Introblog

As I said in class on Wednesday, I was generally happy with the way the class went. I am grateful for your contributions over the semester & for your feedback the last time we met. I’ll be grading as fast as I can over the next few days & posting grades to Turnitin. If you have any last thoughts you’d like to share, this is the place. Comments on this post count toward your total, so let her rip!

• The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no expression to her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly, quiet; an unusually attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance. But her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever. She had magnificent blonde hair, in profusion. One of those picture children often reproduced in advertising leaflets and the photogravure sections of the Sunday papers.
• Then the battle began. I had to do it.
• I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing struggle they grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me.
• But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don’t, you’re hurting me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly, hysterically. Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing me!
• Then I grasped the child’s head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now I also had grown furious–at a child. I tried to hold myself down but I couldn’t.
• We’re going through with this. The child’s mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should have desisted and come back in an hour or more. No doubt it would have been better. But I have seen at least two children lying dead in bed of neglect in such cases, and feeling that I must get a diagnosis now or never I went at it again. But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.
• The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one says to one’s self at such times. Others must be protected against her. It is a social necessity. And all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end.
• In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child’s neck and jaws. I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged. And there it was–both tonsils covered with membrane. She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret. She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this.

When you read the actual language of the story, you see that the sexual charge is just below the surface of the violence & of course the doctor is correct in the sense that he is “doing his job.” What save the story from nastiness is that the doctor indicts himself & so makes us aware of moral complexities in ways that the flat, emotionless plays of Seung Cho do not. WCW’s story offers a way of thinking about our worst impulses; this is not true for slasher movies or Cho’s plays.

Not wanting to give them much prominence, I was initially reluctant to put up this discussion thread, but a couple of people have asked for it so here it is. I’ll be interested to see what you think of them as literature. What strikes me about them is their flat affect. It is all of a piece that Mr. Cho, in his videotaped statement, should blame everyone else — his fellow students, his teachers, society — for his acts. “You all have blood on your hands,” he says in a complete reversal of the truth. He is incapable of taking responsibility. (Why is a different question. He appears to have been severely mentally ill.)

Art accept responsibility; pornography treats others as if they were objects.

Comments here, as usual.

You know what to do.

Update:

• Here is a thoughtful blog entry by well-known American poet Ron Silliman on the VT massacre.
• Here is the article in the LA Times that quotes me.
• Here is an article from the Inside Higher Education website that specifically addresses the “creative writing” part of this story.
• Here is a link to Seung Cho’s plays. You can read them if you want to, but there is no requirement that you do so. They contain graphic violence.

Discuss Welty’s story here.

Update: I was surprised how few of you picked up on the humor. Welty is to some extent making fun of these characters, while at the same time trying to show them in a psychologically interesting way. I’d be interested in responses to this in comments.

Put your thoughts here.

Put Your reactions here.The CD that came with your text has a recording of Carver himself reading this story. I highly recommend it.

Reactions to the Alexie story should go here. (I’ll add some notes in this space soon.)

Think about:

• Story structure, chronology, story within a story
• Point of view, narrator’s tone (attitude)
• Uses of humor
• Who / what is William?
• Theme: wealth & class? race?
• Theme: family
• Theme: fiction versus reality

Make sure you have read the introductory section on Drama in the Norton Introduction to Literature. The quiz will also cover the plays Trifles, Antigone, and Death of a Salesman.

Please note that because a number of students have let me know they will be absent on Wed this week, I have reluctantly moved the quiz to Mon. April 9. This is the final shift. Sorry for any inconvenience.