Final Weekly Response

In his article, “Disability and Narrative” Michael Berube addresses the problem of many novels that choose to portray disabled characters, saying “…scholars in disability studies are right to point out that literary representations of people with disabilities often serve to mobilize pity or horror in a moral drama that has nothing to do with the actual experience of disability.” (CITE) Haddon, in his novel The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-time, turns away from this idea of mobilizing pity or horror; instead he focuses on creating a disabled character that is more understandable, and therefore more respectable. 

All I've managed to write of the final paper so far is the above. I'm still kinda in the brainstorming process, trying to figure out where exactly I want the paper to end up. I know that I want to address how the novel fails to mobilize pity, especially in moments that it should, and I've found several examples that will help with that. 

"The police car smelled of hot plastic and aftershave and take-away chips. I watched the sky as we drove toward the town center. It was a clear night and you could see the Milky Way. Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn't. Our galaxy is a huge disk of stars millions of light-years across, and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disk. When you look in direction A, at 90 [degrees] to the disk, you don't see many stars. But when you look in direction B, you see lots more stars because you are looking into the main body of the galaxy, and because the galaxy is a disk you see a stripe of stars." (Curious Incident, 9-10)

• This is a prime example of a moment that should elicit pity; Christopher just got arrested for hitting a police officer, and you can't help but feel a little sad at first, because the officer didn't understand that Christopher doesn't like being touched. The fact that Christopher doesn't seem to care that he just got arrested, though, takes away from the pity. He states that the car smells like "hot plastic and aftershave and take-away chips" and the moves on to talking about the Milky Way. 
• He follows his passage about the Milky Way with a picture to explain what he's talking about. I like that Haddon adds these pictures/charts/etc. in to show what Christopher is talking about. I know I want to say something about that in the paper, but this is where I'm having trouble tying them together. 

"Mother died 2 years ago. I came home from school one day and no one answered the door, so I went and found the secret key that we keep under a flowerpot behind the kitchen door. I let myself into the house and carried on making the Airfix Sherman tank model I was building." (Curious Incident, 22)

"I said, 'We will need to take food to her,' because I knew that food in the hospital was not very good. David from school, he went into hospital to have an operation on his leg to make his calf muscle longer so that he could walk better. And he hated the food, so his mother used to take meals in every day. Father waited for a long time again and said, 'I'll take some in to her during the day when you're at school and I'll give it to the doctors and they can give it to your mum, OK?'" (Curious Incident, 23)

"I said I would make her a Get Well card, because that is what you do for people when they are in hospital." (Curious Incident, 23)

• In the first example, Christopher simply states that his mother died 2 years ago without any emotion, really. He then proceeds to go on to talk about how he came home from school and no one was home, so he let himself in and worked on his tank model. He seems very unconcerned that no one is home. This is another time when you should feel pity, but Haddon turns us away from that. 

Weekly Response

I've been thinking a lot about the next paper for some time now, and while I was unsure what text I wanted to use at first, I've finally decided to write my paper on Curious Incident. I'm really enjoying the book so far, and I think it offers a good point of view into the mind of someone with a "disability." Continuing on from my last post, I think I'm going to use that theory reading, in particular this quote:

"And yet scholars in disability studies are right to point out that literary representation of people with disabilities often serve to mobilize pity or horror in a moral drama that has nothing to do with the actual experience of disability." (Berude, 570)

I think Berude is correct in saying that a lot of novels do this. Curious Incident is different in this way, though. Haddon tells this novel from the POV of Chris, and while much of what Chris thinks and how he behaves are unfamiliar to us, the novel works to give us an idea of what goes through his mind and it gives us a better understanding of how he thinks. I think I want to do something with this idea, but I'm a little unsure still as to what exactly my paper is going to be about. I may go in with a second theory, Woloch's about the minor characters, and tell how Haddon uses them to show Chris's disability. 

