Reading More Soon!

There are just a few more days left in my current semester.  Then I'll be graduating and hopefully have more time for reading and writing further blog posts.  I have been busy on my home schooling blog, mostly with my own posts for my biology class, but with some things about the kids as well.  We have some crazy big plans for the summer, but they certainly include time for reading!

Playing Catch Up

While I did quite a bit of reading over the winter break, (I completed 2 Sherman Alexie novels and read some other things as well,) I also spent a lot of time with the kids while they were out of school.  I simply didn't have time to blog while we were running around having adventures and I was helping the oldest two earn 3 National Park Jr. Ranger Badges.  Any school break adventure that includes that much learning is a success in my book!  My want to read pile of course also grew during the break.  The problem is that now I have restarted school and will be very busy with 4 classes this semester, and graduation in May.  So, there probably won't be much book blogging until the summer break!  I will be blogging some of my work for my classes this semester, but am planning to do so using the blog I originally created for my home schooling experiences with my kids (here).  If you're interested in checking on what I'm going I encourage you to check there, but know that I'm not quitting book blogging, just too busy completing other life goals at this time! :)

By Any Other Name

"A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet"

-William Shakespeare Romeo & Juliet

G. Whittaker  10-2012

Shakespeare was an amazing playwright, but unfortunately this well known line of his doesn't apply very well to life.  Although he is right that the name of something, or someone doesn't change their character, names are very important.  Perhaps that is indeed why he wrote this line.  Even in the play where it is spoken, names indeed play a huge role, and in a sense, help to determine the outcome of events.  But the intent of this post is not to delve into Romeo and Juliet.  Instead it is to discuss the names by which we call things.

Most people with children (and quite a few pet owners) are familiar with the quandary of choosing a name for their baby.  This naming also extends very much so to authors.  The names that we choose to call things can tell a lot about them, and sometimes even more about us.  Author's don't choose names by accident, just like people don't typically just pull a name out of a hat to name their child.  Some cultures have elaborate naming ceremonies, and in some a person will even progress through a series of names within a lifetime.  In reading , it is important to consider what the purpose of a character's name is, and if it might really tell us more about that character.

But what really prompted me to write this post was thinking about the names that we assign to groups of people.  This can be a very difficult area.  I try to always use the most correct name possible when speaking about a cultural or ethnic group, but this can be very tricky.  One of the most complicated parts is that when people self-identify.  I have been reading a lot of work by Sherman Alexie recently.  He is an author who comes from the Spokane tribe.  He clearly identifies himself as a Spokane, but both in interviews and through the characters in his novels he also identifies as an Indian.  Growing up, I as always taught to refer to these people as Native American.  When I write about a group, or a person I like to be as accurate and respectful as possible, so this naming bit complicates things a lot.  Through my life I have had personal friends who have belonged to various tribes, and they all had different thoughts on this naming.  One friend of mine is Navajo, and I'm pretty sure she is not a fan of the term Indian because of the blanket way that people use it and the stereotypes that come along with it.  This brings up a different issue in what to call another group, because sometimes they can call themselves something that is completely unacceptable for an outsider to use.  Especially for native peoples of this country it can be very complicated.  Let's continue with the example of the Navajo.  We typically refer to them as Navajo, and this seems to be a pretty accepted term.  But they have always been the Dine.  (There's an accent on the e, but I can't figure out how to type it :( )  So are they Indians, Native Americans, Navajo, or Dine?  I usually use the term Navajo because that's what the individuals who are of that group that I know personally use to identify themselves, but occasionally I use Dine.  It is clearly used in a book I'm working on a blog post about that is about some of their history and was written specifically to be used in reservation schools.

With this tricky subject I suggest we simply do the best that we can to be respectful and accurate in the way that we name and describe a group of people.  I recommend we try to make our roses smell as sweet as possible by not calling them by any other name.  When writing about a group I will always try to do so!

Oral Tradition

You thought since winter break started I was MIA, didn't you?  You're not so lucky!  It's just been crazy and busy and I've been catching up on life!  But I've had some time for reading and reflecting on past reading as well, so there will be some posting going on!

One of the fascinating things about written word, is that it can continue without modification for such a long time.  This isn't to say that texts aren't constantly reedited or changed, but just that it is possible to pull out a book that was published 100 years ago, and hear the authentic voice of a long since passed author.  This manifestation is a huge departure from the long held human method of oral transmission of information.  The oral tradition has it's strengths as well though.  A story that is told in that format is more personal.  The story teller can relate to the reader in a way that an author can't simply because they are removed from their audience. They can modify the story to suit their audience better as well, similar to how there are full editions and junior editions of the classics.  This change and modification means that the stories that are retold are alive.  They change over time based on the designs of the storyteller, the makeup of the audience, and based on cultural pressures and current events as well.

The story that got me thinking about this recently was a porque tale.  I had read it with my daughter to help understand the porque form for a Girl Scout project.  Then I found the same porque embedded in a text I was assigned to read for school.  But it wasn't the same at all.  Both explained the same thing, and both are from the same part of the world, but they are incredibly different.  If you are not familiar with porque, it is the name for stories that explain why something is, or how it came to be.  These types of stories are extremely varied, from ones probably familiar to most of my readers such as the Biblical tale of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, to less familiar ones like the one I am going to discuss today.

