Victimized characters

The characters in Williams's "Streetcar Named Desire" all fall into victimization by fulfilling the desire of oneself or another. Blanche in the story struggles to build the magical realm around her to fulfilled the expectation of the society. The passive actions of Mitch show that he is vitimized by two women who are important to his life: his dying mother and his love-Blanche.

In order for Blanche to escape the social expectations in Laurel, she had to escape and flee to New Orleans to find protection from her sister. She is victimized by her own desire, which is to find kindness and protection in male; this explains her strange obsession in flirting and sleeping with male strangers. She has to use all her tricks to hide her imperfections to gain male attention by diming the lights and keeping her thin figure. Because of her immoral conducts, she is considered "Out-of-Bounds" and unwelcomed in her hometown. After being kicked out from Laruel, in the the new location in New Orleans, she tries her best to rebuild her perfect southern Belle identity by fulfilling the expectations of the society. She had to act properly to protray the perfect image of a high-class Southern Belle. At the same time, she has to constantly keep secret of her embarassing history of her mischievous nature. This is the reason she is constantly asking Stelle and Mitch for others opinions about her: "what have people [in town] been telling you [Stella] about me"(1571) and "has he [Stanely] talked to you [Mitch] about me?" (1577) As the result, the goal of her whole life was fulfilling the expectation of others; as the result, she is forced to live in the delusions of her mind to stay functional in the society. The way she is forced to live her life result her insanity that reveals at the end the story.

Mitch, on the other hand, is victimized by his love for his sick mother and the delusions of Blanche's image. Mitch, who is fooled by Blanche's delusions, becomes attracted to her and and even plans to ask his mother for permission to marry her. He believes Blanche's lies about her high education and innocence; therefore, when Stanely revealed the disappoining truth about Blanche, he could not handle Blache's lies and the cruel reality. Because of the disappointment, he remained sullen until the end of the story. It is obvious that Mitch is victimized by his dying mother. Not only he scarifices his life by putting off doing the things he desire, like playing poker with his friends, he scarifices his future by marrying his mom approved girl to please his mother. Because of his sympathetic emotions towards his mother, he is vitimized by his mother's control.

Stanley's character in movie

In the 1951 film, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Elia Kazan let the actors to further define the characters in the play by making the characters their own. Once I watch the film version of this play, I sense a slightly different understanding of Stanley. According to the reading, in scene 3, William depicts Stanley as a brute beast by the his animalistic behavior: “throws back his bead like a baying hound and bellows his wife’s name” and “then they come together with low, animal moans”.(1562) Based on the reading, I only sense Stanley’s true intention of desiring Stella is merely a physical attraction and male dominance.

However in the film, Brando not only portrayed the savageness of Stanley, he also shows a more passionate side of him. With the settings and Brando’s action in the film, it is similar to the balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet”. The slow background music and movement of Vivian Leigh emphasized the romantic emotions, that did not describe as strongly in the script. In the film, Stanley express his love to Stella passionately and softly, “Don’t ever leave me baby!”. This addition line that added in the film shows Kazan wants to portray Stanley not only as a masculine brute, but a character with a passionate personality.

Paralyzing Epiphanies

In James Joyce’s stories, they contain epiphanies that portray protagonists’ cruel revelations once they discover the disappointing truth. In Joyce’s short stories, “Araby”, the young boy describes his innocent crush on his friend’s the sister, and his struggle to buy her a gift to express his affection.

The epiphany is introduced by series of paralysis. The boy struggles when he has trouble to express his affection towards his secret admirer. Whenever he encounters her, he is in awe with his lover’s beauty and starts to unconsciously speculates her attractive appearance. When he is having conversation with her, his intense feelings for her unable him to talk properly. He finds himself too nervous to convey his feelings for her: “ I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.“ (30) Consequently, he chooses to secretly follow her around. He prefers to gaze upon her through the blinds in order to hide himself secretly. The boy intentionally limits his view by lowering the "blind" until it is only an inch from the window sash. Before his encounter with her at the bazaar, the perspectives he had about this girl were always hindered by darkness and the window blind. Every observations he had about her are vague and discrete. He could only closely contemplate on the detailed fragments about her, but unable to have a thorough and complete view. In his mind, she only appeared to him as a “brown figure” and the “brown-clad figure”, and it was the small details of her that trigger his intense affection for her.

His superficial and limited perspective reach to a moment of epiphany, when he discovers that the truth is different that the expectations he had about her. In the story, he beautified her with angelic qualities: “The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the rail. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.” (32) He expected her to have innocent and saint-like personality; which results him to break into disappointment when he overheard her flirtatious conversation with the soldiers at the bazaar. After he discovered her inappropriate action, he comes to a sudden realization of his affection for this woman was foolish and innocent. The epiphany leads him to end his love with despair,“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (33). He simply gives up buying her a gift, and his devotion of love for her is shattered. Once he is not blind anymore and realize her true personality, he can not bear the cruel disappointment and break into tears.

In Kafka’s Metamorphasis, Gregor Samsa experiences paralysis after he is transformed into a giant dung beetle. In my previous blog, I point out Gregor’s movement is limited when he is not used to his new body form, “Gregor find his transformed body difficult to adjust: he spends great time and effort in getting himself up and out of bed. Here is one of his attempts to leave his bed but he falls on the ground instead…” Because of his concern for his family, he decides to hide away in his bedroom to avoid frightening his family member. However, he reaches a cruel epiphany when he realizes that not only his family did not appreciate his effort but they also view him as a burden in his family. His epiphany is mostly influenced by Gregor’s sister, Grete. He used to believe that his sister is the only person that cares about him in the family; however, at the end, she turns cold and selfish, and she even propose to the family to get rid of him. The revelation leads to the huge disappointment, which finally kills him.

The epiphany of both stories are similar. Both protagonists are self-absorbed in their own realm, forming wrong expectations and faulty assumptions that ultimately leads to a huge disappointment. Because of their blind expectations, they volunteer to limit themselves and work hard to achieve their goals. However, at the end of both stories, they reach to the epiphanies and realize all their effort spent are useless and even frowned upon.

Reality versus Fantasy

Magical Realism is presented in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” when the magical occurrence happens in reality. The Gregor Samza’s physical metamorphosis into a giant dung beetle is a fantastic situation. The detailed descriptions of his physical transformation from human to a bug shows that it is impossible to happen in reality: “He would have needed arms and hands to hoist himself up; instead he had only the numerous little legs which never stopped waving in all directions…” (92) Besides Gregor’s transformation, the setting, the relationship between Gregor and his family, his emotions, and motivations makes this story remain connected with reality.

I consider that Gregor morphs into a bug, but only physically not internally. In Part One of the story, Kafka spends in great detail to describe Gregor's physical struggle with his new body form. Gregor find his transformed body difficult to adjust: he spends great time and effort in getting himself up and out of bed. Here is one of his attempts to leave his bed but he falls on the ground instead: “ [he] grew almost rigid, while his little legs only jigged about all the faster…Gregor swung himself out of bed with all his strength. There was a loud thump, but it was not really a crash.” (95) The story's emphasis on Gregor’s difficulties in controlling his bug-like body makes it obvious that his body actually went through metamorphosis.

Despite Gregor’s physical transformation, his human state of mind remains. Gregory’s action still convey his human personalities and qualities. Soon after he wakes up and discovers that he had transformed into a bug-like form. However, he does not seem to be overwhelmed by the situation or surprised by the magical occurrence. Instead his mind filled with profound thoughts as he worries that he is about to miss his work. Moreover, during his whole process of getting out of his bed, his main goal is to avoid alarming his family member by making the least disturbance possible. Base on Gregor’s action, it proves that he is not a bug internally. Because Gregor, unlike a bug, he is not concern about his survival and safety, but he weights his family and his job to be more important. Gregor’s submissive personality remains shows his psyche has not change by the metamorphosis.

Metamorphasis does not only happen to Gregor. Since Gregor turned into a bug, his family go through changes. The greatest difference is happened to Gregor’s sister, Grete. Before Gregor’s transformation, she is loving and caring. In the family, she is the only one who shows affection and sympathy toward her brother. She offers to help to keep his room clean and to provide for his meal. Everyday, she would care about his appetite. She takes notice and keeps track of the amount of food Gregor’s eats every meal. However, as time goes on, not only she grows tired of taking care of Gregor, she turns hostile towards him. At the end, she reaches a breaking point and propose to get rid of her brother entirely. Since Gregor’s metamorphosis, Grete slowly treats and views Gregor like a bug, same as the way his mother and father alienated him.

Márquez critique of religion

In the short story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", Gabriel Garcia Marquez implicitly condemns the ideology of Catholicity for its problematic Church’s hierarchy and the teaching of wrong doctrines that lead to people to have a faulty perception of Catholic religion.

