Triple Paradox 3/9/11

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.

3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.

I assume that the above portion is what you were referring to when you asked us to analyze the triple paradox, and so I will give it my best shot. While the slaves are all at this point free, one of the first claims of Washington's is that the Negroes truly are an inferior  race and are willing to be subservient to the Whites, just so long as they are able to get dome sort of educations. It is almost as if Washington is encouraging the kind of deep-seeded segregation that was about to become reality given a few more years. And then on top of that he goes on to propose "The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro," as said above. It is almost as if he is trying to put his race back as far a possible.. I suppose there is a method to the madness, but I can't say that I understand it. Also, as for the quote that talks about 'no race should be given rights if they aren't willing to fight for them' (or something like that), I support it. I think that this is true. I don't know that much about how things turned out for Booker yet in the end, but I would have definitely been fighting for what I believed in. 

Class 3-3-11

        I guess in all honesty I don't really have a whole lot to say about class today. The presentation was marginally interesting, and I especially liked the opinions and comments that Eunji made. As for the overall presentation, it isn't something that warrants its own paragraph in this entry.
        I am excited to move into this next group of authors that we are going to talk about. I enjoyed reading the few chapters that were assigned due today. While I can't honestly say I found them moving, I did find them very interesting. I'm not sure if we are moving into this next set of authors because of our naturalism work, but it sure seems to me like there are naturalistic elements involved, especially in the story we had for last nights reading. It took the perspective of the lowest of the low and treated him and had him act as the stereotypical slave would have.

Naturalism Project 3-1-11

       I actually found today in class to be quite enjoyable. At least with my group's presentation anyways. I'm sure that everyone else in class would have other things to say about our 40 minute long presentation, but I found it really interesting to dive that deeply into the topic of Naturalism. None of us knew exactly what the others were doing or had researched, therefore it was very cool to be able to hear Naturalism from 4 very different viewpoints, at least for me, being in the group. Jungsoo's whole speech about how Naturalism was derived from the Industrial Revolution and strongly influenced by Marx, Darwin and Freud. While I personally believe that is a stretch, I still find the viewpoint fascinating.
        That was another cool thing; because we had each done independent research and developed our ideas separate from each other, we were able to point out to each other things that we had missed. Such as when Jungsoo pointed out that he strongly disbelieved that Beethoven was a naturalistic composer. And yet surprisingly, none of us contradicted each other during the presentations, which was great. I personally can't say much for the second report, as I was definitely into the word search that Lydia gave us :) Overall, I found this to be an excellent project, and hope that we are able to do more similar to this before the year is over. And by allowing us to pick groups, we subconsciously aligned ourselves by level of work. My group for example, chose to do some very rigorous work and thrived.

Naturalism Project 2-28-11

I had forgotten that you said blog everyday about what we were doing in class, so here is the basic rundown. I am working on the subject of Naturalism in areas other than literature. I actually found a good number of works to support the claim that Naturalism is not specifically in Literature. For example, Naturalism is also found in music, art, and philosophy. And that is what I've been doing.

Naturalism Challenge 2/16/11

       What I primarily worked on for this first day of the challenge was determining a more concrete definition of Naturalism. I found a very good book on the subject entitled American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream by Charles Child Walcutt. I spent a good portion of the period going though this book, and what I got from it (as well as a few other sources that I looked at) was that Naturalism contains a large amount of science in it. The quote that I find most useful is as follows: "It [naturalism] reflects at once our faith in science and our doubts about the modern scientific world." I have to say I was a bit confused when I started delving into this idea. I was thinking that naturalism was more of a philosophical movement not scientific. Anyways, that is where I stand in my research so far.

An Episode of War 2/14/11

        When I first read the book, my first impression was "wow, this is completely pointless. Why are we reading this..." I assumed that there was probably some important element that I was completely missing that would be addressed in class, and, surprise surprise, that is exactly what happened.
        I actually find this story to be very interesting when looking at the structure of it. The whole philosophy of Realism and Naturalism fascinates me. Realism is looking and describing. I was particularly fond of a description that someone used today where they described realism as almost a story in slow-motion. I find this to be an accurate description. It seems as though a story written with realism in mind does slow down. The author notes very small details and the reactions between people, but it does little in the form of dissecting the information that it so thoroughly states. This is where Naturalism enters the scene and the clarity on the matter disintegrates. Naturalism, in essence, describes the description that Realism presents. It is probably not a unfair assessment to say you cannot have naturalism without already having an aspect of realism already present. It's kind of like pancakes. You can eat pancakes on there own (realism), but you can't eat the syrup (naturalism) by itself. However, the syrup makes the pancakes much better when you add it to the pancakes.

Daisy Miller

Here are the two questions that you wanted us to address.
1. Describe daisy Miller- character description.

2. Why is Daisy Miller looked down on by the European family

1. Daisy Miller represents a very interesting idea in this book. She is an atypical woman in the world at the time. Unlike other women, she is not timid and shy to speak to strangers, yet she is not a particularly flirtatious person. She is simply a social person. She enjoys the company of others but doesn't subscribe to their world. She is very much her own person. I see Daisy Miller fitting into our modern world much better than in her own.

2. I find the reaction of Mrs. Costello to Daisy's family to be one of the most interesting parts of this story. Getting straight to it, I think that Winterbourne and his family might represent the typical upper class European family. This is along the same liens of what I said in class. Daisy's family represents the typical American family coming from the gilded age; They are ridiculously rich and in many ways are similar to the European families. However, These two families just do not approve of each other. Mrs. Costello verbally disapproves of the Americans, and Mrs. Miller's lack of acknowledgment of Winterbourne is a good indicator of her disapproval of European families. I think that that  mutual dislike might a symbol by the author of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Any ideas?