Author Archives: Chana Halberstam

Final Paper Bibliography

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Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. The Souls of Black Folk; Essays and Sketches. Chicago, A. G. McClurg, 1903. New York :Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968. Print.

The idea of double consciousness can be used in thinking about how both Bigger and RIngo felt when writing as a different race.

Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. Vintage Books, 1991.

I will be analyzing Ringo who, as a slave, wrote orders as a white army general.

Flusser, Vilém, et al. Does Writing Have a Future? NED – New edition ed., vol. 33, University of Minnesota Press, 2011. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttfvw

The tools used by each “author” are significant. I will be reading the scene where Bigger uses a knife to sharpen his pencil, and writes “asthmatically” using a Flusserian lens. Additionally, Ringo’s usage of alternate mediums to accomplish his authorship is significant to read through this lens as well.

Johnson, Barbara. The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race, and Gender.

I read an excerpt from her analysis of Bigger’s ransom note, which was really interesting. The online preview cut off there, so I put it on hold at my library (and can update the citation once I get it).

Matthews, Kadeshia. “BLACK BOY NO MORE? VIOLENCE AND THE FLIGHT FROM BLACKNESS IN RICHARD WRIGHT’S NATIVE SON.” Modern Fiction Studies 60.2 (2014): 276-97,417. Web.

In this journal, Matthews discusses how Bigger rejects his blackness, which can be tied into Du Bois’ double consciousness.

“OLD SOUTHERN VOODOOISM.” New York Times (1857-1922) [New York, N.Y.] 1894: 20. Web.

A (somewhat racist) New York Times article that discusses slave voodooism in the south. There is a part of the article in which they mention charms to ward off the evil eye, one of which involves writing with pokeberry juice on a piece of paper. (This is a bit of a stretch, but Granny did many things out of superstition, is it so far off to assume that Ringo did the same? Even if he did not have any other tools to write with, I think it can still be somewhat significant?)

Wright, Richard, and Arnold Rampersad. Native Son: the Restored Text Established by the Library of America. Harper Perennial, 2005.

I will be analyzing Bigger’s ransom note, in addition to his infatuation with the media, specifically the newspaper articles that wrote his story for him.

 

 

Topic Proposition

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For my final paper, I would like to explore how writing in certain roles, using certain tools, can help the author achieve different things. This can be seen in several works that we read throughout the semester, but I would specifically like to focus on the authorship of Charles Chesnutt and Faulkner’s Ringo.

Through inscription, Charles Chesnutt and Ringo went through a bit of role reversal in terms of their race. Chesnutt was a black man who wrote in a mostly white genre, and challenged that genre by writing the Conjure Tales. Similarly, Ringo, a slave, disguised himself as a white officer to write orders for mules, through the use of business writing. These roles made their writing a more difficult achievement, if not physically, then mentally. I would like to bring in Flusser over here in order to pronounce the significance of writing that comes as a product of difficulty.

Chesnutt’s use of stenography in addition to his writing is also significant in this aspect.  “Stenography, as a writing system that claims to record and preserve the inflections of human speech, and literary realism, a form of writing that claims to register the vicissitudes of human experience, both participate in a form of mimesis that was, by the end of the nineteenth century, the primary site of critical discord surrounding American fiction” (Sussman). This can be contrasted with the business writing that Ringo did, and I’d like to find some sources that speak about the growth of business writing and its significance. I also want to do some research on pokeberries which Faulkner’s characters used as ink, to see if there’s anything especially significant about it (I don’t expect to find much on that end, but if I do, that would be cool!). I would also love to find some sources that speak specifically about Ringo playing a white author, which may be difficult to find, but interesting and important for my argument if/when I do.

I may also want to make a note comparing Julius to Ringo, by (once again,) comparing and contrasting stenography and business writing (and their functions and goals).

 

Sources:

The Unvanquied by William Faulkner

Does Writing Have a Future by Vilem Flusser

Sussman, Mark. “Charles W. Chesnutt’s Stenographic Realism.” MELUS, vol. 40, no. 4, Dec. 2015, pp. 48–68. academic-oup-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu, doi:10.1093/melus/mlv045.

McElrath, Joseph, Jr. “To Be an Author” Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905. Chesnutt, Chesnutt,. Princeton University Press, 2014. Open WorldCat, http://www.myilibrary.com?id=629662.

Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell), et al. Charles W. Chesnutt Essays and Speeches. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1999.

Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford University Press, 1999.

Was Richard Wrighting about Double Consciousness?

