The Outsiders | A Hood Project

The post we had to read was the text of Darren Wilson’s testimony at the trial accusing him for the unjust murder of Michael Brown, a black teenager from Ferguson, Missouri.

In the testimony, Darren Wilson describes in great detail his altercation with Michael Brown and the violence which led him to shoot Michael Brown fatally.

The language used in his testimony is very interesting because, considering the court case was extremely hyped in American culture at the time of trial and after, the testimony reads like a novel. Wilson compares Brown to a Hulk, and himself to a five year old as he tries to battle Brown. Later in the trial, he compares the way Brown looked at him to the look of a demon.

Wilson describes how the events unfolded: first, that he heard of a robbery in the area; later, that he was driving on the street and he saw two teenagers walking in the middle of the street. When he confronted them and asked the two teens to move to the sidewalk, he explains that he received a surprisingly hostile response from one of the teens–Michael Brown. He describes the events that followed: as Wilson continued to ask the two teens to comply with his orders to walk on the sidewalk, he received increasingly hostile responses from Brown until the altercation evolved from a verbal one to a physical one, resulting in Brown’s death.

Finally, Wilson explains that from his point of view, his decision to shoot Michael Brown was allegedly a decision made out of fear for his life–that he had no choice but to shoot Brown in order to stay alive and protect himself.

Though Wilson’s testimony in no way paints a full picture of what happened before Michael Brown’s death, it does explain what went through Wilson’s mind at the time of the murder.

In the book Frankenstein By Mary Shelley, she is able to portray how distant and isolated Victor had become from his family and friends once he traveled away to University. ” The same scenes around me caused me to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time…. but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination.” Victor had let himself completely go, his work had consumed him as a person, to the point where his “cheek had grown pale with study and my person had become emaciated with confinement.” I believe in a sense Victor is a monster, he had moved away, isolated himself and buried in his work, it had taken over him. He then decided to play “God,” and create life on his own, which can be viewed as monstrous, because to society that is utterly taboo, some may even consider it as sinful.

In the short story by Kafka called the Metamorphosis, we learn that an average family undergoes a strange change. Gregor, the breadwinner of the family also undergoes a change, a Metamorphosis have you. He wakes up and realizes he is a roach, his family is unable to understand and he is able to reflect upon his life he was living but its too late to change it. “Oh God,” he thought, “what a grueling job I’ve picked!  I’ve got the torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate.” Gregor has become almost a slave to his family, he devoted his whole life to working thus giving up his life. He then metamorphosize’s into a roach, something that is disgusting and looked down upon, which is ultimately how his family looked at him just as society looks at roaches.

Hey Everyone,

I’m sorry the lecture got rushed at the end.  I didn’t even get to Mary Shelley!   But please keep in mind the importance of The Enlightenment in our discussion of Frankenstein and then throughout the course even though we will skip almost a 150 years when we get to The Outsiders. If as Baxter posited “adolescence” is a response and a cure for the idea of the savage child (the wild child), then we need look to the Enlightenment (and later Romanticism) to see where the importance of the child in nature (or the garden child) arises and to understand what work that idea did for Enlightenment and then for the 19th century as the western world pushed towards the modern era. “Adolescence” as Baxter tells us is a way of gaining more control over an idea about youth and development (i.e. the youth’s ties to the natural and the primitive).  Looking at Frankenstein and thinking about the Enlightenment might help us to see what is at stake in that idea of the natural child or the youth in nature.  What are the possibilities and what are the dangers of such a formulation.  Particularly try to keep in mind the importance The Enlightenment placed on the centrality of the mind and reason.  Particularly as you continue to read Frankenstein, try to keep in mind some of the ideas of Rousseau’s Emile of letting the youth develop in accordance with nature and not attacking worldly culture or book learning before reason and body have developed.   Some questions to consider:

1) How does the centrality of the mind and reason help to shape Victor Frankenstein’s idea of childhood, youth, and the monster?

2) Are there places in the novel where we can see the mind and the body being pitted against each other?

3) To what degree does the novel suggest that too much education or too much education too soon or just too much of the wrong education contributes to the creation of monstrosity?

On Wednesday, I’ll say some more about the author, and hopefully we can have a conversation at least about the first half of the novel, starting with these questions.

Group Assignments for the final project have been posted.  You can find them by scrolling to the bottom of the syllabus page.   If you were absent from class today, you have been automatically assigned to a group.   These groups should be considered close to final.  Any concerns about these groups must be registered with me by 5pm today.  After that time, the groups will be final.

Lastly, I emailed our last Frankenstein discussion. The article [“Liberty, Equality, Monstrosity, Revolutionizing the Family in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” by David A Hedrich Hirsh in Monster Theory: Reading Culture Ed by Jeffrey Jerome] is for the February 23rd class.  Please let me know if you did not receive it.  You are only responsible for reading chapter 6 (it’s the last of the three chapters in the scan).  It’s pages 115-140 (or if you’re counting the pages of the pdf it’s 43-68.

