Garcia Marquez's Labyrinth

I found the most recent discussion that we had in class on One Hundred Years being like a labyrinth to be most provocative. I was, however, annerved by the different defininition of labyrinth that was being used while in class. My experience with labyrinths has not been a scary one, nor has it been a confusing one. Instead, I have come to see the exercise of walking a labyrinth as being a calming and at times frusturating one.

On retreats that I work, we have the teens walk the labyrinth. They come to see that walking a labyrinth as a journey. There is only one entrance and one exit to the labyrinth. At times, you are closer to the center of the labyrinth and other times you are further away from it. Though other people are in the labyrinth, the journey that you take is solitary and uniquely your own. We help these candidates make the bridge from this being a journey to this being like the relationship that we all share with God. At times we feel close to Him, and other times we feel further away. As Genesis said, from dust we are made and to dust we shall return (one entrance/exit). Finally, though there are other people around in the labyrinth, the journey and relationship that we have with God is unique.

This is the kind of Labyrinth that I see when reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. Ursula says on p. 193 "I know all of this by heart! It's as if time had turned around and we were back at the beginning!" Because each of the family members chooses to live their lives in a solitary fashion, they are doomed to repeat the same cycle of their forebearers. It was also commented in class that it seems that the family members are born in Mancondo and come back to die in Mancondo (one entrance/one exit). At times the family members have a close-knit relationship and at other times they are far away from one another. Time gives Ursula a unique perspective. She can see that her family is operating in cycles, with only one entrance and one exit. Yet, despite the support of other family members, decisions that are made from one generation to another are made over and over again. "Colonel Aureliano Buendia could understand only that the secret to a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude" (p. 199).

The family all lives in one house, all in the game of life together, yet the reader finds them operating in solitary journeys which have only one beginning and one ending. This seems kind of nihilistic now. Do we not have any control over what we do? Despite witnessing history, are we doomed to repeat its mistakes through our stubborn solitary existences? If we are in solitary journeys, why is human contact so important for most? These questions that my labyrinth theory brings up I'm unable to answer right now. This theory seems kind of bleak in appearance, but maybe it's being aware of the labyrinth of life that gives an edge. I guess I'll have to keep reading to get some of these questions answered...

*Said in the tune of the WHITE CHRISTMAS song* Brothers...Brothers...

So, this week has been one of family bonding for me. After my mom was admitted into the ICU, my sister and I were able to spend some quality time together...for better or worse - this week. Though we are only 12 months apart (the term "Irish Twins" was employed at one time...), we are different women. My sister feels more of an obligation toward domestic things. I have no such desire at the moment. My sister is drawn to and good at working with the natural sciences. The last time I was in a labratory, I burned my finger on the match, before the experimenting even began. When we were younger, Beth was the "tomboy" of the bunch. However, now I claim the title of Comfort Queen.

When reading Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years, I couldn't help but compare the relationship of Jose Arcadio and Aureliano Buendia to that of the one my sister and I share. While we aren't at the point of death quite yet, I see the adolescent period, the experiences and reinforcement that children get as crucial to building the people the they will become. My sister and I are just leaving that period of "main identity formation" and moving into the period of adulthood, so I will work on comparing the adolescent experiences that Jose Arcadio and Aureliano had and what impact that had on the people they became.

Many psychologists focus on (with good reason...) focus on identity formation as essential to adolescents. Erik Erikson called this the "identity crisis". Freud focused (as he did with every other category of growth) on sexual development, calling adolescents the "psychosexual developmental stage". Piaget called adolescence the entrance into the "formal operations stage" in which all aspects of identity could be approached. In Garcia Marquez's novel, sexual identity is developed early and very differently in Jose Arcadio and Aureliano. This development of sexual identity played a large part on the men that these boys developed into.

Jose Arcadio's development started early, and other people had a large development on his perception of self. Jose Arcadio's mother walked in on him while he was dressing and thought him "so well-equipped for life that he seemed abnormal" (p. 25). His mother sought the advice of the woman who would be Jose Arcadio's first lover, Pilar Ternera. Pilar first groped Jose Arcadio and then began having regular sex with him, which only ended when Pilar told him "Now you really are a man" (p. 31) because he was going to be a father. Jose Arcadio ran away, did not recognize his son, and became a giglio of sorts. "Five pesos from each one...and I'll share myself with both" (p. 90). What a man.

Aureliano's journey was different. From the beginning, he felt out of place and awkward because he was not as well endowed as his brother. As a result, people didn't give him the same expectation as they gave his brother and Aureliano grew up to be a quiet, withdrawn man. "Everyone thought it was strange that he was now a full-grown man and had not known a woman. It was true that he had never had one" (p. 50). He ended up having sex with the same woman as his brother did (because he watched his brother go through that same process) and had her child, who he recognized as his own. When he did get married, it was to a child, Remedios. After her death, Aureliano went wild - being a revolutionary who laid his seed everywhere. "He had seventeen male children by seventeen different women" (p. 103). None of these women were committed relationships.

