Sutpen's New Identities in A Mercy

Throughout Morrison's novel, A Mercy, it has become apparent that Senhor D'Ortega, while not the main character of the novel by any means, plays a role similar to that of Thomas Sutpen in William Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom!  D'Ortega is a condescending man preoccupied with his money and land, and owns slaves as does Thomas Sutpen.  However, D'Ortega's inhumanity is the most similar characteristic between the two men.  Both plantation owners view slaves as inhuman, but they also retain little compassion for even the free individuals in their lives.  Both ignore their wives, and further disrespect their marriages by keeping slave mistresses in the household.  Jacob Vaark, on the other hand, seems much more sensitive to his wife and family.  He holds the same desires as Sutpen and D'Ortega for sons to carry on his lineage, but this is characteristic of any Southern gentleman in the  17th century. Jacob and Sutpen also share their backgrounds in which they came from nothing, and make themselves in the South through acquisition of tracts of land.  Jacob, however, inherits his land from a family member through legitimate means, while Sutpen is alluded to have wrested his land immorally from the unwilling hands of a Native American. Jacob also feels concern and compassion for his wife, and even gratitude toward her for being able to keep the farm without the help of a slave.  He even refuses to bring in a male slave in fear that the slave will rape his wife. While there are basic similarities between Jacob and Sutpen, the morals and character of D'Ortega and Sutpen are much more similar and important.

Comparisons between Absalom, Absalom! and A Mercy

After our discussion on Tuesday, I began to notice the major comparisons between Moby Dick, Absalom, Absalom! and A Mercy. While I did notice some concerning Moby Dick, I think the most significant similarities are between Absalom, Absalom and A Mercy. The two characters I wish to compare are Sutpen and D'Ortega. In Absalom, Absalom! Sutpen was the character who all the drama was centered around. He came form a nothing background having grown up in a very poor family, he gained his wealth mysteriously, and then built a huge mansion to try to prove his importance. The character of D'Ortega is very similar to Sutpen. Though we don't know very much about him, we know that he has a lavishly built housed but very little money since he is trying to borrow money from Jacob. D'Ortega is the character who Sutpen strives to be. He has a powerful name and can get what he wants because of it. He has vast amounts of land and slaves at his disposal. A similarity between the two is also their slave mistresses. Sutpen has many mistresses he doesn’t really care about and though we don’t know much about D’Ortega, we know he has one based on the smell of her “clove-laced sweat” (24). We aren’t yet sure how big of a role D’Ortega will play in the novel but it’s interesting to see him as a Southern plantation owner, much like what Sutpen strove to be.

Motherhood

After our class discussion, I paid more attention to the themes of motherhood that can be seen in the book. I think this topic began more prominent in the next chapters. It is clear from  the reading that the defining moment in Floren's life was being chosen by her mother as the child to leave her guardianship, and she spends much of her existance trying to validate her worth. The need for a mother stretches farther than this one character. In particular, Florens and Lina share the fate of having been raised without a mother. Their story lines are really tied together on page 73, when their stories are paralled to that of baby birds, abandoded in their nests. It reads, "Florens barely breathes. "And the eggs?' she asks. 'They hatch alone,' says Lina. 'Do they live?' Florens' whispering is urgent. 'We have,' says Lina."
I think the reason this strange group of characters is able to live together successfully is their common need for a mother figure, or any type of family. On page 69 it says, "As long as Sir was alive it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family--not even a like minded group. They were orphans, each and all."

