Midterm

1.       Cultural studies are characterized by practices and rituals that influence the world through power, such as the observance of the life of a celebrity and how their relationships shape cultural practices. It is also used to understand the complexities of social and political contexts to comprehend criticisms and actions. Cultural studies also differentiate intuitive knowledge and universal forms of knowledge. It identifies the knower and the known, and the observer and what is being observed. Finally, cultural studies evaluate morals of society from modern day to extreme politics. It is the ability to analyze and reconstruct through political involvement and change the structure of dominance everywhere.

2.       We apply cultural studies to literature by analyzing pieces then compare and contrast them to the real world. We identify themes and motifs in stories for a better understanding of what the author is trying to say and relate them to today’s society. For example, gender roles, power, irony, etc.

3.       The concept of the Other in cultural studies is for meaning through representation of ideological ideas. The other is outside of one’s gender, class, social group, or culture. The other is used to make an observation of what happens in society and how people are represented through what they are usually categorized as. The other allows comparisons to be made between diverse groups and basically establishes diversity.

4.       There are many representations of othering in mainstream culture. One of the most common is found in religion between Muslims and Christians/Catholics or whoever is outside of the Muslim religion. Muslims are usually stereotyped as terrorists who are harmful to the nation while the Christians and Catholics live by the right laws that protect our nation, which is why we hear the phrase, “God bless America” so frequently.

5.       Gender roles were the main theme in “Trifles.” Men were the superior in the story and considered more intelligent while the women were portrayed as the inferior with “trifles” that didn’t deserve much attention. The women were expected to do housework while the men went out and did “business.” The men had the answers to everything and knew the reasons behind everything, while anything a woman said was laughed off or disregarded. Mrs. Peter’s discovery of the empty bird cage represented emptiness in Mrs. Wright. The bird that belonged in the cage was dead and Mrs. Wright represented that bird. Mrs. Wright enjoyed singing so she got the songbird since she didn’t sing anymore after she got married. Mr. Wright killed the bird, which killed Mrs. Wright’s happiness. It’s obvious that men are controlling so much that they can take away a woman’s happiness. The man is seen as the leader of the household with the power according to the story.

6.       Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter’s recalled how the Wright’s house wasn’t “a cheerful place” so they never went to visit. During the investigation Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter’s were noticing things like Mrs. Wright’s fruit and her quilt she was making. Their female intuition was kicking in and they started to remember how Mrs. Wright was before she got married. They then realized that she was stripped of happiness and turned into an isolated housewife. Once they found the dead bird they made the connection with Mrs. Wright’s love for singing and they started to feel bad for the person she transformed into after she married Mr. Wright. They realized her loss of sanity and happiness from being under the control of her husband.

7.       Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters draw Mrs. Wright up as a lonely unhappy woman. She lived in a secluded farm with just her husband who was said to be a good, but hard man to live with. As a cure for her loneliness Mrs. Wright got a songbird because she liked to sing in her younger days when she was happy. The bird symbolized happiness and life for Mrs. Wright, but Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters believed Mr. Wright killed the bird because of the kind of man he was which provoked Mrs. Wright to want to kill him. Mr. Wright took away Mrs. Wright’s last hope for a little bit of joy so with the death of her bird she lost hope and went on to kill her husband. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters realize that Mrs. Wright just wasn’t happy and they realized that through their women’s intuition.

8.       At the end of “Trifles” Mrs. Hale says, “Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?” Mrs. Hale realizes and feels guilty that she wasn’t a real friend to Mrs. Wright during her depression.  She goes on to say, “We live close together and we live far apart. We all got through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing.” She remembers that women are supposed to stick together, because we are all experiencing or have experienced similar things that we can help each other get through. Mrs. Hale felt bad for not being the friend she needed to be to Mrs. Wright and for not being there to support her or even go check up on her. Nobody is going to punish Mrs. Hale for it, but she will be suffering from the punishment of conviction.

9.       While this can be read as a story about gender roles, this quote illustrates that the story “Trifles” can also be read as a discussion of unity in one’s gender.

10.   Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is about a young woman, Mrs. Mallard, who is afflicted with heart trouble and finds out that her husband was killed in a train accident. She mourns from natural pain of a loss, but then she secludes herself and realizes that she is free from the control of her husband. She locks herself in a room and quietly rejoices about how she can now live for herself and actually enjoy life. She whispers “Free! Body and soul free!” Her sister comes to check on her and brings her downstairs only for Mrs. Mallard to find out that her husband is actually still alive and she collapses and dies on the scene. The doctors diagnose that “she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills.”

11.   Kate Chopin opens the story with recognition of Mrs. Mallard’s “heart trouble.” The heart trouble symbolizes the pain Mrs. Mallard had been suffering from stress and not being able to live for herself, but under her husband’s control. Her pain from not being able to really enjoy life like she wanted to. Also, the window where Chopin described, “she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.” That scene symbolizes a window of opportunities that Mrs. Mallard was presented with since her husband was pronounced dead.

