The Hurricane Questions

1: One of the major motifs I noticed was the idea of Perseverance and Survival. His fight for his own freedom, his fight to stay strong, and his fight for the truth is the major motif of the film. Carter is a fighter - even after two juries reviewed his case, both of whom pronounced him guilty, he continued to fight to get out of prison and to keep strong whilst confined.

2: 1st Symbol: The typewriter and letters. The fact that Esra and Carter can communicate to each other, expressing their feelings, hopes, and dreams, even from so far away (and when one is behind bars), shows the remarkable power of the written word. That so much could be transferred by ink upon a page is a way for both Esra and Rueben to fight - and a small crack in the walls that have held him back his entire life.
2nd Symbol: On the same topic, is the idea of jail. Until the end of the movie, Rueben has been behind a wall all his life, preventing him from experiencing life to the fullest. This is so, not just literally, but metaphorically as well - his race was a sort of barrier to him - and just as the walls and bars surrounded his cell, an invisible wall keeps him away from the full enjoyment of life, simply because of his race.

3: One major part, one of significant importance, within the various legal proceedings, is Rueben's calm demeanour. Through the entire procession, when the entire audience, jury and opposition is becoming emotional, he remains calm. This shows Carter's grim acceptance of his fate - he knows that he will be convicted, so he must not show any sort of emotion. If he did, it would make him look weak - and it would make it even harder for him to get out of prison.

4: One that you could notice is a combination of the two main motifs of the book and movie: fighting for justice, no matter whether you're going to win. This is why Atticus took on Tom Robinson's trial, and why Rueben kept on fighting for freedom; they both possessed a determination to fight for justice and truth, no matter the odds against them or the cost.

Obasan

I have been asked to write on the book Obasan, written by Joy Kogawa. Here it goes:

One of the most important characters in the book is the character the book is named after, Obasan. The aunt of Naomi, the protagonist, Obasan plays a major role in the book, predominantly as a caregiver and guardian for Naomi. She has very little role other than that concerning caregiving activities. Though she plays a large role in the book, replacing Naomi's mother, I found that she had surprisingly little depth of character. Though this may be a result of Naomi's childlike perspective, it makes determining anything solid about Obasan extremely difficult, other than she is a motherly figure.
What can be determined is her outlook, which shows a very interesting sense of nationality: she considers herself equally Japanese and Canadian. This plays out oddly, as they seem to surface equally: Japanese surfaces among her friends and family, but in public, she's a Canadian. This makes her all the more outraged when the Canadian Government deports them: she considers herself a Canadian among other, more "Canadian-looking" Canadians (sorry if that sounded racist. Or didn't make any sense).

What is the purpose of the play being a play within a play? Now, before you all start making Inception jokes, there is a genuine purpose to this: one which proves that there may be more to the play than one might initially think.
The play is inside of another story, one in which the drunk, Christopher Sly, has a trick played on him by the lord of the local land. The lord, as a jest, decides to convince Sly that he is in fact the lord, and the play itself is performed to Christopher Sly and his "wife".
The "play-within-a-play" is unusual, as at first glance, it would appear that such is entirely unnecessary. In truth, it serves an alterior purpose: to remove the play from the audience by another degree. This serves to shift the blame a little farther from Shakespeare, should anybody get offended.
"But why would he put such a thing in," you may ask. "None of the men would get offended, this was Elizabethan Times." But, in truth, the play does not reflect the general idea of the time. Though women were though to be inferior to men, they were acknowledged as having the right to express their opinions. The reason the other characters in the play look at Petruchio so distastefully in many of his actions is for no reason other than that Shakespeare wanted to make Petruchio the bad guy.
In the end, this was not Shakespeare saying his opinion of a woman's place. Instead, it was a bit of a jab at the men of England, saying, "now wouldn't it be nice if the world was like this?"

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapters 12-20

The story continues to advance within these chapters, and things are beginning to get very interesting. By the twelfth chapter, it becomes clear that Jem is no longer a kid - not only does it look like he's going through puberty, but multiple times throughout the chapters, he shows an extreme maturity in his decisions. He seems to possess to greater understand the gravity of things that are occurring than he did in previous chapters, and he also understands a certain wrongness of what is happening - he stands beside his father proudly when the flash mob forms, unwilling to run, even after Atticus tells him to. His speech also reflects this change - he uses an extended vocabulary, along with grammar altered by education.
Though less so, Scout has also changed. Though her personality has not changed as of yet, her ideas have - she now grasps the world around her with more understanding, gained not only from education but fro  experiences with her father and brother. Though she is still naive enough that she does not quite understand some of the thing discussed in the courtroom, she is beginning to understand some of the ideas presented in this book - most fluently, the idea of racism.

But the most important part of the chapters is the trial. Through it, the reader begins to understand what really happened. Though the Ewell's story is that Tom Robinson raped Maybella Ewell, the true details emerge as Atticus picks apart the case: that Tom Robinson and Mabella Ewell are both victims.
To Robinson had been doing favours for the Ewells for quite a while - tending their lawn, cleaning their yard, caring for their flowers, etc. However, on the day in question, Maybella Ewell was alone in the house - the children were out, and her father was off at the pub. She invited Tom inside, and the predictable happens - Maybella reveals her affection for Tom, and the two begin to kiss. However, at this point, Mr. Ewell staggered home, drunk, and saw the two kissing through the window. Outraged, he chases Tom out and then beats his daughter savagely, threatening her into silence.
Though the case is solid, there is only one way this could go - in a town such as Maycomb, a man such as Tom Robinson could never win a case, even against a drunkard such as Robert Ewell.

