Author Archives: d.diaz2

Check In #2: Beloved Group

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Our group decided to make a scrapbook. We feel that it would be the most logical and creative way of expressing our ideas. One reason that we chose to create a scrapbook is that we can make it very centered around color. Color is a major theme in Beloved, that using many different colors to go into forming unique pages of a scrapbook can allow us to illustrate that. Another reason that a scrapbook would be fitting for our book Beloved is that the purpose or scrapbooks is to represent memories. The concept of “rememory” in Beloved is very significant. It is memories that you don’t just see in your mind, but rather feel and experience as if you were in that place or time again. Scrapbooks are similar to this concept, rather than just being a photo album or diary, they combine several mediums together in order to recreate memories even more vividly.

Our scrapbook will not be something you can find in a high school library or even something you can find online like cliff notes or spark notes. Our scrapbook will represent a personal item, such as a diary, that you can read and learn about specific characters and moments in their lives. You will not only get to read about the key characters in the book, but also about the members of this group and the author. We will be combining together, not as fictional characters or real people, but all as individuals who decided to scrap their thoughts into something meaningful.

Currently the main idea we have been juggling is to use all the components we have and mix it into one complex scrapbook. But recently, we have been toying with the idea of creating a set. A set as in, the first book of the set can be about the plot and history, the second book about Sethe, the third about Beloved, and forth about Denver and so on. This way, we can use the title, cover, and pages to specifically apply to the entire subject of that book that together will then create an overall collection of information for Beloved.

Our scrapbook could be stumbled upon by someone who read and wanted to understand Beloved better. We will have pages with character information and quotes. The pages will not just be plain old analysis like cliff notes, not cold hard facts like a textbook, but actually feeling and description of the moment itself. The book can help those like myself that struggled to understand the choices made in the book and give an emotional connection.

I do not believe we should have a photo on the cover. Instead we’ll have a creative scrapbook type of cover such as using magazine type to create the title and using multiple colors together. We do not want to give away too much of what you’re going to feel once you begin exploring the scrapbook, therefore keeping the cover a mystery could be exciting and useful for our audience.

We plan on using the average size of scrapbooks, where it’s not like an average piece of paper or pocket size either. We will be using a lot of texture and color as well as creating text for the pages. We will need a substantial amount of room. Also, scrap books are usually larger and cluttered, we hope to create a powerful and realistic scrapbook.

What and why? The Beloved group

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THE WHAT

Our group has decided to create a physical book for the classroom presentation of Beloved. We all agreed that a physical book could help us create the feelings needed in order to understand the background of each character. Our book will be average size, thinking about 4 x 5 inch paper, few pages long. The cover page is still in the works but the context will (more or less) go as follows:

  1. Why is this text great? – a description of our opinions and experience reading the book; light colors and standard text to be aesthetically pleasing to the reader.
  2. History of the book – a detailed description of how the book and material came together. How and why the book gained popularity; using paper with old texture and style to stimulate history and the time the book was written (after the civil war)
  3. How has this work been persevered over time? – connecting to the reasoning of “why is this text great?” we can use the context in why we and how we think this book has been persevered. How we plan to do that? – create a page for the characters we feel had the most impact and influence in the text; each page will be personalized to each character’s personality and characteristics. We’ll include a strong quote that stood out to us and why we chose that character.
  4. Close reading analysis – using our papers, we’ll combine our analysis and create unique pages for each; to describe the close reading quote or phrase chosen, we’ll use colors, attach certain textures and use specific font types as well.
  5. How does this work connect with the authors other works? – There are a number of works by Toni Morrison in which we can compare Beloved An obvious comparison we can make is the consistent cover pages and fonts she uses for her books. She also has many novels written in the same time period as Beloved which we can compare.
  6. Creative Response – we are either going to create a graphic adaptation or a poem
  7. How does a text become great? – As a group, we will discuss and put together our own opinions on how a text can become great. We will give each other our own page to describe what we believe is great and then compare our opinions.
  8. Bibliography – same text used in “why is this text great?” to keep the appeal.

 

THE WHY

The reason our group chose to do a physical book is because of the event at the Center for Books Art called “History of Art Series, Panel 3: Paper as Haptic Experience.” The event described many different books that used creative paper and textures to make the reader really feel what was happening. Beloved is a book filled with strong emotional moments where we feel that can only fully be portrayed through color and texture.

The book goes back and forth from the present and the past. The character Beloved represents the past as well. In order to reflect that in our book, we will be using paper that appears to be older mixed together with paper that is newer. We have not completely agreed on a cover page, but Toni Morrison has a collection of books with the same font as Beloved on the cover. We think using that same font will be a good comparison for us to use later on in our book.

In the third section (listed in the what) we want to create pages for the characters and moments we feel were the strongest and that made the book great. With this, we want to use colors, textures, fonts, and more to give a better feeling of the moment and/or the character’s background. An example of this would be when Sethe chooses to try and murder her children rather than letting school teacher take them. Although we can put that moment into words, a page with red to represent blood, rips to represent the beatings she took during slavery, and wet spots for tears (from the pain she’s haunted by), is more powerful than words.

