Post # 9

So on Wednesday I’m going to be discussion leader and I’ll be talking about the Medgar Evers pieces and Eudora Welty’s “Where is the Voice Coming From.” The first piece I read was Welty’s and I definitely thought it was the most engaging of the three. For me, the first paragraph was very significant because it seemed to reveal a lot about the main character. He tells his wife she doesn’t have to look at the “black nigger face no longer,” which seemed to me to demonstrate his need to control not only his wife but also to degrade Evers and by extension assert himself as superior (which would be another form of control). I mean obviously his wife is capable of shutting off the television if she wants but the fact that he tells her she can hints at his need to create the world he wants to live in, to ultimately have control over his community. As Abbey mentioned in her blog the stylistic choices that Welty makes bring this character to life—more specifically his word choice highlights that he is not only uneducated but also has this weird very illogical way of thinking. For instance, he gets the idea to kill this man from the mere act of turning off the TV. Further pointing to his bizarre mind set is his assertion that Evers will never be equal to him because he’s now dead. So obviously Welty wants readers to understand first that this killer gives his act little or no thought beforehand and then after the killing takes pleasure in the fact that he has asserted himself as perpetually above this black man (who is probably one of the only black men in close proximity to this guy who has ever asserted his intelligence and humanity so forthrightly). Finally, another thing that interested me was the repetition of the “hot” theme, which I think, really helps to reinforce not only the tensions but also the urgency that the killer felt and also the tremendous threat that Evers posed to this man’s way of life. Maybe the hotness shows that the situation in this town was so charged that one spark could ignite it. Anyway we can discuss this more on Wednesday.

Post # 8

This week I decided to write about Brown v. Board of education and the poem. First, I learned about Brown in high school history but I had never read it before so it was pretty interesting to actually read what the Supreme Court justices had to say about segregation. One point the decision makes is that separate is inherently unequal not because the tangible factors may be unequal but because black students in segregated schools will feel badly about themselves, have low self-esteem and by extension not be able to be as productive. I was really surprised by the information the decision provided about education in the South. I never realized that education of white student in the South had been largely done privately. This seems so strange since I know that in Massachusetts free public education had been instituted since the time of the Puritans. But equally as surprising was the fact that it was illegal in some states even to educate blacks (I had always assumed that after slavery this sort of legislation would have been eliminated).

The decision also encompassed the assumption that segregation was increasing the progression of the educational system and hindering American youth because it was nearly impossible for anyone to be a productive member of society without a decent education. So then I started thinking about affirmative action and how it is designed to right a past wrong. I guess if you think about it prior to Brown, blacks didn’t have a shot at getting a good education unless they were wealthy and living in the North. So this cycle of being disadvantaged has continued and hopefully affirmative action will make this a non-issue for future generations. After all as the decision cites education is the most important function of state and local governments.

Then I went onto the poem “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.” This poem really confused me. I wasn’t sure if the woman was somehow related to the Emmitt Till trial because an acquittal was mentioned. Also, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the capitalized masculine pronouns. Finally, I couldn’t decided why the Prince was hurting the woman. So I’m looking forward to discussing this in class and getting some clarity.

Post # 7

I just finished reading Welty’s “The Demonstrators” and Suzan Harrison’s piece about Welty. At first, while I was reading “The Demonstrators” I was confused about a number of things. First, I didn’t understand the crowd that was looking at Rudy and why they kept having such strange reactions to the doctor (they laughed at weird times, wouldn’t explain what happened, didn’t help catch the guinea pigs). I was also confused when Welty started going into the doctor’s past—at first I wasn’t entirely sure how this related.


Given that “The Demonstrators” was written during a tumultuous time I think this might shed some light on the meaning of the title. But this still puzzles me and I’m not entirely sure if it’s referring to those who watched Rudy die, or Rudy and Dove’s act which could demonstrate race issues/instability/marital problems, or possibly the title could mean something entirely different that I missed.

It stuck out to me that Dr. Strickland could barely recognize his own maid and realized that she was “the maid” in a very matter of fact way. It seemed strange that she had been cleaning his office five days a week and he couldn’t even recognize her. Perhaps this shows his lack of perception—possibly this is what drove his wife away and caused her to angrily tell him, “You won’t tell Herman Fairbrooks what’s the matter with him.”

The significance of the newspaper also confused me at first but after reading Harrison I realized it highlights the significance of reading, of the media, and of the biased news article at the end of the text (which I thought was Welty’s way of pointing out how poorly the media reports violence against blacks).

White kept coming up in the story (white dress, white apron, white tea pot). Harrison notes that the white dress indicated Rudy’s position in white society. Also, it could show how whites wanted to make blacks more like themselves but at the same time in a certain uniform that would make them readily identifiable as hired help.

I liked Harrison’s explanation of the guinea pigs, “unlike the guinea pigs of medical research controlled by and subjected to the intentions of human researchers, these creatures are wild and uncontrollable. Running in all directions, distracting and tripping the doctor…” This might be a stretch but I think some parallels can be drawn between the freedom of the guinea pigs and the freedom Rudy realizes in her death—finally she’s not under the control of Dove and no longer has to be a maid to the white people.

I really want to discuss this story and maybe get some closure to whether or not Dove actually did hurt Rudy or if this double attack was a set up. Finally, I’m curious as to what other people thought about how Welty depicts race relations in this story. I might be reading too much into things but I felt like this story reflected the unruly nature of the 60s and captured the reaction of an old-fashioned white man to this changing world.

Post # 6

For this week I decided to right about Evening Sun. The first thing that stuck out was the Negro women who carry the clothes from the white people’s house to the wash pot without touching it. This “old custom” seemed like an objectification of black women into automobiles or machines that so effortlessly carried the clothing. Faulkner then introduced us to Nancy who is capable of this machine-like occupation but in coming paragraphs falls apart at the seams into an emotional wreck over the prospect of being killed by Jesus. So we have a contrast between the role that black women fill in the working world and who they really are in their personal lives.

I guess this particular story helped me to realize the plight of the African-American woman who was not only subjected to the cruelties of whites but also was expected to put up with whatever violence their husbands perpetrated against them. I thought it was also interesting when the jailer talks about how “no nigger would try to commit suicide unless he was full of cocaine, because a nigger full of cocaine wasn’t a nigger any longer.” This didn’t really make sense to me because the jailer is saying that a “nigger” wouldn’t commit suicide unless he or she was on drugs so this would mean that without drugs a black person is capable of understanding the ramifications of suicide. So the jailer, at least in my opinion, seemed to be suggesting perhaps subconsciously that blacks were in fact not animal like but instead had their own minds and thinking abilities.

When Nancy keeps saying “I ain’t nothing but a nigger” I wasn’t sure if maybe Faulkner was somehow expressing his irritation with blacks who use this justification or if he was subtly showing Nancy’s skill at avoiding taking responsibility for herself. Also, I thought it was interesting how Jesus decided to take out his anger at the white man (for being able to walk into his kitchen and do whatever he wants etc.) on Nancy. I remember reading in history that black men would often subject their wives to the same degradation white men subjected them too.

Lastly, I came to like but at the same time dislike the father because he protect Nancy but in a paternalistic sort of way. When he tells her she should have behaved herself it sounded to me as if he wasn’t looking at the situation holistically but instead was just blaming her the way a parent would blame a child.