Baptizing the Gun

This story in The New Yorker is about a Nigerian man trying to get through traffic.  He is driving a red Volkswagen Beetle and the first major scene is when it breaks down.  His car is stopped and a Lagos man near the road offers to help.  The narrator, whose name I never quite caught, is terrified by this man and seems to want him to leave as quickly as possible.  The Lagos man does not leave however, and invites himself along for the ride back to where the narrator is staying.  Once they get the car started the Lagos man does not stop talking.  He is constantly saying something about Nigeria or the people or anything he can think of.  The narrator is slightly afraid of this but is also grateful that someone helped him get his car started.  At some point the narrator realizes that he and the Lagos man come from apposing tribes and this scares him even more.  He does not want to offend him or let him know where he comes from.  As they drive he realizes that he has run over something that is kind of large but soft.  After a few moments the Lagos man confirms, “That was a corpse, man” (Akpan 5).  This idea of running over a corpse resonates with the narrator and he often refers back to it on his journey.  At first he is scared and never wants to be that corpse in the road, but as he continues and the environment becomes less stable he starts saying that he wants to be that corpse.  He says, “Let him kill me, auction off or sacrifice my essential organs, and crush my corpse under cars, I think” (Akpan 14).  I thought that this reference back to the corpse was very interesting and it really showed how as time went on he gave up trying.

Once the two get closer into town the Beetle breaks down again.  The entire car ride the narrator had needed to use a bathroom quite badly and takes this opportunity to go out and pee by the train tracks.  The O.P.C catch him and accuse him of defecating, which he did not.  It takes him bribing these men to get out of the charges and be left alone.  All along this drive he has had to bribe people to continue on his way without trouble.  The environment in this part of the world seems to be very different than any that we have really studied so far.  At the end of the story his car breaks down again, but they manage to get it to a fuel station.  Three little children come running up and start begging for them to let their father fix the Beetle.  They make their case by saying, “We need to eat tonight!” and “God shall elect you the new President of out country!” (Akpan 16).  Eventually the narrator does let this man fix his car and after the job is finished he is finally able to get the Lagosian to leave him.

Definitions:

Defunct – no longer in effect or use; not operating or funcitoning

Molue – a bus of some sort

Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice

The story “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” by Nam Le is a well written account of a man’s abnormal relationship with his father.  The author is a writer whose father comes to stay with him for three days.  It seems that they are both from Vietnam because they speak Vietnamese to one another.  Besides the authors struggle to overcome writers block and having to deal with interactions with his father he has a girl friend that does not understand his past. He is very private about the relationship with his father but tells the audience the type of abuse inflicted on him as a child.  He says, “He knew how to cane me twenty times and leave only one black-red welt, like a brand mark across my buttocks” (Le 13).  Linda, the authors’ girlfriend, does not understand how he could be so civil towards a man who was horrible to him as a child. 

Throughout the story I got a sense that being involved in the Vietnam War changed his father.  Most veterans of Vietnam have severe PTSD, but in this case, the man seems to be weighed down by his memories instead of overtaken by them.  His father tells war stories with his old buddies but they seem lighthearted recounts of the old days.  When they get home however, the author asks his dad to tell him the real story.  He wants to know what really happened out there.  He plans to use this story for his own personal benefit; he wants to hopefully sell it.  His father is distant while telling his stories but he does not leave out the part about being tortured.  He says, “They tie you by your thumbs, one arm over the shoulder, the other pulled around the front of the body.  Or they stretch out your legs and tie your middle fingers to your big toes—“ (Le 26).  Overall, the final scene where the author see’s his father burning the story is very moving and brings a deeper insight into their relationship.

Definitions:

Equably – free from many changes or variations; uniform

Defeatism – the attitude, policy, or conduct of a person who admits, expects, or no longer resists defeat

Pg. 151-200 The Lazarus Project

This section of the text gives the reader more information about Brik and Rora’s travels.  When traveling from Ukraine to Moldova there is a scene where they are at the boarder and the guards are examining their passports.  Both have American passports and Brik’s gets accepted with no problem.  Rora’s passport on the other hand is a little shady; there are smudged stamps everywhere.  Brik explains this trick, “washing your passport to cover up for the missing entry stamps” (180 Hemon).  It is interesting the tactics that some immigrants must go through in order to get across a boarder.  On this same page Brik and Rora observe another man who seems to have no passport, but is able to sweet talk and pay his way through the boarder.