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In Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” one can note the intense self consciousness associated with protagonist Bigger Thomas. Reading the book with a Du Bois lens, we can assume that Bigger transcribes the feelings associated with double consciousness onto himself. He knows who he is, and how he acts around his friends and family, but when he goes out into the world, he is also incredibly and constantly made aware of the stereotypes etched onto him because of his blackness.

When Bigger went to the movies with Jack, he begins to get enthusiastic about his new job. He starts to daydream about the Dolton’s daughter, Mary, and how maybe one day she’d like to “come to the South Side and see the sights” (34). He gets excited about this, and he and Jack talk and fantasize about the possibility of him and Mary sleeping together, and about how he now has the opportunity to learn from the Doltons. However, when Bigger first walks into the Dolton’s home, we see that his fantasy and conversation with Jack were mostly locker room talk. Bigger’s eagerness and aggression is replaced with timidness and submissiveness, as he soon remembers who he is, and how he looks from an outside, white perspective. He is quickly fearful of the Doltons and of the unfamiliarity that comes with being within a white home. Even when Mary acts as she does in his daydream, and asks to visit the South Side, rather than excitement, Bigger feels discomfort and fear. He feels cornered– both literally, in the front seat of the car, and figuratively, when in conversation with Jan and Mary. He becomes suspicious of their motives and uncomfortable by their insistence of inclusion.

While Bigger’s timid actions don’t change much in the second book, his mindset certainly does. Although on the outside, he still maintained the submissiveness associated with double consciousness, he now found those stereotypes useful in asserting his innocence. He became convinced that all saw him as a helpless black man, too stupid to commit murder, or kidnap, or hurt Mary in any way. He used his submissiveness to blend into the shadows around him, to play stupid, to play innocent. On the inside, however, Bigger became confident and cocky about the murder that he committed, as though it had fed a fire that he did not previously know he had inside of him. The way that others viewed him, which for so long had held him back quickly became an important aspect of his survival.

As Bigger’s innocence depended on the maintenance of the facade that he upheld, he needed to point the blame onto another. Not any other, though, but rather, another color. The second book often speaks of contrasting colors, in which Wright juxtaposes the colors white and black. “He saw her breath as a white thread stretching out over a cast black gulf.” (236) He speaks of the room being “black-dark” and the city as “white, still” (235,241). These contrasting colors make it clear that the world was mostly black and white. From Bigger’s perspective, all of the people who were white were immediately innocent, while black people didn’t stand a chance. However, with the introduction to Jan, Bigger meets a new color, and one that is capable of standing out in a stark contrast from the black and white world. When signing off the ransom note, Bigger essentially spells out that a Communist took Mary. He could have simply signed it “–The Communist Party.” Rather than doing that, however, Bigger used the color associated with the Communists, which is the color red. The color red allowed Bigger to slip away from the spotlight, and propelled the reader of the note away from him and toward the new color, and the new threat.

Faulkner’s Master-Slave Dialectic

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In Faulkner’s book, The Unvanquished, we are introduced to a cast of characters who entirely unconventional in terms of the time period in which the stories take place. The dynamics that are seen between the Sartoris family and Ringo is specifically unexpected, and reminds me a bit of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic– Bayard and Granny are so dependent on Ringo, that they are practically slave to him.

We can see Bayard’s dependence on Ringo in the first story, Ambuscade, when Bayard uses Ringo to balance the musket and shoot at the soldier watching the house. “…the musket was already riding up across Ringo’s back as he stooped.” (26) Bayard was too weak to carry and shoot the musket on his own, and he therefor relied on Ringo to shoulder the burden of the attempted murder. This burden was not just physical–the musket was not just heavy– rather, had Bayard actually succeeded in killing the soldier, he would have depended on Ringo to take on half the burden. Bayard may feel this way because Ringo is more intelligent than him, and therefor, he would have been able to quickly think of a way out of the mess that they had gotten into.

Although this may be the case, Bayard does not want to imagine that his relationship with Ringo is so interdependent. While he acknowledges the superiority of Ringo’s intellect, he also feels that this difference between them is meaningless–as meaningless as the color of their skin. Obviously this is not the case. Intellectual superiority is most definitely not meaningless, and neither was skin color in Mississippi during the mid-1800s. However, by Bayard imagining that him and Ringo are on the same stature, he can also imagine that he is not nearly as dependent on Ringo as he truly is.

