In the opening of notes of a native son, I was drawn into the authors malaise. I immediately reflected on the idea that as a nation we just came to supporting equality across the board 60 years ago. The reality is those reforms only began to be respected 20 years ago but there are still many sociological race problems. I saw how James Baldwin lost his innocence in his tale, he tried to keep his cool but he soon lashed out. This quote ” She was stepping on their toes, indeed she was, all over the nation.” links directly to what was happening with African Americans at the time, this quote likes to the metamorphosis that occurred within Baldwin.
“Identity Card” by Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish shared the struggle of his people with the world, writing: “Identity Card.” This poem was one of Darwish’s most famous poems. It symbolizes the cultural and political resistance to Israel’s forced dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their homeland. His poem spoke to millions of Palestinians and Arabs around the world, resulting in him becoming the most well known and loved of Palestinian poets.
In “Identity Card” Darwish’s opening lines “Record! I am an Arab/ And my identity card is number fifty thousand” explains where he finds his identity, in the card with a number 50,000? Well millions of exiled people, who live in refugee camps and other areas, fit in this category.
In effect, identity is generally associated with place, with a state, which the Palestinians presently lack and for which negotiations continue with the objective of developing. The issue, of course, remains unresolved. And the continued violence (suicide bombers, assassinations, invasions, etc.) finds reflection in the poem’s conclusion, which is:
Therefore!
Put it on record at the top of page one:
I don’t hate people,
I trespass on no one’s property.
And yet, if I were to become hungry
I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
Beware,
Beware,
Of my hunger
And of my anger!
Mahmoud Darwish’s “Identity Card”
“Identity Card” is a poem about Palestinians’ feeling and restriction on expulsion. Darwish repeats “put it on record” and “angry” every stanza. This shows Darwishs’ feeling against foreign occupation. “Record” means “write down”. Darwish wanted Palestinians to write this history event down and remember that they have been excluded. People feel angry when their property and rights were taken away. Palestinians had lived in that land from generation to generation. They took many efforts on their land, so some Palestinians would not want to give up their land.
This poem relates to Mahmoud Darwish’s experience. In the Arab- Israeli war of 1948, Israeli government occupied Birweh, so Palestinians were forced to move and leave their hometown. This recalls me about the American history that U.S. government forced the Native Americans to move to reservations. Many sad stories happened when Native Americans were forced to move. People who experienced exile need to give up some of the property like land they have before and move to another place. This was a hard time for Palestinians because their lives were destroyed, and they needed to start their new lives in a new place.
Girl
“Always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?”
This final line in the story truly indicated the mothers feeling towards the girl and the fear of the daughter becoming a “slut”. The fear is so high that when the daughter interrupts her and ask “what if the baker wont let me feel the bread?” the mother immediately responds to her. She responds to her in a way that the mother is already believing that the daughter is an outcast “slut” in the eyes of the society.There is not much information of the girl. As the reader we don’t have much detail to say that the mother has reasoning for believing the daughter wants to be a “slut”. The mother seems to not be giving the girl much of a chance to prove herself. I believe in a way the mother is actually pushing the girl into becoming a slut rather then preventing.
The Unfit Feet
Virginia’s story, a room of one’s own, is great. Since she chose to not make a conclusion about gender inequality herself but give the liberty to draw conclusion into readers’ hands, there are so many things to discuss. I’d like to talk about one simple incident taking place at the beginning of her story. That is her upsetting experience at Oxbridge.
Virginia is a woman. Yes, she is a woman. It’s plain and true. So what? What makes a woman’s feet unfit to walk on Oxbridge’s turf? I’m trying to be very understanding here. The society at that time was not ready to accept women as equal to men. I cannot change the history, so I let it be the case here. But what I’m more concerned about is the reason for the discrimination against woman walking on the turf. Were they afraid that the grass would get hurt? by a woman’s feet? As far as I know, the number of women possessing finer heels far exceeds that number of men’s heels. So a woman stepping on the turf couldn’t and shouldn’t hurt the grass that much, at least not so much more than the pain the men’s feet would do. So it shouldn’t be that the well-being of the grass was their concern. Grass doesn’t discriminate. Then why?
It surely doesn’t; because I see a human’s emotions much more clear than that of the grass. The Beadle’s “face expressed horror and indignation” (Woolf 341) as he approached Virginia when she walked on the turf. She is smart, sharp, and a professor. Her intelligence might be of a quite distance from some men. But she is a woman; and women’s feet were unfit to walk on the grass, just like women were unfit for all sorts of things. That must have been it.
Girl
What draws a reader into this piece is mainly the stream of conciousness style of writing. It provides the reader a direct look into the mind of a mother of an adolescent girl. Her thoughts mainly focus on teaching her daughter certain skills she will need as an adult woman. Troughout the mother’s thought process she warns her daughter away from becoming a slut because she believes that this is the worst thing a woman could be. I find this quite interesting considering the time period it came from and the background of the author. Kincaid was raised in a family that shunned her academic skills, and within the borders of Antigua where women’s skills outside the household weren’t held to high regard.