We find out a lot of information about Rambo in this section.  Rambo became such a powerful man because he would make deals and con his way into money.  He was in the business of transporting Serb bodies across the boarder so that their families could give them proper burial.  He made a lot of money this way, but because a liability for the government.  Several attempts were made on his life until he was finally shot.  This did not kill him however, and he was smuggled away, out of Sarajevo.  Rora tells this story because he knows that if he ever goes back to a place where Rambo is that he will most likely be killed.  Rora explains, “if he were to go to Sarajevo, Rambo might kill him. He could try to escape from Mostar via Medjugorje, go to Germany or somewhere, but he had no money, knew nobody there” (184 Hermon).

The other story that has been occurring with Lazarus and Olga has turned into a constant search for Isador.  The police want to find Isador because they believe him to have been an anarchist accomplice to Lazarus.  Olga has been hiding Isador at her house and you can tell that there may be some history between the two.  When Miller comes by her house for an interview he is asking her many questions about the whereabouts of Lazarus’s body and where Isador is.  She answers his questions simply and without much information, yet Miller exaggerates everything she seems to be saying.  When Olga says, “Go away, Mr. Miller. Leave me”, he rights “Upon hearing the news, the Jewess wept: ‘Leave me alone to die with my grief.  All I had in the world was my brother Lazarus and now he is lost forever—I cannot even talk to his grave.  I am alone for eternity” (200 Hermon).

Definition:

Recalcitrant – resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant; refractory

Pg. 53-96 The Lazarus Project

The Lazarus Project by, Aleksandar Hermon, is about a young man who emigrated from Bosnia.  He is married to a woman named Mary, and is trying to become a writer in the United States.  Throughout the second section of reading we see how the main character, Brik, travels to Ukraine with his friend Rora.  Rora and Brik knew each other back in Sarajevo before the war.  Brik was able to escape the war by taking classes, but Rora was caught right up in it.  We see how Rora got involved in the fighting because he trusted his friend Rambo.  Rambo was able to get an upper hand during the war through his relationship with a man named Miller.  Miller was a very wealthy American who loved poker, and Rambo beat him miserably in a game.  This particular story is described by Rora, who says, “Miller lost, of course, and Rambo had him in his pocket” (84 Hermon).  This could be the reason why Rora is ultimately alive to tell this tale.  He was able to escape the war and meet back up with Brik and go on to be a photographer.  

The other part of this section is the story of Lazarus and how a policeman killed him.  We meet his sister who is overcome with grief and sorrow to find out that her brother is dead.  This part of the novel confused me because I wasn’t sure who was directly related to Lazarus, and who the real Lazarus was.  Brik tells a story to Rora about a biblical Lazarus, he says, “ ...Lazarus is dead and his sister is friends with a certain Jesus Christ… so she asks him to do something about it…He calls him forth and Lazarus rises from his death…” (76 Hermon).  Due to the fact that there is this biblical tale about Lazarus and a real Lazarus in the story I was confused upon which they were talking about and who the sisters where related to.  In the end, I believe that Olga and Isador are both related to the Lazarus that has been recently killed.

Definitions:

Pomaded – a scented ointment, especially one used for the scalp or for dressing the hair

Cothurni – a grave and elevated style of acting; tragic acting; tragedy

Promulgated – to make known by open declaration; publish

Parsing – to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constitutes, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations 

Extra Credit Speakers

I came and saw the first half of the English speakers in Strom Thurman.  The four speakers were John Persly III, Lindsay Jones, Steve Cats, and Keith Lee Morris.  John Persly and Steve Cats both read poems while Lindsay Jones and Keith Lee Morris read essays or short stories that they had written.  It was harder to follow the poems because they were so short it was difficult to pick up on a central theme, unless you were listening very closely.  The essays were well written and easy to understand and were quite enjoyable to listen to.  The first speaker read a few poems all revolving around the theme of the Apache kid.  He made a statement in the beginning about how he had bought about one hundred of the old western classic movies, and that is where a lot of his inspiration came from.

The second speaker, Lindsay Jones, read a sensitive essay about her experiences housing a Haitian girl in need of medical treatment. She described her feelings towards this little girl and the language barriers that she encountered.  The little girl, Ludmi, loved to help out and even started to call Lindsay mamma.  Lindsay illustrated her feelings of love for Ludmi and how she would be very sad when the day came for Ludmi to go back home to her real family.  The essay was very moving and made the audience feel her struggle of housing a Haitian child for a short period of time.

The third speaker, Steve Cats, read many poems about virtual reality.  Before he read his poems he said, “There is no need for outer space because we have virtual reality.”  I do not quite understand what he meant by this, but his poems were certainly out of this world.  He used a lot of rhyming in his poems but besides that I couldn’t get much out of them.  There was one poem about gloves and human touch but besides that I did not understand much of what this older man was saying.