The occasion with the musket was not the only time that a Sartois depended on Ringo. They leaned on and relied on him many times, especially in terms of writing, a tool that he developed and taught himself. During the horse scam, Ringo was the one who wrote the orders for the horses. This gave Ringo, a slave, the delusion that he had an unconventional amount of power. However, while he was the one writing the orders, he was only playing the role of a white man, and only playing the role of someone who had enough power to write and give orders. He was not an author, but merely an actor with a script. Additionally, while Granny allowed Ringo to be deluded as such, and have a say in the happenings of the scam, she also believed in the strict hierarchical structure which made Ringo, despite his obvious skills, on a lower pedestal than her. As a woman in the south, there were not many people that Granny was superior to, despite her skin color. She therefor needed to assert her dominance as best as she could, and put Ringo down, in as subtle a way as possible. Which is why when Ringo referred to Ab Snopes, a white nobody by his first name, Granny needed to correct him, and tell him to refer to him properly. While she may have put Ab above Ringo in this manner (thus putting herself above him to), only moments after correcting him, Ringo went to get the ink to write another order for mules.

Granny herself was rather unconventional as well. As mentioned, white women did not have much power during that time. Despite this, Granny had an incredible amount of pull. She was intelligent, shrewd, and fairly powerful. In a sense, I feel as though Granny is Faulkner’s white Julius. Both Granny and Julius do things out of self interest and benefit. They were both masters in the arts of scamming–Granny, when she scammed the Yankees into giving her money, and Julius, when he scammed John and Annie into getting his way. Because of the little power that they each had, both Granny and Julius needed to use secondary things or people in order to get their ways. Julius did this through the use of his stories, and Granny did this by using the boys as tools to get what she wanted. Additionally, they were both incredibly superstitious. Julius was a believer (or at least, a fake believer,) of folklore, which helped him in his scams. Granny hid the chest and was exceptionally paranoid based on her superstitions, and the dreams that she had, which worked to her benefit as well.

 

Playing Chesnutt

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Playing a book rather than reading it definitely changes some aspects of how I viewed the stories. As Chesnutt, I could attempt to understand how both his personal life (as a black ‘freeman’ in America), and society around him helped shape and give meaning to his writing. Additionally, while authorial intent is generally something that should not be argued, by pretending to be Chesnutt, not only could I do just that, but I can give meanings to many aspects to the stories as well.

While that was definitely the fun part of the project, there were some frustrating aspects. For one, as a young, fairly unaccomplished college student, it was somewhat difficult to attempt to get into the mind of a very accomplished, published author. In order to attempt to do so accurately, I needed to research both Chesnutt, those involved with him, and those who wrote about him. However, while it was not difficult to find articles, reviews and works about Chesnutt, there was almost too much information to sift through. Were there to be just a few works, I would have been able to pick the best suited one, and use it to my benefit. But, as someone who has a hard time making decisions, it was a bit overwhelming to see so many research options, yet only be able to use one or two of them.

It is for this reason that if I were to play this game again, I probably would not play as Chesnutt. Although I had a good time pretending to be him, I feel as though being a paratextual may have been more enjoyable for me. By doing so, I would be able to create a unique persona and personality, rather than relying on facts or reality (which would definitely make my work more creative and exciting.) Additionally, while I would still need to do some research, that research would be on my own parameters, and based on aspects of a character that I created, rather than one that already exists. I also would have found it fun to, as a paratextual figure, breach the divide between the frames, and make an attempt at communication not just with Chesnutt and other real-world characters, but with people like Julius and Annie as well.

The only thing that I would change about the game is the inability to delete a move once it’s been created. Although I have yet to accidentally hit post on something before I was ready to do so, this created a bit of anxiety that my computer would malfunction (totally probable), which would cause the post to go live before I was ready for it to do so (somewhat less probable,) and an embarrassingly unedited first draft would suddenly be available for all of English 321 to read. (And sure, I could have written it out first on a Google document and then transferred it over to the game, but it’s 2019, I’m a millennial, and we prefer instant gratification.)

Autobiographies and Processing

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When reading excerpts of Christopher Hager’s book Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing, I found that I got caught on one line in particular. “Autobiography is the dominant form of antebellum African American literature.” (Hager, 81) At first glance, the reason for this is fairly obvious. The individuals writing their autobiographies had gone through an incredibly difficult time, and they wanted to tell America and the world about slavery from their point of view. However, when examining the authors that Hager writes about, one can conclude that this may not be the case. The authors discussed are not Fredrick Douglass– they didn’t write as eloquently, nor as grammatically correct as he. Additionally, most of them did not even attempt to publish their narratives. Why then, would they have written an autobiography? When thinking about this line a bit more, and considering Flusser’s arguments in Does Writing Have a Future? I wonder if perhaps they wrote their narratives for themselves, as a way to process the horrors of slavery that they had witnessed and were subject to.