It is just as much outside expectation as genes and enviornment that help adolescents develop their identities. And it should be a balance between emotional development, physical development, mental development, and social development. Jose Arcadio's physical development was differnet from his brother's and people subscribed different roles to them. My sister and I were pushed toward different topics while growing up and have come to embrace them as our own. The impact of both expectation and comparison between sibling shouldn't go underestimated in the importance to their development.

Morsels of Literature...

As today's class was kind of a multitude of things, I'm going to have a cornucopia of responses. Bear with me through this.

First...to close up "Small Things": I see Roy's activism coming through in her text. Some activists are like that though. Characters (and people) are able to be flat or die in the name of the cause. I don't remember who said this, but for some, the end justifies the means. Meaning that, simple as Roy's idealistic message is, its power to purge a story to a simple core demands respect. Also, Roy's message needed to be shared. One would think that if people understood that "isms" are bad, then we wouldnt' have any "isms". That also is not the case. Therefore, putting a face to a problem, making it approachable and meaningful for people is a worthy purpose.

We also touched on Magical Realism today. Is Garcia Marquez's book magical realism? I don't know quite yet. I will, however, respond as such. One of the tenants of magical realism (as proposed in class today) is to have an orientation or attachement to history. However, Garcia Marquez has not given one concrete time in all of this book. Yet, it isn't completely fantasty. If I may be so bold, I would like to propose a different perspective. I think all fantasy texts are rooted in realism of some sort. I'm not a big fantasy reader or anything, but in order to have an impact on a reader, there needs to be some form of connection to real life and a world that people understand. Hence, the emotional story lines, the problems and journeys that we often see in literature. However, real life also has some fantastic moments, ones that can't be explained by the marvels of modern science and such. My life has been filled with serendipitious moments that I am unable to explain. Furthermore, these discoveries are at times prompted by fantastic moments and feelings of calm that I am unable to explain. This leads me to the follwoing conclusion:

Perhaps realism isn't the best mirror of life but instead magical realism is. (oh dear...my idealist is coming out loud and proud...) Life has too many unexplained phenomenons to be accurately covered under the term "real life". Those who can't see the magic in the world around them just need to take off their "woe is me" sunglasses and look around them. Magical realism validates all of those wonder-filled moments that realism refuses to acknowledge.