Testing to my first post on this blog. Next up, summary of the readings.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein interestingly reminds me of the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve. This odd comparison begins when Frankenstein is in the works of creating his “creature.” This creation can be seen as the creation in which God undertakes when he forms the beings of what is known as Adam & Eve. But, once Frankenstein’s creature in fact shows to be a monster, he rids him of his care. Similarly, in the story of Adam and Eve, God rids them of the Garden of Eden once they have proven to be flawed. From this point on both the monster and Adam and Eve have to work hard on their own to produce food and shelter for themselves. (Genesis 3:16-24)

In the Old Testament it states that Adam and Eve knew good and evil. They knew what they did was wrong and wanted to change in a way that would make them good. Therefore, they found a way to receive God’s forgiveness. In Frankenstein, the monster also can distinguish good from evil. He has realized what a monstrosity people saw him to be and set out to change. He learned a language so he could be understood. He attempted to befriend a household of French but was turned away due to his extraordinary looks. This is the part where the two stories differ. Adam and Eve were forgiven, but the monsters looks are something that seem to be unforgivable.

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it” (Shelley 87). Frankenstein’s monster has searched for his creator only to be faced with the reality that his creator wishes to kill him. Confused and hurt, the monster declares that he will defend his life. Not unlike the protests of students against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s. “[C]ampuses became crucibles of antiwar protest, as students came to protest an unjust war, […], and a graduation that would bring them draft eligibility” (Kindig). College students would not be silenced, and protested openly on their campuses. Every day, new reports of death tolls in Vietnam would scare the nation. The draft would force men in the predetermined age range, as well as new graduates, to fly into combat. Obviously scared for their lives, students protested against the government and it’s draft. On-campus recruitment centers were targets, and over a half million students declared they would refuse being inducted into the military. All done in an act of self perseverance, and also protest against a war they wanted no part in.

Like Frankenstein’s monster, those students feel as if their lives are being threatened. Frankenstein has a duty to protect the creature of his creation. The government also has a duty to protect its citizens. However, both the creature and the students of America did not feel protected, but rather threatened. Frankenstein’s monster reacts violently, especially to Frankenstein’s family, wanting not only to protect his life but also to seek revenge on the creator who hated him. College students did not protest violently, but rather refused to comply with regulations; by burning their draft cards or simply running away.  Life is precious, and neither party would allow those false protectors to easily steal it from them.

[A collection of Fred Lonidier’s photographs in the The Agitator newsletter in 1967]

Works Cited:

Kindig, Jessie. “Draft Resistance in the Vietnam Era.” Antiwar and Radical History Project. University of Washington, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. <http://depts.washington.edu/antiwar/vietnam_draft.shtml>

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. New York: Random House, 1981. Print.

In the article “In America, Black Children Don’t Get to be Children,” Stacey Patton writes about how black children are seen as having less innocence in comparison to white children. One example of this comes from the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo. In this case, office Wilson describes Brown as being as scary as a “demon,” going as far as to compare himself and Brown as a five year old facing Hulk Hogan. Wilson went on to claim that Brown charged at him through a hail of bullets, refusing to listen to the officer to back down.

Patton finds that such descriptions of black adolescents have been used as defenses dating back to the 19^th century. Size has acted as a main factor when dealing with lynchings and cases like Emmett’s and Brown’s. Even in the Zimmerman case, the attorney used size to show the jury how intimidating Martin was to Zimmerman.

What Patton tries to show is that what is being argued for these cases are being overlooked. For example, in Zimmerman’s case it was not about if Zimmerman was guilty or not but whether Martin was a child. The same can be said for the case of 12-year-old Tamir who was called “tall for his age” and was shot for holding a BB gun. The loss of a black child’s innocence comes from the overestimation of the child’s age. Due to this, officers have an easier time of not seeing them as children but as threats.

The Till Packet contains two packs describing the murder case of Emmett Till. The first article “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi” by William Bradford Huie was written at the time the murder case took place. This article is written in the form of a story with dialogue. The article focuses on Carolyn Halloway and Roy Bryant. After being dared to go in and speak to Carolyn, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy described as looking like a man, asks Carolyn out. After being ushered out by his cousins, he whistles at Carolyn giving the case its name The Wolf-Whistle Murder. When Roy found out, he took his brother J.W. Milam to find the boy and teach him a lesson. However, upon finding Emmett Till not scared they killed him. The article concludes saying the majority approved these actions.

The second article, “The Murder of Emmett Till” by Randy Sparkman was written about 49 years after the first article. In an effort to try old civil rights crimes, The Wolf-Whistle Murder was once more brought to light. Though giving a brief summary of the case, the article mainly talks about the author of the first article Huie, a civil rights reporter. Intending to shame Mississippi, Huie paid Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam to talk and tell their story. Though the article outraged many, there were also many who quietly promoted it. Now the courts are debating indicting an old field hand and Southern wife who may have helped with Emmett’s murder. Sparkman thus poses the question, will the passage of time and change of views change the way in which people view their actions?