Reflecting on the Semester: Wrapping Up

On Thursday, we will wrap up the semester, and I would like to ask you to reflect back on the reading you’ve done – the novels and the handouts of poems and essays to accompany them. So let us return to these related ideas from the syllabus – to understand literature not just as a reflection of culture but also as an active agent of culture, that art is not apart but a part of [public discourse] – and begin with this overarching question:

• In what ways have the novels we’ve read this semester been active agents of culture?
• And a follow-up: how have they continued to be active agents? That is, what do you think they continue to offer readers of American literature?

Consider how the six novels we’ve read have been active agents in your own social, political, and/or intellectual lives over the last four months.

• Which novel had the greatest effect on how you look at the contemporary world around you? Why?
• Which novel most contributed to, or changed, your understanding of American history? How did it change it?
• Of the novels we read, which one did you struggle with the most and why?
• Which novel would you most recommend to a friend of yours? What makes you want to pass the experience of that particular novel on?
• Which author’s work would you be most likely to read more of? Why?

 

Military Jargon and Acronyms: THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

Throughout They Things They Carried, O’Brien employs a long list of acronyms commonly used by military personnel during Vietnam (and often today). While it creates a sense of verisimilitude for the reader, they can be rather opaque to a non-military reader, who might need some help deciphering them.

Look up terms on the Glossary of Military Terms and Slang from the Vietnam War site.

Tim O’Brien’s “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong”

In 1998, O’Brien’s story “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” was made into a film starring Keifer Sutherland. However, it’s worth noting that the filmmakers’ interpretation of Mary Anne bears some striking differences to the character we encounter in O’Brien’s story. While some of the differences may seem subtle – for example, when confronted by her boyfriend upon returning from a night ambush with the Green Berets, Mary Anne’s “Don’t say anything” is now more pleading than commanding – they are notable, as they tend to reinforce a more traditional femininity for Mary Anne, despite her enthusiastic, and rather unconventional, conversion to military life in the Vietnam bush in the original story.

Of course, O’Brien’s point – or rather the storyteller Rat Kiley’s “moral” if you will, is clearly stated on page 102:

“She was a girl, that’s all.I mean, if it was a guy, everybody’d say, Hey, no big deal, he got caught up in the Nam shit, he got seduced by the Greenies. See what I mean? You got these blinders on about women. How gentle and peaceful they are. All that crap about how if we had a pussy for president there wouldn’t be no more wars. Pure garbage. You got to get rid of that sexist attitude.”

PART I:

 

PART II:

 

PART III:

Tim O’Brien and the Vietnam War: THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

This interview with the author Tim O’Brien originally aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in March of 1990.

Listen to “‘Things They Carried’ Back from Vietnam.”

The Ceremony: Spiritual Practice Rooted in Place

In the last third or so of Silko’s novel, Tayo is taking part in the ceremony, even after he has left Betonie’s hogan on Mt. Taylor. Spiritual vision plays an important part of the last part of Tayo’s ceremony, and those visions are deeply connected to place.

Mt. Taylor (right), the Turquoise Mountain, and Pa’to’ch Butte (left). The Deep Springs are located between the two, where the mesas break.

Ts'eh, the woman with the storm-pattern blanket, finds Tayo and tells him she is camped at the springs. When the seasons change, she returns to Pa'to'ch, the Butte.

 Another photo of Mt. Taylor: 

Photo from Sierra Club.

 IMPORTANT SPIRITUAL FIGURES IN CEREMONY 

Kachinas: Tayo remembers hearing the bells of these dancers, masked and ceremonially dressed; the kachinas were also spirits in the Pueblo culture, often representing natural elements and/or phenomena, a quality, or place (e.g., corn, thunderstorms, etc.). Each Pueblo community would have had its own hierarchy of these spiritual figures. 

Spider Woman (or Grandmother Spider): Spider Woman stories appear in the cultrues of numerous Native peoples, including the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest. She is both the messenger of the Sun and Sun’s grandmother. She is the creator, the mother of all life, and rules the earth. In the stories from the SW, she creates order from chaos by drawing to intersecting lines of cornmeal on the ground, representing the four directions. She also invented the seasons and added the four elements of weather – thunder, lightning, clouds, and rainbow – to the sky. “It is said today that nonbelievers just see a little spider. But Spider Woman herself still appears to those who know anfd believe.” – Susan Hazen-Hammond, from Spider Woman’s Web: Traditional Native American Stories About Women’s Power (17-18).