Photo of this African breed of tortoise and further information about it's natural history here.

The two versions of the story appear in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and in a collection titled African Folktales retold by A. Ceni.  Both are African stories of "How the Cracks in Tortoise's Back Came to Be," but they explain his shell in different ways.  There are many reasons why this could be so, but let's take a look at the two different written stories first.

In Things Fall Apart we are presented with one of the characters telling the story of tortoise   There was a famine in the land and tortoise heard of all the birds being invited to a great feast in the sky.  Tortoise convinced the birds to take him with them so that he too could partake in the feast.  But he tricked them and then ate most of the feast himself in his gluttony.  He was now too heavy to fly back to earth on the wings he had built, so he asked the birds to tell his wife to bring all the soft things out of his house for him to jump down from the sky onto.  The birds were angry with tortoise and instead told her to bring out all the hard things.  From up in the sky tortoise could see she was bringing things out, but couldn't make out what the things were.  When she seemed done, he jumped down.  Landing on all the hard things broke his shell into pieces.  A local medicine man was able to glue his shell back together and save his life, but the cracks remain to this day.

In the African Folktales collection the story of tortoise is a little bit different.  Tortoise and his wife were very good friends with Vulture.  Vulture often came to visit them at their home.  One day Tortoise asked his wife why they never visited Vulture at his home.  Vulture lived a great distance away, way up in the mountains.  So tortoise devised a plan.  He had his wife wrap him up in a parcel that she told Vulture was tobacco that they would like him to trade at the market for them.  Vulture was a good friend, so he agreed to take the package.  While he was flying, tortoise called out to him, saying, "Look it is I Tortoise and I have come all the way up here to visit you at last."  Vulture was so startled that he dropped the parcel with tortoise in it.  When tortoise hit the ground his shell cracked, and it never fully healed.  And that was the end of the visits between tortoise and vulture.

There are some obvious differences between the two tales, but some clear similarities as well.  Both explain the same thing of course, but go about it in different ways.  In both cases we see tortoise interacting with birds and falling from the sky to break his shell.  In both cases the fall is the result of some trickery on the part of tortoise.  In the first case he is quite the trickster, convincing the birds to take him with them, and then managing to steal almost all of the feat that would have generously fed them all.  In the other case tortoise resorts to trickery to try and do a much nicer thing.  Both stories not only explain why tortoise appears as he does, but also serve as a warning to listeners/ readers to be honest.

Many things play into the differences in the tales.  As we've discussed, they are markedly similar, so why are they so different?  Regional variations surely play a role.  But the dynamic of the oral tradition is part of what molds that as well.  It is anthropologically probable that both stories have developed out of a common story. Perhaps one of these tales is more similar to the original.  Perhaps a visitor to one area long ago heard the story while trading and took the story home, but couldn't remember it quite correctly, so it became something similar but different.  The children's game of telephone demonstrates quite easily how mishearing something can result in a completely different story eventually.  The role of the story teller is an important one.  For the longest time they were the only keeps of the past.  Still today they play a very prominent and important role in some communities.  Accurately memorizing stories of their people by heart is an immense honor.

Gilgamesh, an Epic

I recently had the pleasure of rediscovering The Epic of Gilgamesh.  The Babylonian tale is still incomplete due to the damages of time.  It was originally carved into stone tablets in cuneiform.  To get yourself feeling like an ancient Babolonian you might want to get your monogram in cuneiform here, from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.  (mine is included above).

To get a great insight into the myth, I would recommend this video, that covers some of the themes of the epic, how they have affected people in modern times, and some of the works that have been produced from inspiration drawn from the tale of Gilgamesh.

Although this animation doesn't follow the translation I read exactly, it provides a general coverage of the story in a compact, easy to understand format:

Quick Interlude:
I had started writing this post when I had just read Gilgamesh for a course I was taking.  The instructor included so many wonderful resources with every reading assignment to help us gain a greater understanding of the culture and time in which the work was set that I wanted to try and incorporate as much of that as possible in my blog.  Being as I was in the middle of a semester of school including two very heavy reading English classes, I just didn't get around to all the reading blogs I wanted to do at the time.  Now that it's semester break, it's time to catch up!  I don't have access to my professors amazing resources, but hopefully I can share some similar things along with my thoughts on the works.  Looking back is kind of nice as well because it really tells me what aspects of the texts stuck with me.

Gilgamesh is a story about facing our mortality.  Enkidu is created as an equal for Gilgamesh, to teach him how to be not only a strong ruler, but also a wise ruler.  As the story tells us they become like brothers.  When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is beside himself.  It is as if he has lost a piece of himself.  He has never really had to confront death before and initially refuses to believe that his friend is gone.  This is very reflective of one of the human ways of dealing with death.  Many people fear death and try to avoid, and deny it.  Gilgamesh is overcome by fear of death after his loss and decides that he must seek another way.  Through his quest for immortality he learns that it is not only unattainable, but that we should be appreciative of what time we have.  He ultimately returns home with a different outlook on life.  He has embraced the inevitability of his death and pledges himself to living and ruling his people as wisely as possible in the mean time.