Unfortunately Kincaid’s writing comes from a time when women were held to a different standard from men, even moreso than they are today. One thing this piece brings up is the mother’s serious concern that her adolescent daughter will become a slut. It’s a strange double standard to have, why wouldn’t an adolescent boy deserve the same warning? What exactly makes it okay for a man to act like a slut and not a woman? When reading Kincaid’s piece that is exactly what her mother’s echoed words make me think of. Kincaid wrote this in 1978 yet how different would a mother’s thought process be today? Maybe it would get a modern day update to compensate for the advances in technology but I feel like the message about not growing up to be a slut will stay the same. It’s quite unfortunate that to this day we still have such a strange obsession as a society to keep our women “pure”.
Women need their own room
In “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf’s main point is that every woman needs a room of her own. Women never get to enjoy what men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own provides a woman the space and time to engage in an uninterrupted writing because during Wolf’s time there was inequality between men and women. Men’s talent was considered higher than women’s. Wolf predict that unless these inequalities were resolved, women will never be considered as an asset to their society and their literary achievements will never be recognized.
We Need a Room of Our Own
In “A Room of One’s Own”, the author Virginia Woolf proves women do not enjoy the equal right as men, for example, she creates Judith Shakespare, who can be imagined as Shakespare’s twin sister. However, her talent is not considered as worthy as William Shakespeare, even both of them are talented. The author also lists a lots of books in which the male authors holds the idea that women is not as talented as men. She also states the importance of money for women. In terms of the above ideas, I can agree with the author more since her idea is still useful for today’s female.
It always happens to me that I spend the whole day doing this and that without rest. When I have time to make a conclusion for today’s life, I find that I spent little time or almost no time on myself except study. If I am a housewife without education and work, there would be no room of my own. The importance of money for me in my life is a way that I can use the money that I earned to change into my own time. When I have to time and energy to cook, money can provide the time for me to rest. Although money cannot do everything for me, it still helps me a lot. We enjoy the relatively equal right as men today, but we have to overcome more pressures and difficulties than men. We can achieve the same academic success as men, but we still have to give birth to sons and daughters. It is the responsibility which men cannot do for us today.
“Diary of a Madman”
The novel “Diary of a Madman” was written by Lu Xun, which he delivered his feelings about the Feudalism in ancient China. The words of a madman may not necessarily be false. The man wrote in his diary, “If they’re capable of eating me, then they’re capable of eating you too! Even within their own group, they think nothing of devouring each other.”(Lu Xun, p.251) He reflects that the ancient society was complicated. People are greedy and insidious. They do not know how to stand together to face problems but plot against each other. “Change from the bottom of your hearts!” This sentence is repeated twice. As a reader, we can see the protagonist’s hunger for change and his hatred on corruption. He knew that the only way to save human beings was to change themselves. However, he was labeled as a Madman. Who is going to listen and believe a word of a Madman? It’s useless!
The novel mentioned EAT PEOPLE again and again. PEOPLE symbolizes human nature. EAT can be interpret as destroy. Therefore, the real meaning that the author wants to deliver was the destruction of human nature that cause by the depraved society. At the end of the novel, the author concluded with “Save the children…” The ellipsis at the end of the sentence emphasizes the protagonist’s helpless voice. He believed that the children should be lighthearted. Unfortunately, they joined those who “eat people,” and they gradually become marble-hearted. The children should be the future of the country, but their simplicity was “killed” by the society.
Through the novel, we have seen the miserable of the Old China. In that society, people were living under complete darkness, which was totally lacked of justice. Compared to the lives today, how lucky we are, living with each other who DO NOT EAT PEOPLE…. appreciate what are we having now….
Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman”
When I read Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman”, I feel that the protagonist suffers mental illness like paranoia. He always thinks that his brother and all other villagers are planning to eat him even though children and Zhao family’s dog. This sounds ridiculous and irrational. The diary also doesn’t write down the date. It seems like some parts happen in a same day, but some parts include many days. These are consistent with what Lu Xun writes in the preface that this diary is from a man with a dread disease and he changes no word.
In Part One, there is a sentence, “But I’ve still got to be very careful.” I feel that the society is very danger, so the protagonist needs to “be very careful”. Protagonist is very sensitive because he can realize that villagers plan to eat him based on their actions and eyes. He discovers that old texts also talk about cannibalism. Villagers are very apathetic because they don’t stop although they know they are wrong. They let the bad things happen and don’t give a help. At the end, Lu Xun is yelling “Save the children.” This bad culture and apathetic behaviors cannot pass to younger generations. Lu Xun wants people to realize that the bad side of traditional culture and take a change.
My favors part of this Diary is, “There were no dates in this history, but scrawled this way and that across every page were the words BENEVOLENCE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, and MORALITY. Since I couldn’t get to sleep anyway, I read that history very carefully for most of the night, and finally I began to make out what was written between the lines; the whole volume was filled with a single phrase: EAT PEOPLE!”(Lu Xun 246) These two sentences said that traditional culture teaches people virtue like “benevolence”, “righteousness”, and “morality”, but the aim is to cover the brutal truth of “eat people”. People are influenced and assimilated imperceptibly, so people become apathetic.