Untangling (and Following) a Thread

For your second paper, you’ll be identifying and following a thread in one of the novels we’ve read in class this far. Let’s practice delving deep into some of the threads in Ceremony. The novel’s structure doesn’t make this an easy task; however, out of all the novels we’ve read, identifying and untangling the threads in Silko’s work is perhaps most enlightening, as it leads us to the deep structure of the work and reveals some of the native storytelling tactics the author employs.

EXERCISE

Get into groups of four. Consider the thread on your card. Start by identifying a few moments when this thread comes up (at times, the word on your card may be used explicitly in the novel, or it may not, requiring you to read more critically).  Once you’ve discussed some of these scenes, answer the following questions and report back to the class:

1. Why is your thread important to the work as a whole?
2. Name one key scene you believe is important to understanding your thread (preferably one that supports your claim above).
3. How does the meaning of your thread change or develop as the novel progresses? (Consider its many valences.)
4. Is your thread connected to any other threads in the novel? Which is the most important?

Uranium Mining on Navajo Lands

In Ceremony, Silko tells the story of the ancient witch people who released evil in the world by telling the story that created white people.

“They will take this world from ocean to ocean, they will turn on each other, they will destroy each other. Up here in these hills they will find the rocks, rocks with veins of green and yellow and black. They will lay the final pattern with these rocks, they will lay it across the world and explode everything” (137).

The rocks the witch story-teller refers to here is uranium, a radioactive mineral that was mined heavily in the Southwest, on Navajo lands, in order to fuel America’s atomic arsenal – that is, in order to create and experiment with the atomic weaponry that was eventually dropped on Japan in World War II.

Watch this slide show put together by the LA Times in 2006, including interviews with Navajo who experienced – and are still experiencing – the effects of the government’s radioactive mining near their homes:

Watch Blighted Homeland.

Learn more from the Uranium Impact Assessment Program.

The Hoop Dance: Traditional Laguna Pueblo and Navajo Cultural Practices

Robert and Tayo travel to the city of Gallup to visit Betonie, the medicine man, for Tayo’s ceremony. Gallup has its problems, but it draws a large crowd of both tourists and native peoples once a year for the Inter-Tribal Gallup Ceremonials.

Navajo Hoop Dancers perform at the Grand Canyon:

Leslie Marmon Silko’s CEREMONY (pp. 1-113)

A MAP OF THE (LAGUNA PUEBLO) WORLD

Map of Indian Reservation Lands in New Mexico.

When we meet the protagonist, Tayo, he has recently returned from his service in World War II and is still recovering from shell shock, or what we now classify as Past-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He often has flashbacks to the jungle, specifically to the moment his friend Rocky is killed by Japanese soldiers.

JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS

In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, about 110,000 Japanese and Japanese American people along the Pacific Coast were forcibly relocated during World War II and imprisoned in internment camps for the duration of the war. About 62% of the people interned were American citizens. President Roosevelt authorized the internment in 1942, and the US Census Bureau supplied information that allowed government officials to locate people of Japanese ancestry. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan officially apologized for the government’s actions and signed legislation that admitted that the government’s actions had based on “racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” The US government paid out more than $1.6 billion in reparations.

BATAAN DEATH MARCH

In April of 1942, after the three-day -long Battle of Bataan in the Philippines, the Imperial Japanese Army, faced with approximately 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, forcibly marched them to 128 km, or about 80 miles) to Balanga. The POWs were not supplied with food or water, and thousands died or were executed during the march, including some civilians. The march was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a punishable war crime.

THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS (BIA)(p. 76)

This US federal agency is part of the Department of the Interior and is responsible for the administration and management of reservation lands in the US. The agency was officially created in 1824, though similar agencies had existed since 1775. The agency was moved to the War Department (very telling) in 1789. In 1849, the BIA was transferred to the Department of the Interior. The BIA has been responsible for some rather questionable policies, including its decision to educate native children in separate boarding schools in order to  assimilate them. They were often forcibly taken from their homes and were prohibited from speaking their indigenous languages, or engaging in their native practices. Native children were often abused at these schools; some were beaten for practicing the prayers and ceremonies they had been taught at home.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the rise of the American Indian Movement worried the BIA, as the government and its policies and agencies targeting native peoples came under fire. In 1972, 500 members of the American Indian Movement occupied the BIA headquarters in Washington, D.C. for six days, protesting the Trail of Broken Treaties the US had left in its wake throughout it colonial history.