General background on the Great Depression (via UIllinois' awesome Modern American Poetry site): click here. This site is great not only for its historical overviews, but for its links to the photography and artwork of the era.
We listened to a few clips from Studs Terkel's remarkable oral history of the Great Depression entitled Hard Times. Click here to read more about the book and listen to audio MP3s of the recordings he made. Read more about Terkel and his incredible work here.
Finally, check out this incredible timeline of the New Deal here and a more general timeline of the 1930s here.
A Shape to Fill a Lack
ReplyDeleteAddie's section was my favorite part of the whole book (I think. Maybe.), and my favorite part of this section is the paragraph that begins "So I took Anse" (Sorry guys, I have a different edition with different page numbers).
Anyway, I love how in this section, Addie sort of proposes a theory of language-- where words come from, and how they relate to the material and the emotional worlds. She does not believe that words are ever good enough: she says that "words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at." She uses motherhood, pride, and fear as examples of words that do not adequately express the reality that they represent. But what's interesting to me is that she concludes that the people who invented these words must never have had the experiences, because the people who HAVE had the experience know that you don't NEED any words. For Addie, words are "just a shape to fill a lack."
So words are a fetish.
I'm wondering whether anybody can help me think through the spider analogy. What are the spiders "never touching"? Each other? The beam (reality)?
Also, I think it's interesting that marriage and sex do not violate her aloneness (as she says), but there's something about beating and bearing children that connects her to other people.
Throughout this section I found several things that were of particular interest to me.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting, however, would have to be the glimpse into Addie's thoughts, that we were finally privileged to hear! So far I have found myself frustrated mostly with Anse. I didn't like him because I thought that he was lazy, selfish, and unloving. However, after reading what Addie has to say I've found myself doing a complete reverse and being angry at her. She isn't exactly the person that I'd made her out to be in my mind, or that I had wanted her to be so badly. She isn't the devoted mother figure who strongly runs her family, but instead, it sounds to me as though she is resentful towards her children and begrudges Anse for marrying her and "violating her loneliness." Now, instead of being frustrated with Anse for repeatedly saying he doesn't “hold this trip against her”, I am angry at Addie for asking this as a way to get revenge on Anse. So far this act of revenge has cost the family so many hardships. Besides the drowning mules, financial hardships, Anse not getting his teeth, Jewel losing his beloved horse, and Cash breaking his leg again, this trip has also done an immense toll on the psychological state of every member in the family, especially poor little Vardaman. How could a mother wish this upon her husband or her children?
Even more so, this makes me so mad at Addie because Anse never really did anything hugely wrong to her. Addie says herself that she knows Anse cares/loves her, even though he might not say it the right way. It seems so unfair to me that Addie is the one seeking revenge when she had the affair in the first place. I truly feel sorry for the family.
Consequently, maybe because Addie lives in a time era centered around women marrying and having families, all of this transpires. It’s sad to think that this demand made by Addie isn’t necessarily to seek revenge on Anse as an individual but as payback for being forced into a lifestyle that she didn’t want but had to live because of the society in which she was born into.
Of course, all of this is my opinion and I could very well be wrong about any of it or most of it.