Lina

I found Lina's chapter to be particularly interesting.  Although it is not told from a first person perspective we get the sense that Lina is a very observant character in the novel.  She pays close attention to so may things, and has her own way of interpreting them.  She reminds me a lot of Magawisca because she does think highly of nature, and even at one point on page 62 it describes a story she told to Florens, and she uses an eagle and her nest in the story, but really it is about orphans like herself and Florens.  She assures Florens that the eggs hatched alone, but they survived because Florens and herself are surviving without their mothers.  It also was interesting to see how Mother-driven Lina is in this chapter.  It seems the way she treats and thinks about Florens is in a very mother-like manner.  She is worried for Florens because she cannot protect her on her journey, that she can protect her from men.  She sees an evil almost in the blacksmith that Florens is too blind with love to see, Lina knows she is being careless but she cannot convince Florens that the man does not love her back.  It is also interesting how much resentment Lina has towards Sorrow.  It is hard to understand why, because I have not seen Sorrow do much to deserve the resentment.  Although it does seem that Sorrow is lazy and does not do much work, and in the beginning of the chapter we saw that one of the things that Lina learned when she was with the Presbyterians is that those that are idol anger God, and that it is sinful.  Lina works hard, and when Florens arrives Lina likes her and cherishes her because she is a hard-worker too, but Sorrow is not like that.  Sorrow doesn't seem to have very much skill.  Lina even tries to convince Mistress that Sorrow is the reason that her children died, that Sorrow is pure evil and she cannot help it but she is.  It just shows how much Lina thinks the natural world influences the things going on.  Just like she thinks that Sir became sick and died because he cleared out all those trees to build a huge house without asking the forests' permission.  Almost like she thinks that the natural world is exacting justice on the family because they have become careless with it.

Floren's Lover

   Throughout the book, Florens and other characters reference the blacksmith whom Florens seems to have a crush on. The blacksmith, being a free black man, comes up often and seems to play a passing yet important role in the novel. But why is Florens so infatuated with this man? There could be several reasons for her interest, including the fact that he is a free man and also black. As a child, Florens has always been a victim of the ongoing slave trade and the numerous conflicts that it brings forth. She was taken away from her mother and younger brother at the mere age of eight. She now works for wealthy individuals that don’t seem to fully understand her or her life. Florens may be envious of the blacksmith for his freedom. Its logical to assume that as a slave, she may envision a life of freedom in her own future. To her, the blacksmith could make that possible. The theme of slave relations in the novel may prove to be a bigger topic than one would have presumed. In the coming chapters, I would not be surprised to see some form of increased radical racial discrimination. Unlike Absolom Absolom! This novel is before the civil war, and enslaving black people was not an uncommon event.

God's Wrath

The misfortunes that befall the Vaark household often are referenced in a way that characterize them as results of God's vengeance or wrath. Every member of the household either stubbornly rejects or does not actively adhere to the Christian faith. Instead of devoting his life to God, Jacob focuses on profits as a means to procure material luxuries. When given a chance to accept the religious practices of the community surrounding her, Rebekka is angered by them and treats them with contempt. It can be argued, as I'm sure it would have been by the Anabaptists of the community that God was punishing the Vaarks by taking away four of their children. Members of the Christian community will not even associate with the household after the first child dies from fever. This "plague" is revisited more harshly upon Jacob and Rebekka, both of whom were stricken with smallpox. As Rebekka lays in the midst of her delirium and looks into the tarnished silver mirror, a symbol of Jacob's useless materialistic nature, she looks upon her face and apologizes to it, although she makes no clear indication of the reason for her apology. Perhaps she is apologizing for her faithlessness to the God that she began praying to when she was stricken with her fever.

Lina's Perspective

I think it would be fair to argue( and maybe a little too obvious) that Lina's perspective is very similar to Magawisca. Both view the Europeans through the lens of their own culture, and both feel a very strong connection to their tribes even after their tribes have been destroyed. However, I feel like Lina's perspective is much more emotionally potent because it is told in first person instead of third person. We see Lina not only as a Native American who values nature, but also as a woman. On page 58 she talks about how helpless she and the other females on the farm will be if their mistress dies because they would be “belonging to no one, became wild game for anyone.” If this book is to define Colonial America, in the way Absalom, Absalom! defined the Antebellum South, I think Morrison’s decision to focus on strong female characters will give it an interesting perspective. It makes obvious to the reader that it just wasn’t Native Americans or black slaves that were oppressed, but that women also had limited opportunities.

 Even Lina, who is very intelligent and has helped build the farm and learned many skills, relies on the her owners for protection because she realizes her own vulnerability as a woman.

Mother Hunger

In this novel, Toni Morrison focuses a lot on the relationships between women and the importance and worth that women add to society, as well as the longings of some women.  I think these sections of the book definitely played into the focus on women and where they find their worth.  Lina and Florens share a relationship that is very much mother to daughter.  Lina is worries about Florens the way a caring mother would worry about her daughter.  She gives Florens advice that constantly runs through Florens mind when she is going to find the blacksmith.  Lina also understands and admires Florens. She knows the thoughts that run through Florens mind when she meets the blacksmith.  She understands the threat that he brings to what she considers to be Florens’ innocence.  She wants to protect Florens from the life that she sees Sorrow leading. 