Evaluating "Literary Shenanigans": Midterm Meta-analysis

For the sake of a fair analysis, I want to start looking at how I’ve grown as a reader since I started at Stritch back in 2006. Coming in, I was in the second stage (Text-Other Texts) of reading. I had a strong English background in high school and took college preparatory coursework in English and Literature my last two years of high school. In those courses, my teachers encouraged me to both connect to the texts and also to connect texts to other things we have read. My senior year, our English Literature class had a thematic approach; we read books that had themes in common and connected the texts based on those themes. We also explicitly discussed the idea of everything being a text and intertextual connections were an expectation for our coursework.
Coming to Stritch and having the background that I did, I was already predisposed to make connections from one text to another. However, I did not have the exposure to different social discourses coming out of high school. While I’m certainly no expert at the varying social discourse around the world now, attending a liberal arts college has made me aware of the other, ‘non-literary’ influences on texts. As I took classes like psychology, philosophy, religion, and government, I began to see familiarities within the texts that I was reading. Probably the best example I can see of this transformation happening in my life would be comparing the times that I read John Kennedy O’Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. I first read Dunces coming right out of high school, the summer before I entered college. What appealed to me at the time was the characterization of Ignatius and Myrna and the different relationship dynamics that ran throughout the book. However, I re-read the book a couple of summers ago (after my first year of college) and the satire on American politics and society, which had slipped past me practically unnoticed at the time, was particularly funny after having taken some liberal arts courses.
Today, I find myself to be mostly in the Text-World stage (stage three). I owe this a lot to my coursework at Stritch thus far; my professors have encouraged (for the most part) cross-curricular connections, which have encouraged the habit within me. This is a habit that is not just limited to my coursework, but also happens when I’m reading books of enjoyment like the Twilight series or authors of popular fiction like Jodi Picoult. In particular, I find myself connecting philosophical ideas and movements to texts that we are reading in class. Philosophy, much to my surprise, has become something that I enjoy working with and applying to the world around me. In my blog, “Literary Shenanigans”, I use the ideas of Descartes, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche to expand on the works of Murakami and Rushdie. “Both of these philosophers [Kierkegaard and Nietzsche] advocate a world that operates in shades of gray instead of black and white, which is what Rushdie advocates for as well” (Literary Shenanigans). I’m curious about philosophy in particular, both because I have minor in the subject area and also have had more coursework in that area than in most other areas. It is a humbling experience to see esoteric ideas being looked at in a semi-concrete fashion in literature for a wider audience to be exposed to (because, let’s face it…not many people read dense philosophy texts in their spare time…).
I also try to bring in class readings that we have done on literary criticism to my blog. The works of Said and Spivak have made appearances in “Literary Shenanigans”. Literary theory adds more layers to looking at texts as well as gives readers multiple lenses to view a text through. In some ways, literary theory can also give a more objective reading of a text. For example, Spivak’s idea on the “subaltern” never being able to be authentically represented by a non-subaltern is something new to me. It adds a rather radical dimension onto the purpose of education. Many people, myself included, originally entered education to voice the plight of those who couldn’t voice it for themselves. As I have come further along as a student and teacher candidate, I have come to see that it does an extreme disservice to speak for others instead of helping them find their voice; not only does no learning occur, but I’m not truly able to represent their experience. Seeing my inability to properly represent people in situations different from mine has helped me to see that education is about helping others discover their inner power instead of an all-knowing individual dispensing knowledge.
I take issue looking at connection formation (referred to in the assignment as “Stages of Reading achieved, one is at the pinnacle of reading development. I would disagree with such a premise. While I believe that making connections to texts is a scaffolded process (if a person has trouble making text-self connections, then they will have problems making connections to text-text and text-world as well), truly meaningful reading connections include connections from all three sections (text-self, text-text, text-world).
As I reader, I try to make connections from all three categories. In my blog entry from 9/11/08 (“A Wild Sheep Chase is SUCH a Wild Goose Chase…), I make connections from all levels. I begin the blog entry by talking about how confusing I find Murakami’s novel to be. “I find myself to be intrigued by the book. I do admit, however, that logic and reason does rule my life, and I have a hard time stepping out of the box of realism, which is essential to understanding Murakami’s Sheep” (Literary Shenanigans). Then, I use a reference from the Matrix to show the dream-conscious binary at work, a text-text connection. Finally, I talk about Descartes and his meditations on consciousness-dream status. “Descartes maintains in the first of his “Meditations of First Philosophy” that the senses can be deceptive (…) while dreaming” (Literary Shenanigans). This blog entry presents a more holistic approach to literature. More connections mean a better understanding for me, the creator of the connections, as well as for my reader, the interpreter of the connections.
Sticking to any one level (text-self, text-text, text-world) means that the focus and the content that I get from each novel is either too narrow or too far away from me. If I spend too much time on connecting texts to myself alone, then I can be missing commentary that the author may be making on their world, not to mention making texts all about me instead of a product of the world in which they were created. However, if I spend too much time on trying to connect the text to the world around me, the text won’t have any concrete meaning for me as an individual, but instead be up in the clouds where it is inaccessible for readers.
My blogs, at times, have a tendency to namedrop. Instead of looking into myself for meaning, I can find myself looking to proven ‘authorities’ to make my argument for me. I need to find a balance in my own analysis of looking inward and outward for meaning of texts. Therefore, instead of reaching for any one single level, I instead want to work toward more holistic connections to texts involving all three levels. For lack of better specific name, I will refer to my goal as the Triangular Approach to connections. Achieving the Triangular Approach on a consistent basis will ensure that I stay in touch with the author’s place in the world and the text’s content as well as validate what I as a reader bring to texts, making me a better reader and teacher in the end.

Education and The God of Small Things

As Non-Western Literature loves to tackle binaries, I'm going to attempt to work with the binary that I find most interesting - the educated versus the non-educated in "The God of Small Things". I find myself still approaching Francis Bacon when I think of this binary - "education is power". In light of that approach to education, the haves and the have-nots become more pronounced in "The God of Small Things".

Education, and the ability to have it or not, is most definitely a power struggle in this book. What a better pair to compare then Chacko and Velutha? Chacko is an Oxford educated man. He has had the best education and finds himself turning to Marxism as an educated soul. Velutha is an Untouchable. He is continually subject to discrimination and oppression as a member of the lowest caste. Velutha also turns to Marxism as well.

The Spivak handout that we looked at as a class also works within this. She discusses the "subaltern" - the colonized person, the unorganized masses who never fully consent to the power of colonialism. This feels like a Marxist idea.

Are these all related? Is Marxism an idea for the educated or the non-educated? Is Marxism merely a poorly concealed way of the educated gaining power of the non-educated? Or perhaps is Marxism the ultimate equalizer...we all can live without the presence of a government? Because as much as Marxism would like to be an equalizer, it in the past has had the nasty effect of separation of peoples.

I don't know if I can answer these questions. I don't even know if I fully understand them. However, one thing shows undeniably clear. Education is a political entity. Even in a political system that works to promote the unity of the educated and the non-educated, separations occur along the lines of education (p. 66) as Chacko, a follower of the Marxist ideas, sits attacked in his vehicle by people whose ideas he still follows, including Velutha.

What does education as a polticial entity mean for us, mean for "The God of Small Things"? Well, perhaps it isn't education itself that is the political entity, but the withholding of education from some but not others that makes it a polar topic. Would sharing the wealth of knowledge change anything?

I say yes.

Empowering people to advocate for what's right as infinite potential to change things. Sharing education equally de-polarizes it.