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Sag Harbor and the television

     The TV features heavily in Sag Harbor. As early as page 7, Ben tells us that “[t]he TV was our babysitter…” In fact, throughout the book, the television is treated as an essential fixture of their household- not even of their house, as the television and its role follows them to Sag Harbor- it’s very nearly a fifth member of their family. Its absence is explicitly and notably disturbing (page 121, “[t]he TV was off, a bad sign.”), for, as Ben tells us on page 156, “The TV was always on in our house, whether people watched it or not. We needed sound, any kind of sound. Watching TV and reading at the same time was standard op.”      These repeated references to the TV are outgrowths of a core theme in Sag Harbor: that of the “made-for-TV” or “Cosby” family. The argument Ben makes with these lines is that his family is fundamentally structured around a veneer of correctness. How the household actually functions (quite poorly and abusively, from what we can see) is entirely irrelevant
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Black Swan Green and speech

    The motif of speech is ubiquitous throughout Black Swan Green. Apart from the similarly ubiquitous and respectable member of boys’ society that is violence, wit and sharpness are how one goes about accruing status. In a similar vein, Julia uses her sharp tongue to great effect on many an occasion; and, of course, Jason’s stutter, his inability to speak to the standard expected, is a core part of his character.     Jason has a stutter. I don’t really know why I felt the need to put that there, seeing as we all know that, but it felt like a natural way of transitioning. On account of this fact, he evidently cannot speak as he’d like. In near enough to every chapter, Jason is forced by Hangman, the personification of his struggle with his stutter, to change how he talks. It isn’t a nice morning, it’s a pleasant morning.. He can’t say “ninety-nine” without struggling, so 9 times 11 is evidently 101.      There is a second Hangman in Jason’s life, outside of his head: the boys’ culture
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Fun Home's visual language

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          Fun Home distinguishes itself from the other books in our unit by being a graphic novel. This opens it up to an entirely novel (hoho. haha.) dimension of expression, the visual realm. Aesthetics are very important to the core of the book: the two core characters, Alison Bechdel and her father, Bruce Bechdel, both express themselves largely aesthetically, Alison through visual art and personal styling, and Bruce through decoration of his house. This meta-parallel between the subject and medium is replicated one layer lower, through visual symbolism expressed in the panels of the graphic novel.           A fascinating visual dualism presents itself in the form of the third and the final panels of Fun Home. Both are a reference to a core analogy Bechdel makes, comparing herself to Icarus and her father to Daedelus, two figures of Greek myth. Notice the similarities. In both, Bechdel is above her father, and supported by him: in one, she is supported literally, by his legs; in th
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Death and Electricity

  Esther has a troubled relationship with death. From the outset, she is seemingly most lucid, most poetic, when she discusses death, and the ancillary matters contained therein, seemingly contradictory with the intrinsic stopping, the intrinsic ending, lack of thought and reason, which comes with death. She also has a troubled relationship with electricity, a relationship which manifests itself inversely: electricity drives all lucidity from her mind. Death riding on the electric current- it is the very first thing she relates to us. Isn't it awful about the Rosenbergs?   The Death Electric bears down on Esther in one other significant instance: Dr. Gordon’s electroshock. Esther’s first experience with electroshock is one of the most immediately traumatic experiences for her in the book. It pushes her torture beyond the stifling psychological confinement of the bell jar, of New York, suburbia, womanhood, and into the dimension of raw flesh. Gordon’s electroshock tears Esther apa
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Holden Caulfield and Capitalism

Why did Holden lose his path? Other blogs will provide other answers. Holden is, as is pointed out in the book, a ripe subject of psychoanalysis. I propose that Holden Caulfield’s lost state is, at least in part, resultant from his interactions with the status of capitalism. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield presents the figure of a man (or, really, a boy) lost- he has rejected the mainstream, consumerist-industrialist, all-American path of [high school college job wife kids family], associating it with the “phoniness” and seeking flight from it on many occasions. Holden makes his disdain for consumerist industrial capitalism clear from the start. On the second page of the book,  he says of his brother D.B. “He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home . . . Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.” D.B. is not a literal prostitute- that would be something of an odd career choice given hi
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Test post

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Did y'all know that the Guinness World Record for 'Most swords swallowed underwater' is 5? This was achieved at the Aquarium of the Smokies on February 13, 2016 by Chris Steele. He was also the first person to swallow a sword underwater on May 9, 2006 at Manly Ocean World Aquarium in Sydney Australia. He performed this underwater feat in a tank of live sharks.
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