Florens and Lina remind me of the habits of cattle.  When a cow loses her baby calf both need something.  The cow mourns her young and wants somebody to take care of, while the calf needs milk to drink.  However the cow will not accept the baby calf unless her dead offspring’s skin is on the calf.  Lina could not accept someone like Sorrow.  Instead she needed a child figure like Florens who she saw as capable and willing to do work.  She wanted someone moreso like her.  Therefore, Lina is able to bond with Florens over their needs (one to be a mother and the other to have a mother) with times such as Lina telling the story of the eagle. 

Sandberg and Plath Discussion

·      Grass

o   Literal Interpretation: The impact of war.

o   Selection of Battles

§  War is Timeless

§  Linked Directly to Nature and How it Repeats Itself

§  High Body Count for Each One

o   Cyclical Nature of War: Poem Cycles

o   It is never finished; it is continuous.

o   Plea for a pause to the fighting.

o   People forget – only the name remembered.

o   Parellels to Whitman: Leaves of Grass (written as a response).

·      Lady Lazarus

o   Tone: Dark, Grim

§  Physical Body

§  Numbers

§  Art Form

§  At the same time, playful rhymes and language (Paradoxical Style)

o   Addresses: Her Father

o   Biblical Reference

o   Linked to her Relationship with her Father.

o   Stigma Attached to her Life

o   Theatrical Death Allusion

o   Crowd showing up.

o   Phoenix Analogy: Unwilling Resurrection

o   Taunting Death: Miracle (Unwanted)

·      Daddy

o   Style: Somewhat of a dark song/ Nursery-like

o   Reference to German/Authoritarian relationship to her father-like Jews.

o   Insensitivity in the Importance She Places of herself in this Relationship.

o   Themes of Patriarchal Oppression/ Gender Roles vs. Personal Hatred

Contrast in the mode of Sylvia Plath's works

In October of the year 1962, Slyvia Plath wrote a few works concerning the Holocaust, specifically Daddy on the 12th, and Lady Lazarus on the 23rd.  Although both concerned the horrid times of a Jewish life, the mood of the works are quite different.  Wasting no time, Plath sets the mood of wild anger in the 1st line, seeming so furious she was flustered.  As opposed to Lazarus, where she cooly begins, "I have done it again."  Very calm and composed, she flies through the beginning part her work with much clarity and even slight humor, very at peace with what life has handed her.  This discrepancy in mood is not what is interesting to me, as writers especially are known to have up and down moods, but what is interesting is how the moods change so drastically mid poem.  As confused and upset as Plath is at the start of daddy, she is equally focused at the end, realizing that it is her father who the anger is directed at.  And the once light writing in Lazarus quickly turns dark: "I do it so it feels like Hell" and "Herr God, Herr Lucifer."  I am not sure where I am going with this per say, but I am curious to see what happened between those 11 days which would have led her mood to change so much.  I would be curious to see your thoughts.  Thanks.  Tyler

Balance between life and death in "Lady Lazarus"

The grim nature of "Lady Lazarus" tells the story of a women who seems to transcend the cycles of life and death. The author of the poem presents death as more of a temporary state as opposed to a permanent rest. Dying is refereed to an art form, something that can be perfected through repetition. The narrator of the poem's ability to come back to life as the same "identical women" allows for a supernatural state of being, where death comes and goes. We understand life to be the temporary state, once taken away we enter the perpetual state of death. The narrator breaks from this view, as her timeline includes multiple births and multiple deaths, neither of which is permanent. How would we understand life if this is how nature worked? Would we have the same value placed on the uncertainty of the now? The state of being for the narrator of "Lady Lazarus" would undoubtedly alter the importance we place on life. The balance we create to understand life is that once its gone, its not coming back. The perspective offered in "Lady Lazarus" throws off that old notion, affecting how place importance on each other and ourselves. Emotions would mean less when this balance is thrown off, as our sense of time would lose all meaning.

