American Art

When visiting the Apple Pie: Visions of Americana exhibit at the MMOCA, the photographs of Larry Clark caught my eye above all of the other pieces (such as the one above). This photograph in particular was taken in 1971 and shows two rebellious youths engaging in acts of drugs and sex.

The dominating theme that shows up in Clark's pictures during this time period is the use of drugs and promiscuity in order to show the social upheaval and teenage rebellion during this time of the Vietnam War.

One thing that I do not understand about this piece is how Clark cuts the woman's face off while showing her nude body and the heroine injection; this could probably be analyzed further.

This piece relates to America in a huge way in showing the motif of rebellious teens. Almost every generation throughout America has had a generation of rebellious teens and this piece shows the Baby Boomer generation at the height of their rebellion in the early 1970's during the Vietnam war.

Some things that this piece does not show are the silent majority, or the majority of both American teens and adults that were not taking part in this sort of drug/sex influenced rebellion.

A major question that I would have for Clark would be: why did you not take pictures of the silent majority? or why did you cut off the girl's face in this picture?

This piece relates in a big way to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald in that both pieces of work show the rebellion of a generation. The Great Gatsby shows the rebellion of the flappers in the 1920's and their heavily-drunken influenced parties, while this piece shows the drugs/sex influenced culture of the Baby Boomers in the 1960-70's.

Thoughts on this Last Quarter

This quarter went by extremely fast! :( It seems as though, at least as a senior, every quarter this year has been going by faster than the last; we're almost done!

I thought that our class this quarter had a multitude of great discussions and we came to a lot of good conclusions concerning the identity of America through the thoughts posed by the texts that we studied. Concerning the texts, they were amazing. There were so many that I loved I can't even list all of them but my favorites were Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and of course Fitzgerald's "Gatsby." Also I thought it was cool to actually read these famous texts, such as "Common Sense," that we always here so much about in history and in school.

In all, I learned a lot about America and what people think of it this quarter. I thought it was an extremely enlightening quarter, and more than anything I'm going to miss the great people in this class...and Mr. Kunkle of course.

"The Devil Baby at Hull-House" by Jane Addams

In this essay, Ms. Addams talks about how a fictitious tale about a son of Satan was spread around Chicago. She says that the story places this child of the devil in the Hull-House, which she founded, and that as the story gained momentum more and more people were calling this place and showing up at this settlement inquiring upon the whereabouts of the child. The story goes that a baby was born to a woman whose husband had sinned in some sort of way, and because of this it was born a devil. As soon as the devil was born, the parents rushed it to the Hull-House (which was a settlement for poor immigrants at the time), supposedly. The main story that comes out of these events comes from the stories that Ms. Addams hears from the old women that come to the house in search of the baby. She tells of the wide variety of horrid stories coming from these women, including: a woman whose daughters sold themselves to prostitution, a woman whose son was in jail for life and who wanted to die just so that she could see her son again, and many other women with stories of marital brutality and great loss. The main point that she makes of all these women is that they all come to the Hull-House in search of this Devil baby because they connect with the story and see how it tells the story of their own pitiful situations.

Jane Addams was a feminist reformer who founded this Hull settlement House in Chicago as a haven for poor immigrants. At this house she would take care of the immigrants and teach them English, along with finding them jobs. As a result she would receive votes for her cause, which was feminism. Keeping this in mind, I thought that this story was extremely successful toward her cause of an increase in women's rights. The stories of the women that she meets at this house as a result of the fictitious story are so horrid that it must have struck a chord with the majority of her readers. Finally, I thought that besides being effective in this way, it was also very well-written.

I Hear McFarland Singing

The police sirens howl, as bored officers chase drunk adolescents;
City meetings are loud, with the sounds of angry old-timers trying to protect their traditional values;
Newly integrated minorities complain of the majority white population, as the majority white population complains of the minorities;
In the fall, the sound of the marching band reaches all of town;
In the winter, the sound of sirens signals another state championship;
The day is quiet and belongs to the retired, while the night is loud and belongs to the young and the restless,
All of the population singing their strong melodious songs.

"Civil Disobediance" Thoreau aka "The Man"

What to say about this essay, I do not know. It seemed that every word Thoreau wrote spoke to me, personally. It was simply an amazing experience for me reading this piece.

First off, the main point that Thoreau is trying to get across in this essay is that when men pay taxes and are a part of society and the State, they are nothing but "machines" or "slaves" to the State, letting this State run their lives. He starts off his essay twisting Thomas Paine's quote "Government is best which governs least" into "Government is best which governs not at all" which basically summarizes his point. Also, he talks about how men should not pay taxes or follow the laws of a government that does not hold up their best interests. He asks not at once for "...no government, but at once for better government...." By this he recognizes that obviously the government will not yield to his opinions at once, or ever, but that we should have a more democratic democracy that holds up the ideals of the people. I think that the main reason why Thoreau held this opinion is that at this time during the Mexican War, senators were not elected by the people but by congress so that parties had a self-sustaining system. Also, there was a lot of decision-making being done, especially in the Compromise of 1850, over the heads of the American populace; while, at the same time poll-taxes among others were still instituted in order to pay for all these acts.

Many activists have been influenced by Thoreau's ideas of peaceful activism, such as Martin Luther King Jr. as well as Mahatma Gandhi. These men, among others, must have read how Thoreau believed that the only way in which to a have a peaceful revolution, which is what he wanted, against the government is for people to quit their government jobs, break the law, and not pay taxes, being "counter-friction to the machine" which is the State. Also, they must have been influenced by Thoreau's idea that Jail is the most Just place for a Just man because it is the only place where he is truly free from the Unjust State.

Overall, I loved Thoreau's essay, as many have before me, and I think it is overall the most enlightening thing I have ever read.

On Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be...."-Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is one of my favorite quotes in all of Emerson's essay On Self Reliance. This quote tells how the rich control society by controlling the government and how they control the poor by keeping them poor and essentially deciding what their lives are going to be. This passage alludes to his main point in this essay which is that one must cut their strands with society and rely on oneself, because society is corrupt. While I completely agree with this entire essay, I do not believe that it is healthy for someone to completely cut their ties with society. The main reason why I do not think this is a good idea is because society does control our lives and if we cut ourselves away from it we are either doomed to lives of misery or isolation. Personally, these two things are too high a price to pay; but, at the same time it is society that tells us that living a life apart from society is doomed to misery and isolationism, and it is also society that tells us that we must "play the game" or end up a burnout and bum in the eyes of the rest of society. So, while society is bad in most cases because it is so controlling, we do have the choice to play the game and stay in it, or to cut our lives out of society at the cost of failing in the eyes of the rest of society, which is a good thing.

"The Great Gatsby," In Review

First off, I hold to my statement made in the previous blog post that this book is still by far one of the best that I have ever read. One simply cannot deny the perfection of Fitzgerald's prose. This being said, the last couple of chapters did not disappoint.

The story climaxes in the death of Gatsby after he has had his heart broken by his long time lover, Daisy. The most moving scene comes from Nick's description of what must have happened as Gatsby approached his pool:

"If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees."

This scene describes how Gatsby's world falls in on him as he sees that everything that his life had revolved around for four years has been for nought. While sad, this scene also alludes to the greater point that Fitzgerald was trying to make in this novel; that is how shallow the lives of this society really are. He describes this scene especially through the character of Gatsby, because as Nick explained in the first pages of the book, "Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn."