(Glendy shared this article with me. “This Laser Will Change Your Eye Color” by Alexandra Perron in Yahoo Beauty)
Group B – Close Reading Post – The Canterbury Tales – The Pardoner’s Tale
The Pardoner’s Tale is one of the collection of stories in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
“And every one of the rakes ran until he came to that tree; and there they found almost eight bushels, it seemed, of fine round florins coined of gold.” The story is told by an unic to warn against greed. The tree represents nature or life. The men are described as rakes, which are men who live immorally. The men do not walk, but run there and find fine gold. Described in this tale – Greed is seen as the root of all evil. On that tree, the symbol of nature and life, lay the gold. The men are called rakes or immoral men. Almost naturally, they rush towards the gold which is at the root of their future evil doings because they later conspire to kill each other so that each man thinks he would have all the gold to himself.
Greed is reiterated throughout the tale on many levels. Greed kills these men in the tale.The unic who tells this tale, in an effort to warn against greed, charges the guests near him so that they he can pardon their sins – of greed.
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Group B – Close Reading Post on “Aura” by Carlos Fuentes
“Aura” by Carlos Fuentes is an old Gothic novel. The story is focused around a young man named Felipe Montero. Tired of every day life, he searches for a new job and comes across one that fits him perfectly, from the amount of pay to doing what he loves, dealing with history and the French language. He becomes a live in assistant for an old woman, Consuelo, and the young beautiful Aura.
One part of the text that really stands out are the numbers. Through the use of numbers, the author is able to show what is happening in the mind of Felipe Montero. For example, at first when he finds the wanted ad, the amount of money is exactly what he had been expecting, though he does not take the job hoping for a sign that would tell him to do so. This sign comes when he sees the ad again almost a week later with an even higher pay. Here, the numbers are the incentive for him to make a change. The second example is when he is walking through Consuelo’s neighborhood looking for the house. Felipe notes that the numbers on the houses are hard to read, there were faded numbers and new numbers drawn on top of them. This could easily show the transition of Felipe’s mind. The faded numbers from when the neighborhood had been busy and prosperous represent the realistic world he had been so accustomed to while the new numbers painted on when the neighborhood became less prosperous and busy represent his entering a more surrealistic world.
The numbers may also foreshadow the supernatural events that occur and the ending of the book. All the numbers mentioned in this book, the amount of pay, the address 815, and the 13 steps that Felipe has to count while in the house counted in the house are all odd numbers. Odd numbers are often treated negatively and because all the numbers are odd in the book it makes sense that this may have been done on purpose to show the darkness of the events, and maybe the involvement of the occult.
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Outsiders quote
“I don’t see why he gave me this. I couldn’t shoot anybody.”
Then for the first time, really, I realized what we were in for. Johnny had killed someone. Quiet, soft-spoken little Johnny, who wouldn’t hurt a living thing on purpose had taken a human life.
page 54
Pride & Prejudice Close reading
In Pride and Prejudice, there is a moment when Elizabeth is asking Darcy why someone of his breeding/ status in life, is so rude to strangers. The quote below is Darcy’s response to that question. It goes:
“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Mr. Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”
Darcy saying that he can’t talk to new people because he can’t catch their “tone of conversation” might be looked at by most as a quick dismissal of the question at hand. So many people are able to converse with people that they are not familiar with with ease but for Darcy, it is a source of difficulty. The “tone” of a conversation will vary from person to person and group to group. Misreading the tone of a conversation can and usually does, result in awkwardness, misunderstandings and other uncomfortable things. More importantly, Darcy doesn’t say that he doesn’t want to engage in conversations with strangers, he says that he cannot as if he has tried and failed before. His silence around new people is not practiced, it was learned from previous missteps.
Since Darcy is of nobility, he likely had to deal with other nobles and wealthy people who could ruin him if he offend them enough to that sort of action. For him, it is better to appear to be rude. Rudeness is somewhat expected with people of the noble class; Darcy could hide behind that curtain and not speak to strangers. On the other hand, he could not fake interests in the concerns of those he did not know, because he would not be acting as his real self. Moments like this one just add to the extreme complexity and confusion of what we are supposed to think of Darcy.
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Group B – Close Reading Post on Take Me To Church by Hozier
When I saw this video the first thing that caught my attention was the box that is seen through the video. The contents of the box is never displayed but is a very significant part of the story that is being told. The box is secured by a heavy chain and is buried by on of the lovers seen in the video, later on the box is then un-buried by one of the persecutors and opened and thrown to the flames. This last action could be taken as a symbol of moving from the hidden to the exposed. Yet what the box contains could be something pure or valuable that needs to be protected or something that is dark and is a threat and has to be hidden. From the details of the video we can conclude that the box contains something valuable that is worth being found due to the chain that protects the box and the fact that is being kept buried. The contrast the Wood box and the steel chain is a very nice contrast to something that could easily be destroyed, to something that doesn’t. When the box is thrown in the flames since is wood it would burn easily but the chain since is steel it would take a very high temperature in order for it to melt so is not easily destroyed. This could give a reference of the complexity of the box and its contents.
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1930s Film History
For a nice timeline, check out this site: http://www.filmsite.org/30sintro.html
(pic below from http://www.filmsite.org/tarz.html)
Women in the Depression Era
Check Out this Site: http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/great-depression/essays/women-and-great-depression
(Image by Dorthea Lange [1930s Female Documentary Photographer] from her Migrant Farm Worker series. Check out the Site: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/lange/dor12-113.htm)
Migrant workers particularly their children seen as “problems” in the nation.
Women take on new roles in society as a result of The Great Depression and exposure to the harshness of the west and the dust bowl.
[Possible places to look at ideas of monstrosity]
Posted in (Not) Fitting In, Gender, Innocence, The Body
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1930s Duke Ellington
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyFDTEpP62c
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Oklahoma Sounds
I’m beginning to seriously suspect Oklahoma’s history telling capacities. Let’s just say that it seems very reticent to tell a history about it’s non white residents. To say nothing of the long suppression of the 1921 Race Riots which destroyed Tulsa’s Black Wall Street (and the all black town of Greenwood), look at this site about an exhibit on Oklahoma Rock & Roll in the 60s and 70s. http://oklahomarock.com/oklahoma-rock-and-roll-1960s-1970s/
All these groups, and they don’t even mention The Gap Band (brothers Charlie, Ronnie, and Robbie Wilson) who were from Tulsa. Perhaps one wants to say that The Gap Band was more funk, which is true. But … I don’t know that it’s any less Rock than this piece (which is on the site) could also be called country . . .
Plus there’s a kind of funk sound to a lot of 60s, 70s Rock (since it is after all coming from the Blues). Check out this Leon Russell “Stranger in a Strange Land” (also on the site). You can hear the funk:
http://youtu.be/Hjy7RAu8TJ4
Anyways here’s one from The Gap Band:
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