Daddy

In "Daddy", Sylvia Plath creates the metaphor of her father being a Nazi and her being a Jew. This seems like an incredibly extreme metaphor considering everything the Nazi’s did to the Jews. She doesn’t even limit this metaphor to just her father but also considers her husband to also be like a Nazi. What are the chances that the two most important men in her life would happen to be as truly evil as she claims? This leads me to believe that the actual experiences she had with her father and husband weren’t actually as bad as the Holocaust but the impact they have had on her life were as dramatic. She mentions trying to kill herself when she is twenty. While her father never physically attempted to kill her, he did cause her to attempt to kill herself. This shows how strongly someone can influence someone else even if they aren’t trying to. We also see that she isn’t referring to her experiences with her father at the very end when she declares that she is through. Her father has been dead for many years so she can’t be talking about her experiences with him but is instead talking about her thinking about him. I’m still unsure if I feel this justifies her using something as horrible as the holocaust as a metaphor.

Imagery in Daddy

   Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" features a speaker describing her attempts to deal with the death of her over a period of time. His death still weighs heavy on her mind and makes it impossible for her to live her life, which is why the speaker uses the imagery of her father being a Nazi and herself being a Jew shipped off to a concentration camp.  Like those in the concentration camps, the speaker found it impossible for her to live her life with the grief from her father's memory constantly living in her mind, so she was forced to thing about him less by thinking about him less: "Daddy, I have had to kill you."
   Having her dad move from God to a Nazi shows that the speaker is attempting to think about her dad less by lowering or even defaming his memory.  God is a figure that gives life and watches over it, whereas Nazis are those who would claim rights to others' lives, oppress them, and sometimes take them, such as the memory of her father has now done.
   Eventually she compares her father to a vampire, a dead but still frightful figure.  The grief from the speaker's father's death saps the life from her life a vampire sucks blood, so therefore she must kill it.

Revival in Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus is one of Sylvia Plath’s three holocaust poems, the others being Daddy and Mary’s Song.  Throughout the poem there are three separate instances where the narrator dies, and through no will of her own, is brought back to life.  These three different resurrections of the narrator are obviously in reference to Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead, mentioned by Plath in the title of the poem.  The poem has a much more morbid, darker tone than others we have read throughout this semester, dealing with the issue of death as though it is an art (line 44) that can be mastered by an individual, one that the narrator claims to do “exceptionally well” (line 45).  The poem is filled with allusion to Nazi Germany and the pain Jews suffered throughout the Holocaust.

A more subtle reference in the poem can be found near the end, where Plath alludes to the Phoenix.  The Phoenix is a mythical bird that was burned to death, and rose again from ashes.  The reference to this can found in the last few stanzas of the poem where the narrator is burned and comes “out of the ash.” The Phoenix itself symbolizes rebirth, immortality, and renewal, alluding to the overall theme of the rest of the poem.

Grass

    For me, Carl Sandburg's "Grass" represents how society often operates in cycles and leaves nature and time to cover it's wrong doings, which can be read positively or negatively. 
    The poem mentions some of the bloodiest battles from the 19th and 20th century, in saying, "Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo/...And pile them high at Gettysburg/ And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun."  These battles had many casualties; however, as the speaker suggests,  the grass is still able to grow and cover these hurts.  In a sense, this is inspiring and leaves the impression that time can cure all hurt and mankind will always be able to bounce back, even in its darkest of hours.
    On the other hand, this poem reveals how easily time can make people forget.  As the grass grows and covers the damages of war, people begin to forget the carnage that lays underneath its surface.  Although they are left with the beautiful grass in place of a bloody battlefield, there is a danger in forgetting the mistakes of the past.  The poem makes a cycle in saying, "let me work" at the beginning and end of the poem.  This demonstrates how time never stops and society is, in some sense, doomed to make the same mistakes of the past. 

Grass

A few things intrigued me about this poem. The first thing that I noticed was the selection of battles that Sandburg chose. They span 2 continents and 3 wars. But all of them have one thing in common: a staggering number of casualties. I believe that Sandburg was trying to comment on the universality of both war and nature. The large gap in time between the battles implies repetition. The grass, which represents nature at large, spans both space and time. It is all encompassing. This idea is also suggested by the somewhat confusing lines: “Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: / What place is this? / Where are we now? / I am the grass. / Let me work.” War is petty to nature.