The fourth and final speaker that I listened to was Keith Lee Morris.  He was by far my favorite speaker to listen to.  He read an essay or short story entitled, “My Roommate Kevin is Awesome.”  The story was relatable because the characters were college age and describing the fantasy college experience.  The main character and his roommate Kevin would throw these crazy parties everyday where unrealistic events would occur.  The first day, Kevin was able to levitate, which attracted the initial crowd of people to their room, making these two guys popular.  After that Ray Charles was in their room, and everyday even crazier events occurred.  It was a very entertaining, funny story and was a good way to end the night.

A Wife's Story and American Dreamer

This weekend while reading “A Wife’s Story” in The Middleman and Other Stories by, Bharati Mukherjee, I was very interested in the story of Panna.  She is an Indian woman living in New York City, trying to get her degree in special education.  You can tell that she has emerged herself in the American culture and has learned to adapt to this different way of life.  When her husband visits the big city and the American people entrance him.  They go site seeing together and he criticizes American culture and the way that Panna seems to accept it.  At one point when the couple are purchasing tickets for a bus tour of the city he says he her, “What was the chap saying? I told you not to wear pants. He thinks you are Puerto Rican.  He thinks he can treat you with disrespect” (Mukherjee 36).  From this quote alone you can see how he thinks down on American culture and believes that he can be controlling towards his wife.  A lot of American women would hear a comment like this and think that it is wrong for a man to talk to a woman in such a commanding way.  On the other hand, Panna had an arranged marriage, a regular custom in India, and is having to deal with the consequences of that.  The article also written by Bharati Mukherjee, explains some of her views of an Indian woman living in an American society.

Mukherjee describes in the article more about how it is being an immigrant.  She is not a native-born American citizen, but worked hard to gain her citizenship so that she could be a part of society.  She says how she had a “love of the ideals embedded in the American Bill of Rights” (“American Dreamer”).  She lived in Canada for 10 years with her husband, Clark.  This time on her life was difficult and she felt a lot of cultural divide.  She struggled with her identity and was not sure whether she would be able to remember and life the old life of India in a new culture of the Americas.  Mukherjee goes on to describe the “dangers of an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality” (“American Dreamer”).  She explains that this theme can be seen in California, where there is increased violence towards minority and ethnic communities.  By the end of the article the reader can tell that Mukherjee really loves being an American citizen and see’s it as a right that she had to earn, it was not handed to her by birth, and is therefore proud of that fact.

Definitions:

Derisive – chatacterized by or expressing derision; contemptuous; mocking

Demagogues – a person, especially an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people

The same River Twice: End of Novel

As the novel comes to an end, the two stories, one of Chris’s life as a young man and the other his life married and with a child on the way, finally come together.  Chris ends up in the everglades in Florida working as a naturalist.  He is not properly qualified for the job as he describes, “I borrowed all his books and learned enough to fool any hapless tourist into believing I knew the area like a Seminole” (161).  He worked as long as he could, loving the nature and tracking the hurricane that finally gave him a reason to quit.  Chris had lost any friends that he made at this job and after the hurricane he went back up to Boston and stayed with his friend Shadrack for a time until he met Rita.  They dated for a while and married in Manhattan where she is originally from.  Keeping a journal had been Chris’s most prized possession at times and relied on it in many occasions where he had no one to turn to.  Now however, with Rita in his life he explains, “The journal had become useless, an obvious dodge” (176).   He no longer needs this form of escape from the outside world because he appears to be happily married. 

As the book comes to an end we see Rita going through labor and giving birth to their son.  She has a long and difficult delivery and Chris handles it the best he can, getting sick at times and being there for her.  Throughout the novel when the author would talk about Chris and Rita there would always be scenes where Chris is out in the woods looking and thinking about nature.  The outdoors seems to calm him and give him greater self worth.  The very last scene is Chris in the woods with his son wanting to tell him all the right and wrong things to do in life.  Instead Chris says, “I give him a leaf which he calmly tastes.  He can’t learn from my mistakes, only from his own” (188).  The real life lesson at the end of the novel is that Chris has learned from every place he traveled and every mistake he has made in his life and now knows that he would not be the person he is if he had not gone through it on his own.

Definitions:

Roving – roaming or wondering

Corrugated – to draw or bend into folds or alternate furrows and ridges

Bathysphere – a spherical diving apparatus from which to study deep-sea life, lowered into the ocean depths by a cable