother and grandmother to not work in the farm with the father and help them in the kitchen because she's a girl and girls belong in the kitchen. Her father seldom acknowledges her so she craves for his attention. She doesnt accept these gender-stereotypes and she tries to claim her identity but fails. “A girl was not simply what I was, it was what I had to become.” After the death of Flora, she begins accepting her gender role and conforms into what/how society thinks a girl should be/behave; her search for her self-identity dies along with Flora.
ReplyDeletenice point about her namelessness--good quotation--about becoming!
DeleteIn " The World's Greatest Fisherman," Louise Erdrich intriguingly depicts one woman's life-death transformation. The woman's name is June. Erdrich vividly describes June's struggles in life, and her somewhat terrifying experiences with men. Yet, at the end, her pure soul becomes free and her physical pain disappears.Erdrich states: "Even when her heart clenched and her skin turned cracking cold it didn't matter, because the pure and naked part of her went on"
ReplyDelete( 7 ). This indicates June's relief from earthly pains and how she was good woman, and the good went on with her when she died. June was a Chippewa woman who met a mud engineer named Andy and decided to spend some time with him. While with Andy, June had some odd thoughts of a mud engineer who was "...killed by a pressurized hose" ( 3 ). The thought of killed man makes June very uncomfortable and anxious, just like she had to do something with his death. Although she feels bad, she still decides to be intimate with Andy, thinking that he is "...got to be different" ( 4 ). June was obviously mistreated by men, and that is why she questioned if Andy was different. Her feelings come across as unsettled and painful, till the end, when she decided to "go home" anyway. June's life agony was over with her own death.
very sensitive close reading of June's condition and transcendence--we will look at symbolic side of this today in class.
DeleteIn Louise Erdrich "The worlds Greatest Fisherman" the narrator displays that Junes character is unsure and she is very trusting and vulnerable. The story begins with her walking down the main street and describes her as an easy young girl, meaning she is naive to what could happen to her. when the guy approached her she did not put up a fight .So could immediately this displays that she could be a prostitute. According to the text " the last of the money that the man before this one had given me was spent on a ticket ."(39). this demonstrates that this is the kind of behavior she is use to. The she allows him to take her for drinks and it leads to something that she did not imagine of.
ReplyDeletegood start! maybe not a prostitute but someone who is poor and used to depending on men? follow her through to end--is ending only sad or also good?
DeleteThe character June in “The World’s Greatest Fisherman” is a tragic role who arouses reader’s sympathy. Actually this chapter is the first one of Erdrich’s novel and June is the first character appears in the chapter one. From the first section, we have known that June’s ending in this novel. Erdrich writes this novel from the end as the beginning, which also attracts reader’s interests. June apparently appears and dies at Easter Day. Her death is as if the foreshadowing. The word “killing time”(38) in the beginning reminds us June’s end, like a prediction. Through the author’s description, we will be shocked about the scenario that June has sex with the man meet in the Bar, but actually it reflects a pain memory of her and a fisherman. She emotionally hopes this man will be different from the fisherman. “You got to be different."(40) is as her thoughts in her heart. She definitely is hurt by somebody. “It was later on, still, that she felt so fragile. Walking toward the Ladies she was afraid to bump against anything because her skin fell hard and brittle as the shell of those eggs and she knew it was possible, in this condition.(40)” She seems very delicate and feel isolated, when she walks into the Ladies room. Here also might remind her painful memory. The ending of her is that she leaves alone, even though it starts snowing. She doesn’t forget the direction and feel freely walking in the snow. Here is as the symbol that she might be released from the bad memory, but she still dies in this heavy snow that hasn't happened in the past 40 years. In this section also appears many words reflect on June’s fear and frailty, such as dull, low, fearful, empty, etc. in the meanwhile, the author writes a lot of description talking June’s skin, which could be the symbol of the fish skin.
ReplyDeletegood analysis of foreshadowing at beginning with Easter and killing time--the book is considered a short story cycle as the stories can stand alone but characters appear again in other stories...excellent collecting of words to describe her emotions--and yes there is a lot about skin, peeling, cracking, fragility!