In the story, Marquez illustrates the reaction of a group of villagers when they encounter a celestial figure-an old man with enormous wings. Pelayo and Elisenda are in great stupor when they find a human with wings, and then they realize that he looks like a holy apparition- an angel that is depicted in the bible. They do not believe that he is an angel that has descended from heaven; instead, quickly they question his identity of an angel and they do not treat him with any respect. They give him the worst treatment possible and approach him with caution: “Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop.” (452) They choose not believe the old man as an angel, but to merely base their beliefs on the final verdict decision of Father Gonzaga and the people with higher order in the Catholic church (bishop, supreme Pontuff). This shows that their beliefs of Catholism is not depenent on their faith or the Bible’s reading, but heavily based on the doctrine and practices that are set by the influential people in Catholic church.

The religion of this community sets misleading expectations of their spiritual beliefs. As Father Gonzaga comes to visit the old men, he judges the old man’s identity according to his catechism. The priest characterizes the old man’s identity by ridiculous guidelines in his doctrinal manuals: angel must speaks in the language of God (Latin) and they must know the way to greet the God’s ministers. The priest also judges him based on the superficial appearance. He thinks that the old man is “too human”. He has a bad smell of the outdoors, and moreover, his wings are infected with parasites and are torn badly. Based on the expectations of an angel the priest has learned from his catechism, the old man’s appearance does not measured up to the holiness of the dignified angels. Besides the priest, the people in the community also use radical ways to test the old man’s identity. They follow the wisdom of the wise neighbor woman to feed the old man mothballs to examine him. People trust the knowledge from the powerful people in the community, the priest and the woman, to judge their religious beliefs. As a result, it causes people to have wrong perceptions and expectations of catholism.

Emily Grierson's Facebook Page

In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, the main source of information about Emily Grierson is based on the omniscient third person’s narration throughout the story. The mysterious narrator portrays the reaction of the citizens of Jefferson to Emily, and the events that happened to her in town.

This is a photograph of an old woman that I imagine she would use as her profile picture. I chose this picture because this is a good representation of Emily in her 60’s. In the story, the narrator describes her appearance when the tax collector visits her: “they rose when she entered-a small, fat woman in black, with a gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her.” (357) The woman in this picture fits the physical descriptions of Emily, who has a small figure with gold hair. For her outfit, she is also dressed in black old-fashioned clothing with a chain around her neck. I imagine the woman in this picture is a better representation of Emily. The old woman in the photograph looks more polished and properly dressed than the descriptions of Emily in the story.

According to information given in the story, I imagine that if Emily Grierson had internet access to own a Facebook page, she would not pay much interest and attention to add details on her page. I suspect that she is not into social networking, so her personal profile would be plain and her activity on Facebook would be kept minimal. As the result, she would not participate in any application that is available on Facebook. As her privacy setting, she would set her page restricted so only her close friends could see her on her profile. The reason I suspect her to use a strict privacy setting on her page is because of Emily's action that is described in the story. She excludes herself from the community and did not leave home for almost six months, in order to avoid socializing with people. Faulkner shows Emily's aloofness when she treates the tax collectors coldly and advises them to leave her house after a short conversation.

I suppose the only reason Emily would use Facebook would be to advertise her china-painting class in one of the downstairs rooms at her house. Since she does not connected with the people in town, she might need to create a interest group of china-painting on Facebook to promote her painting class to the people in town. This way, she would be able to sustain her living by teaching students after her father died.

For her pictures, Emily would post photographs of some of the artwork she has done: some beautiful painted china and a crayon portrait of her father on a tarnished gilt easel. Also, she would post some pictures of her with her father to show her attachment to her father. Emily’s close connection to her father is revealed when she is in denial of her father's death even after three days.

In Emily's friend list, she would only add a few friends: Tobe-her servant, Colonel Sartoris, old lady Wyatt-her great aunt, and Homer Barron-her lover. However, I suspect that she would have many friend requests. According to the story, the women in town were curious to discover Emily's secrets; in order to find out, they would add Emily as a friend to order to gain access to the information of Emily’s personal life.

Conversation thread from Emily’s Wall:

Emily: Its been a long time I have not seen you, how are you lately? I am looking forward to go out with you. How about we drive around town in my yellow-wheeled buggy this Sunday afternoon?

Homer: This sounds terrific! I will bring my hat and cigar.

Emily: Great! I will go and get some ingredients to prepare a special dinner especially for you.

Homer: Thanks, I will see you later.