For the close reading, we are going to put our papers together and pick two or three of the strongest quotes or phrases to further elaborate on. Each close reading will have its own page with a unique background to fit the feelings portrayed in the text. In the seventh section (listed in the what) we also will be putting our thoughts together and give each other our own page to describe what we believe is great. We think this is an effective way to actually come to a definition, because “what is great” is subjective. At the end, we will put together a page with our similar opinions with the conclusion of what we think makes a work great.

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“And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe.” (Morrison 192)

The concept that stood out to me the most in Beloved was the idea that Sethe “protected” her children by murdering them. My comic strip is my interpretation. I chose this quote, because I wanted to make sense of it for myself. Many characters such as Baby Suggs don’t agree with Sethe’s way, however, Sethe would be considered a character with strong motherly instincts. I was hoping that through a visual representation, I would understand more why she made these choices.

The comic strip begins with Sethe holding her new born child. As she looks at the child, she goes from joy to fear. Remembering what kind of world it is for her children. She imagined her child returning to Sweet Home and having the physical and emotional abuse that she once experienced.

Drawing the scene was difficult. I thought, how could I portray slavery? But I decided to draw them outside the Sweet Home. The path goes from orange to red, with darker green as the grass so represent the fear and danger Sweet Home holds.

After Sethe’s thought of her daughter being taken to the Sweet Home with the school teacher, Sethe realized she needed to give her daughter something better. She didn’t want to let her children live that awfully painful life.

I take you from the thought bubble to Sethe back in bed with her infant. She then takes the opportunity to give her a better life by sending her “outside of this place.” She murders the child in hopes it will live a better life.

My comic takes the child from the murder scene, out of her mothers hands into the hands of God in heaven. Now she is safe.

 

Living in Invisibility

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  • “I say this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead” (Ellison 6)
  • “I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility…to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?” (Ellison 14)

Using the archaeological dig for The Invisible Man, I first want to say that at first it was difficult for me to see what invisibility actually was. After reading thoroughly through the pages, I then began to realize connections with racism. “Invisibility” is just a metaphor for being an African-American in society.

“I say this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead.” (Ellison 6) This quote stuck out to me, because the first time I read this passage, I truly felt as if maybe he was dead, or it was a metaphor for freedom or another idea. He lives as an invisible man, but not like a ghost. This got me thinking. Is he not dead? If he is not dead then what is this story? In the first paragraph Ellison states “when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments or their imagination–indeed, everything and anything except me,” (Ellison 3). Reading this at first, I immediately assumed that the invisible man was actually a metaphor. The first few pages, I went in thinking that this was a non-existing thing, until I reached the quote assuring me that he was a living being.

“I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility…to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?” (Ellison 14) After reading the first quote and beginning to switch up my angle of what the invisible man is, I began to see the connection with racism. His connection to Luis Armstrong, where he’s asking similar questions and implying the struggles that they are both invisible, but Luis Armstrong just doesn’t know it. I asked myself, what does the narrator and Luis Armstrong have in common? The break down of Luis Armstrong’s music and what the narrator felt from it really is what gave me the answer to who is the invisible man. The quote about irresponsibility was a strong one. When reading it, I felt why he chose to be invisible, rather than allow people to make him invisible. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but if he is going to be treated like less than a person, like an invisible man, then he will take the advantages that come with it, such as being irresponsible. To agree that he is irresponsible, we are assuring him that he is invisible, because to him responsibility comes from being seen.

“Man Thinking” The American Scholar

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“Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles.” (Emerson 4)

The American Scholar was a speech given to the gentlemen of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Harvard. The speech is essentially addressing the fact that many of the men in that room have never really worked or experienced real life. They are book worms who have lived their lives through their reading and through what they have been taught.

The quote stated above stuck out to me. As a student, who doesn’t know much outside the school system, this quote gets me thinking. Why do we assume that some authors are extremely knowledgeable? Because we were taught about them in school? Because our favorite professor told us so? These questions are brought up many times as a student. Emerson bluntly states what we’re thinking: these are men who were told were good thinkers, who were told they could write and tell stories. Throughout the speech, Emerson gives multiple examples of this. Emerson believes that only through action, you can truly be knowledgeable.

At first glance, the quote is something most students may agree on. However, there are always the scholarly students (like the Harvard) who would disagree. The fact that Emerson is speaking about these “great works” and “great writers” as people who were just born talented and did not actually experience anything real, is quite shocking. The students listening may not agree and may not be happy, since many of them may look up to those authors.

Many students who go to Harvard are those students who truly lived and loved school more than anything else. Their social life, sports, and other aspects were never more important. Yes, every case if different, but let’s assume that’s the vast majority. These students who have worked 18 years to get where they are, another 4 to get into this society, and most likely another 8 for a further degree, do not want to hear that their role models and favorite authors are not just talented, but wise amongst words.

The passage above is not to be taken lightly for, he’s insulting many of the books we’ve read. Emerson is no fool and is able to admit that the writers are talented, but that’s all he can say about them. He even says that they “start wrong.” What could that mean? That the authors stumbled upon brilliance? They did not work for it, nor did they struggle for it?

I could argue that students who have worked their entire lives to make it to a school like Harvard and be a part of the Phi Beta Kappa Society have worked very hard. But with this quote, is it possible that they just were born with it? I do believe that some are born with more intelligent capacity, with more advantages, weather it’s financial or genetic. However, can we doubt that they did not work as hard as the common man?