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ReplyDelete1. "The World's Greatest Fisherman"-- how does Erdrich capture June's emotional condition--what details and/or symbols help us understand her feelings and what is happening to her?
ReplyDeleteEldrich lets the reader know that June experiences a void in her life that has no real name. When drinking with her newfound male host, June finds out that he is a Mud Engineer. June has a flashback to a story someone told her of a Mud Engineer getting their inside hollowed out by an underground hose. June becomes uncomfortable thinking of that situation: "It was that moment, that one moment, of realization you were totally empty. He must have felt that." June knows what that feel like because she state " sometimes, a lone in her room in the dark she thought she knew what it might be like." June does not seem to have any warm relationships when we are introduced to her: her hands are are colder than the eggs inside the bar when she first entertains the male guest. Moreover, when she disappears she has no worry about what will happen to her which can be read as either giving up hope or that she has accepted her condition and can now move on with a different part of her life.
good focus on the emptiness--feeling hollowed out--you can connect that with other images for her--ending--you think she lives? to be discussed.
DeleteIn Alice Munro's "Boys and Girls", a young narrator details her life on a farm as she interacts with her family and struggles against social pressures that attempt to shape her. In the story, the narrator realizes that gender is socially "constructed" when she states "A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had to become" (5). Girlhood appeared to be a "joke" on the narrator because it began to restrict what was acceptable for her to do. In the beginning of the story the narrator doesn't fit into the female gender role as seen in her aiding her father doing typically "manly" activities throughout the farm but as a result she disappoints her mother because her mom doesn't feel like she has a daughter. The narrator at first responds to being treated like a "girl" by rejecting girlhood; she would keep herself free by slamming doors and sitting awkwardly but when Flora dies (a symbol for the narrators free spirit) at the hands of her father, brother, and family friend (symbols for patriarchy), she begins to act "according to" her gender. No longer does she dream about saving people instead she dreams about being rescued, she dreams about dresses and hair lengths as she succumbs to the socialization she's constantly exposed to.
ReplyDeletelike the way you trace her efforts to reject girlhood--nice reading of Flora as symbol for narrator's free spirit.
ReplyDeleteAlice Munro shows us that gender is socially constructed in her story "Boys and Girls". by showing a story of a family whom each play a different role. From the beginning it shows the father working outside in the farm, while the mother is inside the kitchen. Children often grow seeing the different tasks both genders are supposed to do but ironically this story starts off with the girl helping her father outside in the farm doing chores rather than inside the kitchen helping her mother. As the story proceeds it shows that the narrative prefers to do outdoor work than inside, she even mentioned "...It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father's service, was ritualistically important." (44). Even though she was a great helping hand to her father, there was never a moment where her mother didn't mention that once her brother grew up he would be his father helping hand while the narrator returns to work in the kitchen along with her mother. Towards the end when the narrator decided to let free of the horse, in my opinion I felt like she was freeing herself because she didn't want to stay in and do something she wasn't comfortable with doing meaning working inside the kitchen, so I believe that the horse symbolized her own freedom.
ReplyDelete"Saint Marie"
ReplyDeleteIn Louise Erdrich's "Saint Marie", she paints a Poe-esque picture of the relationship between Marie and Sister Leopolda, and the “Dark One”. I see a sinister reflection in Sister Leopolda, of Marie. I felt she saw herself as a young girl, in Marie. She saw the indignation that Marie had and recognized it. A friend once said to me "Try to understand that what we perceive as a fault in others is often the outward manifestation of an inward struggle”. I think Sister Leopolda is projecting the things she dislikes about herself, or perceives as negatives, onto Marie, and Marie notices this. Marie says “He was always in you…Even more than in me. He wanted you even more. And now he’s got you. Get thee behind me!” (288) recognizing that what Sister Leopolda has seen as a darkness in her, is really a darkness in herself. Christian missionaries went into Native American communities with no concern for their beliefs, only pushing their own. I see this as Marie pushing back, in a way.