Portayal of Women

The portrayal of women in these couple of texts I read was not shocking to me. It would have had I not known about it before. I have seen this trend throughout history, and I can still see it today. Women being helpless, straight and adorable has always been accepted and as our discussion in class brought up, shows like My Sweet 16 promote this theme. Of course it has been more apparent in the past. Films like Birth of a Nation clearly demonstrate this theme, women are stupid, vulnerable, and should be sweet and angelic. Even stories told by my grandparents seem strange to me, I remember a story my grandmother told me that was essentially the same sort of plot line as Lucy Nelson. She told me about a girl she knew that liked to play with boys and boy toys, so she gave my grandmother all of her dolls. Then one day the girl’s mother was concerned so she took her to the “beauty parlor” and made her get a perm and someone told her she was pretty so she got mad and washed out her curls. Her mother disowned her after she got a girlfriend. The thing that really struck me about my grandmother’s story was that seemed to think the mother was justified.

The ending of "The Count and The Cousin"

In walks the count. “I can’t lie to you anymore, my dear…I am your cousin.” She looked at him with watery eyes “OH MY GAWD!!” She didn’t know what to say, so instead they threw themselves into each others arms in an incestuous moment of passion. Their love was too strong to tear them apart by simply blood relations and a matter of nationality. She loved his whiskers, his manly scent. There was nothing that would draw her away. They soon married, the count and the little lady had 7 children together, 3 of which where birth defect free. Ever since they lived happily ever after.

Alluwee Brown, and the Tragic End of Unlearned “Jim”

I found this tale of “Alluwee Brown, and the Tragic End of Unlearned “Jim”” to be extremely depressing. I don’t even really know what to say about it. I was just so struck by how sad it was. He was so in love with the girl and he never knew how she felt about him until it was too late. He never felt worthy of anything and others helped to contribute to that. He was a selfless person, and never knew that he was capable of so much more. I can’t seem to pick up on what the story was trying to get at in terms of messages about education or love. What I interpret it as, is that a lack of knowledge and an abundance of misfortune doesn’t make someone less of a person, emotion still exists and often a different kind of intelligence that cannot be reached through education and school is present.

Wiki Assignment ("Warriors of the Rainbow")

"Warriors of the Rainbow" depicts a world in which certain people will become leaders. They will lead people to understanding the gods of the earth and how to make it beautiful and free of toxins. The ideal world is one of simplicity, where "...children would once again be able to run free and enjoy the treasures of Nature and Mother Earth."

Current ideals are also advertised to be simplistic, but this kind of "simplicity" is simplicity through technology, but i think it's clear that to the well being of the earth, technology is detrimental.

Although I don't know that the preservation of the earth is the only message to the story. I think that a lot of it is preservation of culture; trying to overcome others prejudice to preserve what the author's tribe believes in. The author states at the end that she wants her children to be "Warriors of the Rainbow" which in some ways says to me that it's about culture, heritage, rights of passage etc. (not sure, just a thought)

Wiki Assignment ("The Runaways")

When the grandmother got to the river, she promised the cranes that she would use her magic to transform them into any creature they wished to be. After all "It must be so dull to live in the water!" The cranes replied that they both wished to be great lions. The old woman agreed and she began to cross the river. After she got to the other side she started to walk away from the water. "HEY!" said the cranes "We want to be great lions, when will you transform us?"
"Never!" said the old woman, she stood next to the river taunting and making fun of the "ugly" cranes and told them that they would never be anything more than dumb birds.
Hiding in a bush nearby was the couple, they combined their magic and turned the cranes into lions, who then ate the old woman. Never before could their magic have been so powerful, but it was their love that made it that much stronger.

"Very Short on Law and Order"

Very Short on Law and Order is an unbelievable story. The narrative of feuds, journeys, death and crime are so unreal when put in the perspective of the people involved.

One of my favorite characters from the story, “La Brie” is a classic villain. He holds grudges against the narrator for what we as readers do not understand, the reason behind it was untold and that fact portrays him to be very unjust and evil. This makes his intentions almost humorous. “La Brie” seems to be a very important figure to the plot in the beginning and we follow him closely until he quickly dies as a result of his grudge. This is an important part to the plot movement, but I expected him to be a main character throughout.

Another interesting I noticed about the story was the use of alcohol as a sign of weakness. It seems that in a lot of fictional adventure stories it is acceptable for a heroic character to drink. Except that in this story it seems that it’s the desire for alcohol that makes the characters weak. Beaver Tom was clearly a failure who couldn't even stay on his horse and the criminals wanted the peach brandy in the ambulance and Old Man Cohn lied to try to keep it.

As I think about it more I think that the theme may be the weakness of desire in general, because of the things people wanted many of them ended up worse off and sometimes dead as in the case of Big Nose George.

Big Nose George was probably the best character from this story. He was a criminal, but he had a soft spot. He didn't want the narrator (Squaw Kid) to die. I can’t see any selfish motives in saving him from La Brie, but I can’t decide whether the years after knowing Squaw Kid were ones of extreme change or not. Maybe his soft spot disappeared, but to me he just seems like a man with nothing to lose.

I absolutely loved this story. It seemed so classic and as far as I understand, it’s Andrew Garcia’s first hand experiences, which makes it so much better. I usually hate this genre, it makes me think of dumb guys chewing on weed in the west, but the character development was really effective and you could imagine what the characters mind set was and what they were supposed to look and sound like.

"The Sheriff's Children"

After our discussion, I don't really know what to think about the author's intentions in the story. I thought a lot about what the author was trying to say about the civil war, racism and people in general.
I think that he wanted to make a statement about humanity's submissive qualities; how we accept things to be the way they're "supposed" to be, we allow ourselves to be brainwashed and our natural morals to be erased.
It took so much for he sheriff to realize that he had done wrong. Not only did he not realize that it was wrong to prejudge someone based upon their race, but something as obviously immoral as selling two human beings (not only human beings but ones he should have respected and loved) into slavery, should not have taken so much as it did to resonate in his head and for him to finally realize that there are so much more important things in life than doing what is self preserving and crowd pleasing. In the end, he was too late, and I feel like it's a message about the obliviousness of people and our inevitable doom to fail and make conscious mistakes.
I think it also made a statement about the fact that we prejudge things that we have never experienced...The town hadn't been hit by the war, but they waged it themselves even though they were clueless.