Why is this story so intriguing to people?  Clearly the age of the tale is something that draws people in.  But it is a story outside of time.  Death is something that we all must face eventually.  It is inevitable in life.  Reading the story and knowing that this is something that has been on men's minds for so very long is a way to help people cope with it themselves.  They can relate to Gilgamesh when he loses his friend in in his search for a way to escape a similar fate.  The tale teaches that to let go is necessary, and to live, is to die.  From death comes new life.  The maggots that feed on Enkidu's body flourish where there is death.  Gilgamesh only sees the death at first.  It is very easy to adopt this perspective.  But as he grows and realizes that though death is inescapable, life is also inevitable, and the reader comes to this realization as well.

The epic has inspired many to create their own works of art through the ages.  Perhaps through the adventures of the half-god people are simply inspired by his humanity.  Despite his half godliness Gilgamesh is imperfect.  He resists the conventions of adulthood, struggles with mortality, and makes mistakes along the way.  If a demi-god has these problems it makes them more acceptable to those who know the story.  It becomes okay to be fearful, and to make mistakes in life.  People are comforted by the story because of how they can relate to Gilgamesh.  His challenges are immense, and his battles larger than life, but he is accessible to the reader.  We feel the heartache when he loses his best friend, and the joy in finding his purpose after this.  The tale has endured because of human nature and the need to understand ourselves and our purpose.  Though the epic doesn't give answers to these hard questions, it helps readers to address them, and provides some greater understanding of how one ought to live their life.

Semester Final Project

For our final project in my English 102 class we were asked to prepare a presentation on something that we learned this semester.  Here is my presentation on Biographical and Historical Criticism:

Biographical and Historical Criticism from R2Whistler

I used the book The White Tiger as an example in my presentation because I just read it for my other English class and felt the colorful imagery would make a memorable addition to the information. :)

World Literature Reflective Postcard

This drawing is my reflective postcard for this semester in my World Literature class.  I wanted to create something that would represent all of the literature and films that we took in during the semester.

The goddess Kali is from The White Tiger, the final book that we read.  A magnet depicting her is kept on the dashboard of the car by the narrator Balram.  She is typically depicted with either 4 or 10 arms.  Here she has 10 and holds items that come from, or represent all of the others.  Over her head she holds a basketball to represent Sherman Alexie's collection of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  Presented on her next hand to the right is the head of Humbaba the monster from The Epic of Gilgamesh.  Below that she holds a samurai sword to represent the film "The Twilight Samurai."  Following this is a take out bag from the fast food chain Cowboy Chicken, featured in the story "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town" in Ha Jin's collection The Bridegroom.  The next hand holds a liquor bottle which is included as a unifying image for several of the works, but the design of the bottle was inspired specifically from The White Tiger.  Kali is often depicted with her foot on the head of the dead Vishnu, who in this work, has been replaced with a face to represent Okwonkwo of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.  The next hand brandishes a wooden spoon representative of Tita in Laura Esquivel's novel Like Water for Chocolate.  Above this a hand holds a stick for the blind to represent Mohammad in the Iranian film "The Color of Paradise."  The hand above that holds a ring to represent "Beuowolf."  The last hand has a parrot perched upon it to represent the novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

Although each of the items is included with a particular work initially in mind, there is much more that I meant to represent with them.  Although Mohammad is the only physically blind character in the works that we read/watched this semester, many of the other characters fumble like the blind in their search for things.  This searching is something I would say is a unifying theme throughout the works.  A liquor bottle is used by Balram as the weapon to commit a murder, but alcohol plays a major role in Alexie's work as well.  It also appears prolifically in Wide Sargasso Sea as Antoinette's mental state declines.  There was so much I thought about as far as the meaning of the items and their placement in the work,  perhaps you are familiar with one or more of the works and can make your own connections.

The only work that we viewed this semester that doesn't have it's own individual item is the film "Waltz with Bashir."  Of all of the characters searching for things, this search is possibly the most obvious, but I had trouble coming up with something representative that I felt worked.

I really enjoyed the armchair travels we went on in this class throughout the semester.  Although I like to get out and see and experience places a lot as well, I think that arm chair travelling is a fantastic thing to do, and is far more practical and less expensive that traditional travel.  Also when we actually travel, there is a propensity to insulate ourselves from the people we are visiting by travelling with tour groups that are designed specifically for American tourists.  There's quite a bit more that we can learn from people and places if we have the time to stop and really take in their point of view.  I didn't enjoy, or like all of the works that we used in this class.  But I don't find that necessary either.  A lot of times being challenged by a work that you wouldn't not normally expose yourself to is a very positive thing.  Sometimes those are the ones from which we learn the most.  If you're interested in mote of my thoughts on some of the works included in this reflective post card collage, check my blog archive as I have blogged in depth about several of them through the semester.  Though not all of them managed to make it onto the blog yet, many did, and others are draft posts still awaiting completion. :)