As Flusser explains, “writing is a gesture that aligns and arranges ideas.” (6) That is, writing takes thoughts that run rampant within one’s mind, and arranges them neatly. Takes them out of a chaotic brain, stops them from running in circles, and makes them linear, on the pages. In doing this, one can process and understand their thoughts in a more cohesive way than before.

This could explain why African Americans mostly wrote autobiographies after emancipation. In order to move forward in life and to understand what the next chapter can hold, one must understand what occurred in the past. Newly emancipated slaves, most of whom were barely literate, needed to go through this process. They didn’t necessarily write their autobiographies for other people to read, but rather, for themselves, so that they could process what they had been through. Hager touches on this when he mentions that in writing autobiographies, the authors were brought both “closer to selfhood,” and “further from an authentic view of slavery.” (82) These autobiographies reconstructed their painful past, and allowed them to understand their own personal story, and what they themselves had been through.

John Washington, for example, kept a diary through much of his life as a slave, yet he neglected to mention his enslavement and mostly wrote about those around him and the woman he loved. However, after he was emancipated, Washington rewrote his diary, changing only a few small details to allude to his life as a slave, and to his freedom. Perhaps he did this to process; if Washington never planned to publish his diary, why else would he have rewritten it?  Why else would he have written over his diary, only changing a few words and sentences to make analogies about his life as a slave? Why would he do this, if not to process what he had been through?

I feel as though it is narratives like this which are perhaps even more important than narratives like Fredrick Douglass’. Although Douglass wrote eloquent and important work, his writing was for the public. His writing was for people to read, and for them to be changed. However, it was not necessarily as personal as the narratives discussed in Hager’s book. These stories, written in mostly broken English, portray a side to slavery that is difficult to see when it’s written about with clear literacy. It tells the story not only of the struggle for literacy and freedom, but of the need to put words on paper, despite the limitations set before them. It tells the story of the need to process slavery, despite never being given the tools to do so.

“Honor Maketh Man”

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After reading over Fredrick Douglass’ Narrative Of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, I can’t help but think of the Code of Honor. Pre-Civil War, the white men of the South followed a rigorous Code of Honor which dictated the way that they behaved. The most important aspect of this Code of Honor was (as one could infer from the name of it,) honor, and the defending of said honor.

However, as righteous as a Code of Honor sounds, it was, in fact, far from that. This is due to the fact that what we consider honor in 2019 is vastly different than that of the 1800s. Image was very important, and a man’s honor was tied to that image. An honorable man would be masculine, powerful, strong and aggressive. The more masculine and powerful a man, the more honorable he was considered. Additionally, those who were dependent upon a man reflected his honor– be it his wife, his children, or his slaves. Therefor, if a man were to be considered honorable, he would need to establish complete dominance over those who depended on him. He did this by ensuring that his dependents would be submissive, cooperative, and obedient by means of brute force.  A man’s honor was everything, and so he had to defend his honor at all costs– even if those costs involved incredible violence and pain.

In reading Douglass’ narrative, I can’t help but feel incredibly angry at this system of honor that was instilled within Southern white men since birth. I feel as though it was this system that pushed slave owners to treat their slaves with such cruelty and lack of regard for their well being. The beatings that Douglass experienced and witnessed were not mere pats on the cheek for wrongdoings (or even lack thereof). They were gory bloodbaths in which “the most heart-rendering shrieks” (Douglass, 14) ensued– regardless of the age or sex of the victim. That wasn’t honor. That wasn’t honor, unless being honorable means that you are a bloodthirsty tyrant, determined to pain as many people as possible, determined to scar anyone that disobeys even slightly, or looks at you wrong. That was an assertion of dominance, done to ensure that a slave would never dare disobey his master. That was done to ensure that every time a slave even consider going against a master’s words, he would think of the beatings that he felt or witnessed, and decide against it.

Yet in the South, that was honorable.