Weekly Response

"And yet scholars in disability studies are right to point out that literary representation of people with disabilities often serve to mobilize pity or horror in a moral drama that has nothing to do with the actual experience of disability." (Berude, 570)

"I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork holes. I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross, and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk. I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running toward me from the patio. She was wearing pajamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on." (Curious Incident, 3-4)

I agree with Berude when I say that I think a lot of novels, and even movies, try to dramatize disabilities into something that they don't have to be. Often times, they try to make the person with a disability look like a monster -- or sometimes even a hero -- and they fail to point out that they too are humans, and while they're thoughts are different from ours, maybe they actually aren't so different. In other words, they aren't something that should be pitied or something that should cause horror, and I think that Haddon does a good job of capturing that idea in A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I chose the quote above from the primary text because I think it does a good job of capturing both perspectives. On one hand, we have Mrs. Shears, who immediately believes that the main character of the novel killed her dog. This continues on on page 6, when the police show up. Neither Mrs. Shears or the police seem to understand that the boy has a "disability" and that his thoughts are different, and so right away he is to blame. I guess in a way, the text is causing us to pity him, because he is being blamed for something that he didn't do. But then we switch his view, and we realize that he's actually very intelligent. He notices that Mrs. Shear's toenails are painted bright pink, and when the policeman asks his age on page 6, he responds down to the day. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this novel, since written through the boy's eyes, offers us a way into his head. He spells out thought for thought, like above with always knowing what a dog is thinking, and how the novel has little pictures and charts to show the audience. In this way, I think the author is turning us away from pity and horror and trying to get us to understand what goes on inside their head.

Weekly Response

"Throughout history, some people have adapted to terrible life events with flexibility and creativity, while others have become fixated on the trauma and gone on to lead traumatized and traumatizing existences." van de Kolk and McFarlane 487)

"To get into the college of art, in addition to the other tests, there was a drawing qualification. I was sure that one of its subjects would be "The Martyrs" and for good reason! So I practiced by copying a photo of Michelangelo's "La Pieta" about twenty times. On that day, I reproduced it by putting a black chador on Mary's head, an army uniform on Jesus, and then I added two tulips, symbols of the martyrs, on either side so there would be no confusion." (Persepolis, 281)

I think the thing that sets Satrapi aside from others is the fact that she found a creative way to deal with the struggles she went through. It's apparent from the details of the novel that Marjane didn't have the best life, with the revolution she had to grow up in, to losing her uncle, and having the possibility of her parents dying from their demonstrations, as well as having to leave her country when she was only 14 and live without her parents in a country where she didn't even speak the language. There are things in the novel that we kind of take for granted. I mean, we went through the familiar and unfamiliar in class, and that was pretty eye-opening. It seems like nothing to be able to have a party with friends and drink, I know my parents do it every year, without the fear of getting caught, but then you look at things from Marjane's perspective and it's just so unfamiliar. The novel itself is proof that she was able to adapt to terrible life events with flexibility and creativity. In her time, it was almost unheard of for females to go to college, and while she could have developed some sort of psychological disorder, like mentioned in The Black Hole of Trauma, she found a way to adapt to it and created a way to tell her story that was out of the ordinary. Persepolis is told in such a simplistic way, with the comic boxes and seemingly simple pictures, but when you look at it as a whole, and think of what it represents, it turns into a totally different thing. It's her way of coping with the terrible life events she faced.

I used the quote above from Persepolis because it was the first moment in the novel where she really got into her art. The rest is her kind of telling her story, and while her art is part of the story too, it's kind of the defining factor in writing this graphic novel. Think of if she had just traveled with her then-husband at the time. Would we still have her life story in the way it is? There's the possibility that we would not. And so I think that quote is really what started it all. There's where the book started.

Week 10 Response

"As Farzaneh Milani and Afsaneh Najmabadi have observed, autobiographical stories have been perceived as a form of metaphorical unveiling as indecorous as physical unveiling" (Estranging the Familiar, 225).

"In 1979 a revolution took place. It was later called 'The Islamic Revolution.' Then came 1980: the year it became obligatory to wear the veil at school. We didn't really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn't understand why we had to."

