Literature Humanities 07-08

Defending "Defender of the Faith"

Early in his career, Roth received considerable criticism for his sometimes less-than-perfect Jewish characters. Some critics thought that characters like Grossbart would solidify and perpetuate long-held stereotypes about Jews (40 years earlier, W.E.B. Du Bois famously criticized a cadre of young Harlem Renaissance writers along similar lines).

The Gordian Knot of ethno-cultural identity is very much at stake in "Defender of the Faith." While Grossbart's machinations certainly elicit strong readerly reactions, Nathan Marx's struggle with his own identity is the cognitive center of the work. Since we didn't get to it in class, I'll keep my questions here pretty general:

1. At what point is Marx most sympathetic towards Grossbart?
2. What finally turns Marx against him? Why such strong feelings?
3. How justified is Marx in changing Grossbart's orders back to the Pacific?
4. What is the nature of Marx's struggle with his identity throughout? What larger issues of identity do you think the story is addressing?

On "Rationing"

So.....In rationing there were many things that seemed to make little to no sense to me, the first of them being the presence of Uncle Kotai in the beginning of the text, he is introduced, constructed for what seems like no reason other then to let Saburo's character develop (and even that explanation is hard to believe), and then killed off.  Then after the majority of the story, Kotai is mentioned again and for the last time when Waters is describing Saburo.  The only other reason I can think of Kotai being in the story at all is to set a mood for the rest of the story.  1) What is the deal with Uncle Kotai, what purpose does his character serve in the text?  The other main thorn is best described by: "There was no response.  The awkward streetcar flashed into his mind, and in that moment of panic he understood himself to be on the verge of something he had feared subconsciously, all his life." (p. 6).  Yet, even by the end of the story, I, at least, had no idea that Saburo was afraid of much.  I guess what I am wondering is if anyone else felt that this text is so normal, it is almost mundane, but at the same time, it elicits emotional responses that should not surface from a mundane text. -Tyler

Question of the Narrator in "Ysrael"

Ysrael The narrator and his brother, Rafa embark on a journey to find some mysterious child with a deformed face, Ysrael. Their journey represents a voyage of discovery, experience, and a sense of brotherhood.  It is mentioned on page 5, "I didn't mind these summers, wouldn't forget them the way Rafa would.  Back home in the Captial, Rafa had his own friends, a bunch of tigueres who liked to knock down our neighbors and who scrawled chocha and toto on walls and curbs.  Back in the Capital he rarely said anything to me except Shut up, pendejo".  There is a drastic transformation from not speaking any words to each other to sharing hands in a criminal act against Ysrael.  What I was wondering is what does this exploration by the narrator into the life and mind of his older brother do for him?  Do you get the sense that he will learn a productive lesson from the experience?  By this I mean what do you make of the last lines, "Rafa signaled for a stop. Get ready to run, he whispered.  I said, OK"?  Is the journey to el campo a lifestyle that ends once they return to the capital? Or is it that now that the narrator has experienced life with his brother he will want to spend more time with this destructive brother? Considering the entire text and the narrative voice do you find the narrator able to say no once he returns to the capital? And to supplement that question, do you think that Rafa has a new respect for his younger brother or will he continue to dismiss him?  Lastly, what do you make of the molestation scene?  I personally thought that it would haunt the narrator for a long time and he would have something negative to associate with the trip along with seeing the horrendous face of Ysrael and the violent act of his brother.

On the Matter of Gravity

In his novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Milan Kundera writes this in Chapter 2: "If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht). / If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness./ But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?/ The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become./ Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

I'm hoping you guys can see why I thought of this passage upon reading The Things They Carried. A lot of the things mentioned in this passage tie in to specific events in the books. "If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times" -- that reminds me strongly of Lavender's death playing in Kiowa's head, and he replaying it over and over again to the others. The idea of weight needs no explaining. The idea that "we sink beneath" the heaviest burdens again reminds me of Lavender's death -- how he fell ilke a "bag of sand." In addition, on pages 22-23, we see the dream of "freedom birds,' concluding with the idea that with their dreams, "they gave themselves over to lightness."

My questions to you are the following: Going off of our discussions in class, which did Lieutenant Cross pick -- weight or lightness? What about the soldiers -- what do they pick? What should they pick? What options of picking do they really have? What else is said on the idea of weight vs. lightness in the text? And finally, which do you choose to live by?