The ending lines of the poem also suggest that when it comes to war, history repeats itself. Horrible battles continue to occur and people are none the wiser. Ultimately the grass covers up the sites and humanity begins to forget its mistakes. There is no physical reminder of the tens of thousands of deaths which occurred at each battle. Sandburg is commenting on the fact that people tend to quickly forget the horror of war during peacetime, and perhaps that is why we are bound to repeatedly fight one another.

Daddy

Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is written directly toward her father.  In order to properly understand this piece, though, it's important to first gain some insights into its background.  When Plath was very young her father died, an occurrence that many attribute to her problematic life and suicidal tendencies.  In indication of this, Plath describes her father as a Nazi in this poem and herself like one of the Jews that the Nazis persecuted.  In describing her father as a Nazi, she uses many soft allusions to the idea.  For example, in the poem Plath lightly alludes to her father as Hitler by referencing his "neat mustache" and also his "Aryan eye, bright blue".  Also, Plath describes herself by saying, "I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew".  In doing this, Plath is paralleling her life story to that of the Jews in the Holocaust.  In this sense, Plath is reaffirming the belief that her father's death during her childhood was a primary cause of her suicidal tendencies later in life.

Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus, written by Slyvia Plath, has a dark feeling to the poem. Sylvia experienced suicidal period throughout her life which is manifested in the poem. Lady Lazarus, the name, is a biblical reference to the Book of John’s Lazarus of Bethany. In the Bible, Lazarus died and Jesus brought him back to life. This story is indicative of the poem’s understanding of someone who continues to try and die but is continuously brought back to life. Plath seems to be explaining her three suicide attempts in the poem and relating them to the Holocaust. She is comparing her life to the Jewish people in the Holocaust, explaining how horrible her life experiences have been. Her referral to the Holocaust and her comparison of her life to hell demonstrate how much of a depressed poet she really was. She views her attempts at death as a way for doctor’s to make money and those who try to save her as her enemy, saying that she disapproves of them. The last stanza of the poem is very interesting. She is basically saying that she is going to be reborn from ashes and finally free, like a phoenix. This reference is almost saying that she will live forever, and in death she will come back to life and eat her enemies “like air.” Overall, this poem was very depressed and gave a sense of how she felt as a person. It seemed almost like a cry for attention or help. 

Structure

I'm going to go ahead and post on A Mercy now because that's what I thought we were supposed to read (and I've got some time to write a blog post now, but haven't read the poems yet:/ - Don't worry, Kelly, I'll have them read by class tomorrow!)...

The structure of this novel definitely reminds me a lot of Absalom, Absalom!, especially with his use of multiple narrators. He starts the novel in Florens' point of view. Her point of view has a tone of the classic slave-master relationship - it kind of hints that he is a strong, powerful man who always gets what he wants. In the second chapter, Sir (Jacob Vaark), is portrayed as an adventurous, compassionate, and determined man who did not believe in "flesh as a commodity". Another difference between the two chapters is that the first chapter is written in first person, and as Florens would speak in conversation, and the second chapter is written in third person with a rather formal tone. This difference might suggest that Florens' account will be much more limited than that of the narrator's. Also, Florens having to tell her own story, contrasted with the narrator that tell's Sir's, makes it seem as of Florens doesn't deserve to have her story told, or that her store doesn't matter to anyone besides herself. I'm wondering if this will change once we delve further into the novel.

Similarities to Absalom, Absalom!

I remember that earlier in the semester, Kelly told us that we would start to identify pieces of literature that were influenced by, if not based off of, Moby Dick.  After reading most of a mercy, I strongly believe that Toni Morrison based her novel around William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!; for me, I feel like I’m receiving Clytie’s or Wash Jones’s point of view.  In both novels, despair among all parties is prevalent and there is a sense of striving for goals that are almost unattainable.

In Absalom, Absalom!, Sutpen’s lifelong goal is to amass a wealth to which he will pass on to his first born son.  Jacob Vaark is no different once he discovers the wealth that can be amassed through rum trading; he dies trying to build a towering monument to himself which Rebekka believes is extremely unnecessary, considering they are common folk.  Similar to Judith’s despondent behavior after the death of Charles Bon, Florens becomes enshrouded in sadness after her failed relationship with the blacksmith.  Scully and Willard both notice her “don’t lay your hands on me” attitude when she returns to Mistress.  The character traits in both novels suggest that Morrison wanted to recount Faulkner’s story, but in a way in which she has done with books such as Beloved.