The idea of this graphic novel working as a metaphorical unveiling is interesting to me. While I knew that the freedom of women was limited, I didn't realize how much so, and that something as simple as writing a book could be considered a "freedom" for women. I think that Milani and Najmabadi are completely right when they claim autobiographical stories have been perceived as a form of metaphorical unveiling. I chose to pair that quote with the one above because it shows Marji's first time having to wear the veil and how confusing it was to her. She didn't understand why she had to wear it, especially since she was coming from a non-religious French school that allowed children to wear what they wished and for boys and girls to be together. The veil is something that she constantly tests throughout the novel. While she still wears it, she starts to become more westernized with her jean jacket, nikes, and Michael Jackson pin,and I think that can be seen as a metaphorical unveiling as well. When she finally leaves Iran, she allows herself to take off the veil, but when she moves back again, she has to wear it. So while she has escaped the veil, and thus achieved some freedom, she backtracked and was again stuck with it. This novel allowed her to tell her story, to achieve freedom, without actually having to take off that veil.

Week 9 Response

"To prepare, we need to become aware of the shift, understand its causes, and think creatively and innovatively about new educational strategies to the coming changes." (Hayles, 1)

How does the shift become apparent with a novel such as Persepolis?

Instead of picking a particular quote from the primary reading, Persepolis, I decided to look at the novel as a whole when trying to answer this question. When I think of studying Literature, I think of novels such as Pride and Prejudice, and plays by Shakespeare. If I was picking books for the course, I never would've thought to pick a graphic novel. But the more that teens/children change, especially students, the more we should figure out ways to fit these changes. That's not to say that we shouldn't continue studying Jane Austen and Shakespeare, we should just add to it. Persepolis allows for a whole new audience; it takes those that read graphic novels or manga, even, and lets them read the same story, just told in a different way. I think that the author of Persepolis was very aware of this shift, understood its causes, and thought of a creative, innovative way to tell her story.

Weekly Response 8

Thesis:
In his article, "The One vs. The Many" Alex Woloch discusses the importance of flat characters in Jane Austen novels, namely Pride and Prejudice. Instead of merely taking up space in the novel, each flat character serves a greater purpose. When we take into account the five Bennet sisters, we find that Elizabeth is the only sister that has any substance to her character; the others seem flat in comparison, forcing many to ask why they are even in the novel. Each of Elizabeth's sisters contain one characteristic that is highlighted throughout the novel -- Jane has her beauty, Mary her studies, Lydia is careless, while Kitty is a follower. In Elizabeth, we find a well-balanced version of each characteristic. The reason for the four other Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice is to account for Elizabeth's character.

Paragraph One: Establish Elizabeth's Characteristics (?)
"To be a character in Austen is to get continually contrasted, juxtaposed, related to others, and, as such, to help build the thematic architecture that critics then discern." (Woloch, 43)
"'I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.'

'They have none of them much to recommend them,' replied he; 'they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.'" (PP, 45).

Paragraph Two: Jane -- Beauty
"Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behidn you, who is very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you." (PP, 50)
"Oh! my dear Mr. Bennet" as she entered the room, "we have had a most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there. Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Every body said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful and danced with her twice." (PP, 50)

Paragraph Three:
"Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood." (PP, 50)
"They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature

Paragraph Four:
"...but Lydia, with perfect indifference, continued to express her admiration of Captain Carter, and her hope of seeing him in the course of the day, as he was going the next morning to London." (PP, 67).

"'We will go as far as Meryton with you,' said Catherine and Lydia. ---- Elizabeth accepted their company, and the three young ladies set off together" (PP, 70).

Paragraph Five:
"Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless ecstacy, calling for every one's congratulations,, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever; whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repining at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish." (PP, 244).

"'I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask me as well as Lydia,' said she, 'though I am not her particular friend. I have just as much right to be asked as she has, and more too, for I am two years older.'" (PP, 245).