American Lit Blog

The American Scholar

2012-02-14T02:37:00.000-08:00

“Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself.“

In the above quote, I feel that Emerson is speaking about experience. He is saying that everything that is shown to us by a philosopher or bard or actor is their portrayal of something that they've been through. However, something doesn't become real to you unless you've been through it yourself. Nothing means anything until it is experienced by you and Emerson is saying exactly that. For example, if an old veteran of war is trying to explain to a young and comfortable adolescent of the horrors of war, the adolescent can only relate so much before they cannot relate at all and the only way that he will be able to fully understand is if one day, he experiences it for himself. Emerson is saying that these people that are trying to teach us can only show or do so much for us until that point where we have to apply our own consciousness into the situation - It's the only way that we can find meaning in anything.

Something else that I got out of this excerpt from The American Scholar is that anything that is taught to us by a teacher or by a professor or in an institution is not something that we cannot already learn or know on our own. We should not seek to imitate, but to think. If we seek to imitate, we are only as good as robots spitting out the words and ideas of others. When we are taught to analyze a piece of literature, we are actually instructed to listen, not to think for ourselves. We are instructed to listen to an interpretation of a book or film or poem and take the interpretation as truth with no input from us. Furthermore, how can we take an interpretation as truth when in actuality, it's impossible to know what the true meaning was or is. We are fully capable of interpreting and thinking for ourselves and therefore, imitating and soaking in ideas of others and taking them as truth seems almost idiotic.

~2 Journey Narrative

2012-02-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

It's the summer of 1983 and Shaun is a 12-year-old boy edging into adolescence without a father, his dad having lost his life the year before in the Falkland Islands War. A gang of skinheads - tough guys in their teens and early twenties who shave their heads, wear Ben Sherman polo shirts, Dr. Martens boots, and listen to ska music - walk the streets in Shaun's neighborhood, and one day they start picking on him. Shaun, however, shows he can give as good as he gets, and gang leader Woody takes a liking to the boy. Woody takes Shaun under his wing, and he starts hanging out with the skins, getting advice on dressing right from Woody's girlfriend, Lol, and learning about Jamaican music from West Indian skinhead Milky. However, the gang begins to change when Combo is released from prison and returns to the neighborhood; like many skinheads, Combo has been recruited by the National Front, an openly racist right-wing political party, and soon the gang begins to fracture, with Combo taking one faction toward violence and petty crime against blacks, Indians, and Pakistanis, while Woody and his friends follow a more benign path. This Is England received its North American premiere at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. (Mark Deming)

This Is England reproduces features of a journey narrative in several ways. At the start of the film, Shaun is just a boy who gets picked on frequently. He then meets the gang of skins heads, prior to Combo's release from prison (A). During a party, to everyones surprise, Combo comes back into everyone's life (B) only to ruin everything between the gang and convince Shaun to join the 'cause'. At the end of the film, Combo is no longer in Shaun's life (A) and he's back where he started - no longer with the cause. Throughout the rising action of the film, Shaun is all for being a skinhead. Combo has seemingly brain-washed Shaun into thinking that everything that the National Front stands for is morally right. The climax happens when Combo, realizing that he will never be with Lol, gets stoned with Milky and ends up beating him almost to death in front of Shaun. Combo stands for racism and white supremacy. In Shaun's mind, Combo was the National Front. Shaun is a supporter of this up until the climax, when he sees the damage that Combo's values cause. There is an opposition of values as well as innocence vs. experience. The film ends with Shaun throwing the National Front flag into the ocean, symbolizing him dropping everything that they stand for. Combo serves as the function of "nature" as well as Shaun's "space of transformation," only in this narrative, "nature" is a person.

~1 Introduction

2012-01-31T17:55:00.002-08:00

Hi! I'm Chelsea. This is my first blog post. 3eb is too great for words.