This picture best represents these chapters in my eyes. "Justice is blind" is a common adage of the legal system, harkening to an unspoken goal of equal representation under the law, regardless of group. However, this is not so in real life or in the book - people are biased, and regardless of how we work against it, some will always fare better than others in the court of law. This is sadly true in To Kill a Mockingbird - though Atticus is good lawyer, and Ewell's story is full of holes, Tom Robinson will not win the trial, simply because of the colour of his skin.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapters 9-11

Part 2 of the series on To Kill a Mockingbird.

As the book advances, we can quite clearly see how things are progressing towards the end. Atticus is having a larger roll to play in the story by this point - his defending of Tom Robinson, a black man, has effectively ostracized him from the community, and Scout and her brother, Jem, take a good amount of the prejudiced abuse. In the very first part of the first chapter of this segment, a nasty boy at their school accuses Atticus of being a "n*gger-lover" in front of Scout's face.
This point in the story, however, is moreso an introduction to a second major part of the story: Courage. This comes up multiple times throughout the chapters, starting with Scout's dinner conversation with Atticus. As he tells her about the case he's taking on, Scout asks him:

"Atticus, are we going to win it?"
"No honey."
"Then why-"
"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win."

This demonstrates an idea that partially forms the basis of this book: that Courage is nescessary, in all it's forms. Atticus once again demonstrates this brilliantly by killing a rabid dog. In the process, he also proves to Scout that he still has a good amunt of skill left in him, simultaniously removing a problem and assuaging Scout's worries. So, as the book demonstrates, corage is it's own reward.

I chose this picture to represent this because it is a still of one of the scenes from the movie adaption of the book. It is pictured here the very moment after Atticus has shot the rabid dog - when he lifts his glasses up to survey his handiwork.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Part One

This is the first of a LOOOONG series of posts about the book "To Kill a Mockingbird". This first post details chapters 1-8.

 

I have begun reading the book To Kill a Mockingbird. The book is set within the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the height of the Great Depression. It is told from the point of view of the young girl by the name of Scout Finch, and the chapters within display very clearly what Maycomb is: a very traditionalist and prejudiced society, very focused on roles within the community and extremely oppresive towards those who would deny such.

The first few chapters alone are enough to quite prominently display this information. Many of the town's residents take great ditaste towards Scout's choice of clothing - overalls and a shirt - as they believe that such clothing is unladylike, and does not fit their vision of how a member of the Finch family should look. The Finches are a very successful family in Maycomb, and as a result, everyone believes they should look "proper". Though this does not nescessarily coincide with the forward-thinking views of her father, Atticus Finch, the many people still look down on her.

This prejudice is shown moreso in their opinions of black people, however. Throughout the chapters, it becomes abundantly clear that, like the majority of places in the United States at the time, "negroes" are treated with extreme disdain. Even Scout uses "the N-word" at one point in the chapters. In fact, it seems like the only person in the town who isn't prejudiced is Atticus, who, aside from making his sentiments perfectly clear in numerous conversations, also agrees to defend a black man in a trial.

I chose this picture to represent these chapters because of the significance of Boo Radley. Boo Radley lives in Maycomb, and is widely regarded as being insane - his windows are always shut, the door is always closed, and no one has ever seen Boo Radley leave the house. This provides a source of amusement for Scout and her friends, as they enjoy tormenting Boo in severl ways. Though it does not have to do with the greater theme of the chapters, it does provide a sub-plot within the story itself.

The Loons

Here's my stuff on our short story, The Loons.

The Loons is a short story. Told from the point of view of a girl named Vanessa, it is a metaphor for the suffering of the First Nations as a result of discrimination. The story tells of Vanessa's experiences with a Metis girl named Piquette Tonnerre. The Tonnerres are a very poor family - as it is described in the book, Piquette has to look after most of her family because her mother was dead. Since every penny she earned went towards supporting her family, she could not put out a very "nice" appearance for Vanessa. The two girls are metaphors for First Nations and the rest of Canadian society - Vanessa looks at Piquette with a sort of wonder, along with a healthy serving of stereotypes. The view Vanessa already has of Piquette obscures any truth about her during her childhood.
However, later in life, several incidents occur that prove that Vanessa may be starting to learn the truth. During the last part of the book, it is revealed that Piquette was killed during a fire in her cabin - a cabin located around the same lake a good part of the story takes place in. Vanessa returns to a dock she once knew, where she used to listen to the loons as the sun set. However, there are no more loons, and no longer does the lake have the same untamed beauty Vanessa so admired as a child. Instead, the lake has been transformed by the government, with a resort at it's edge, reworked roads and piers, and other wise changes to make the place more popular to tourists.
What has happened to the lake is a metaphor for what was happening, and what is still happening, to the Native American peoples. Out of a misplaced sense of authority, the government has taken something beautiful and changed it to make it more appealing to their eyes. However, by doing so, they remove what made this thing so beautiful in the first place. In the same way the lake no longer has the loons that gave the lake it's haunting beauty, the First Nations peoples no longer have the spirit that was so popularized by general stereotypes - the presence of such stereotypes pushed the Native out of the Native.

This picture I chose is a weaving made by artist Sue Coleman. Though not directly related to the book, it represents what I am trying to say - the loons are a representation of the Native American peoples, which, in this picture. they are in the most literal sense.