In the beginning of Douglass’ narrative, he speaks about how slave owners often raped their slaves, and then, when the child was born, tore him/her from their mother and sold them to a different master. Douglass believed that this was done because a man wouldn’t be able to mercilessly whip his own child, wouldn’t be able to watch the son that he isn’t ashamed of tie up the son that he is. While that may have been the case, I believe that the reason he did this was to (once again,) assert his dominance and defend his honor. To show the poor woman that he impregnated (against her will,) that even something that came from within her is more his than hers. Something as important as a child, meant to be shared with not one parent but two, was completely his, simply because he was master, and she a slave. Thus, the child was his. His to do with as he pleased, his to sell to a cotton farmer states away, and then forget about just as quickly.

The stories which Fredrick Douglass recounts of the unjust actions inflicted upon slaves turns my stomach. As if it was not enough that people were forced to serve others based on a factor as unimportant as the color of their skin. As if that was not enough, they were beaten horrendously, made to sleep on the floor, given minimal food and provisions to help them get through a day of backbreaking labor. Children, given nothing but a shirt to wear, regardless of the season. All of that, to establish dominance. All of that to live up to a meaningless code, to defend an image so skewed, an honor so false.

Does Writing Have a Future?

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Does Writing Have a Future? by Vilem Flusser discusses how the advances in technology may one day cause writing to be obsolete and unnecessary for most, used only by historians and other specialists. While Flusser may be correct in this theory, he also discusses how the importance of writing is not one that can be done away with. He states, rightfully so, that “Writing cannot just be overcome.” (Flusser, 21) I agree with this, and would like to expand on it further.

One thing that made me somewhat uneasy, is Flusser’s claim that many people will be hesitant to learn the codes of the future, not because they believe it to be unnecessary, but because they are lazy, and have a sort of superiority complex, feeling as though written words are superior to that of technological ones. While I agree with the latter statement, I believe that it is wrong to say that people will feel this way due to laziness, nobility, or because they think themselves as superior. Writing, just as any art form, is the process of expending artistic and creative energy. It can not, and should not, be exchanged for a new platform, whether or not that new platform makes it easier to get ideas across to an audience. There are various other artistic forms that are constantly gaining new mediums to make it more accessible and easier for the artists. However, while that may be the case, the artists who are introduced to that new medium are not going to reject the old methods because it’s not as easy to use. Take painting, for example. Oil paints have been around since the Renaissance, while acrylic paints only began to surface around the ’30s or ’40s. While many artists use acrylic paints because they are easier to manipulate and put on canvas, there are many who still use oil paints, the older medium, because that is their preferred method of expression.

The same can be said for writing. Although new media platforms are high on the rise, writers who write for creative purposes will be hesitant to use them. Not because they think that they are superior to these new platforms, but rather, because these new methods do not help them express themselves creatively, and they have little to gain from speaking into a microphone.

Additionally, Flusser speaks in depths about the old form of writing, or inscription, in which people carved words into clay or marble. He makes the important distinction between mediums that made inscription laborious, such as bronze or marble, versus mediums that made inscription somewhat easier, such as clay. He notes that writing which remained legible for a longer period of time was engraved  upon the more difficult medium, while writing that faded quicker was inscribed upon the easier medium. When reading this, I can’t help but think of things that are easy to write about, and compare them with things that are difficult to write about. Things that are easy to write about are somewhat like carving into clay. The words come out smoothly and quickly, but they don’t necessarily have everlasting importance or significance. Things that are difficult to write about, on the other hand, don’t come out as easily. There may be jagged line breaks, or pauses where the writer needs to catch his breath before continuing, as the effort of writing something that is painful can be laborious. However, this writing is far more significant than something that is easy to write. When a piece like that is finished, like marble, it does not fade as quickly. It is long lasting and important.

Seeing as things that are difficult to write about, or inscribe, can be strenuous, imagine how long someone who carved words into marble must have thought about each word before etching it. Imagine how they must have thought about the significance of each word before beginning the process of chiseling it into stone. One wrong word, one wrong letter, would make the entire piece obsolete, the entire backbreaking task meaningless. Now, while the process of writing may be easier than carving words into stone, the task itself can still be hard, as mentioned above. We still need to take pauses at times, seek a word that will better suit our needs, even with the luxury of the backspace button. Imagine, for a moment, a time when we wouldn’t need to search for the perfect word(s). Imagine, for a moment, a time when words appeared as quickly as the mind could imagine them, simple codes taking away the need to ponder anything significant. That wouldn’t be something helpful, but rather a form of thievery. Thievery of the arts, thievery of the words that are difficult to write, but that are important nonetheless. Art like that wouldn’t be significant, nor would it be long lasting. It would be temporary and unimportant, fading as soon as the next big technological ‘advance’ erupts.