12.   “The Story of an Hour” presents themes of autonomy, power, control, and oppression. As well as irony and gender roles. When Mrs. Mallard heard that her husband died, an autonomous feeling filled her body. “She said it over and over under the breath: “free, free, free!” She was free from the control of her husband and the power he had over her life. She wasn’t living for herself, but living to fulfill the needs of her husband. Power and control in the story is driven by gender roles. The male sets the tone and the lifestyle of how things are run, which controls Mrs. Mallard’s way of living. Irony is present at the end of the story when doctors said, “she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills.” Mrs. Mallard didn’t die from the joy of her husband being alive, but from disappointment and shock that he was alive, because at that point she realized that she still wasn’t free, and that stress killed her.

13.   “The Story of an Hour” comments on the oppression of females by male’s power and control. The way Mrs. Mallard rejoiced about her husband’s death, she was craving freedom the entire time she was with him. Anything she did it was because he thought it was best for her so she wasn’t really living life for herself. “Possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being,” that statement justifies that Mrs. Mallard never exercised her rights and what she believed because her husband controlled all of that and it took his death for her to realize the what she had in herself and what she could do at her own will.

14.   That quote describes how Mrs. Mallard realizes that she is released from the control of her husband. She has somewhat of an epiphany and expresses her freedom to be able enjoy life and live fully for herself. She no longer has to live with her husband saying what she should do and how she should live her life. “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature.” She would have power over herself and be able to enjoy life the way that she desires.

15.   According to the doctor Mrs. Mallard dies from “heart disease—of the joy that kills.” Ironically Mrs. Mallard dies from finding out her husband is actually alive and she is not actually free from his control. She dies from the stress and sudden change of emotion. After she rejoices because she thinks he is dead, she is suddenly struck with pain when she finds out he is alive and that kills her. I believe she was overwhelmed with shock from a sudden change of emotions.

16.   In the “Beginners” Carver addresses marriage and love through two couples, which one came from broken relationships and started a new one. Herb and Terri were a couple, but Terri’s previous relationship was abusive and in Herb’s eyes unacceptable. Terri believed Carl (her ex) loved her even though he was suicidal and tried to kill her, and she still loved him. Herb is so bothered that Terri still feels so strongly about Carl. Herb also went through a divorce, which left him depressed and suicidal. Even though Herb’s wife Terri still loves her ex, Herb still loves Terri no matter how hurt he is from the situation. The author then presents an old couple, the Gates, who are very much in love, so much that they can’t stand to be apart from each other and never have. The old couple shows genuine love, the love that is expected for a happy healthy relationship. The author wants us to know that people interpret and express love in different ways because Terri loves Herb even though she still loves Carl, and Herb still loves Terri even though she still loves Carl.

17.   Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery” is about a town that does a tradition every year where the villagers come together and wait to see who is to be stoned that year for a good harvest. Each family draws a name out of a black box and whoever drew the paper with the black dot had to be stoned. This was a tradition that the village people never gave up, but somehow kept changing the rules and how it is preformed. Mr. Hutchison drew the paper with the black dot, but his wife called a re-do on the drawing and she ended being the one to draw the paper with the black dot and had to get stoned even by her own children. This entire story revolved around maintaining a tradition no matter how much the procedures changed. A person was stoned each year to ensure good harvest, and that’s what the villagers really believed so they continued their stoning tradition. “Mr. Summers spoke frequently about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition was represented by the black box.” The box symbolized the existence of their tradition and kept the village and its tradition authentic. When it was time for the stoning the Mrs. Hutchinson’s children even participated with pebbles to show how serious the village was with maintaining their tradition.

18.   The idea of hypocrisy in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” is to establish order and authority in order for the exile to go through. There is always a superior group in a society and in this case it is the hypocrisy, which represents the voice of the town who makes the ultimate decisions.

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20.   “The Village” was about a secluded town that was made by a handful of people who left a corrupt town full of crime to start their own village. The people who started the village also started a myth to scare their people from leaving the village in fear of being murdered by “those they don’t speak of” who were supposedly beasts of the town. The villagers lived a very conservative life and it was ran by the elders. Only the elders knew about the myth. They scared their people into believing it was real because they want to protect their innocence from the corrupt world. As a part of the myth the elders establish that yellow is the safe color and red is the color of the beasts. They even made costumes to scare the people every once in a while if they ever got curious about what was outside of the village. Ivy who is one of the elder’s daughter had to get medicine from the towns in order to save Lucius, her fiance’s, life. Ivy is blind so her father lets her go outside of the village into the town to get medicine. He let’s her in on the myth, but she has believed it all of her life so she is still scared when she goes into the woods. When Ivy makes it back to the village with the medicine, the elders still want to keep the myth going to “protect” their people from the harms of the “real” world. So the myth and traditions continue.

21.   &  22. In the film, “The Village,” myth was the controlling element. The myth of the beasts instilled fear in the villagers so much it controlled their way of living and made them scared to go out into the world and see what it had to offer. They were also careful of what they said, and only stayed in their village. It scared them so much that they weren’t even curious to find out what was outside of the village. The village was organized by the elders who also made up the myth, which established control.

23.   August Nickolson’s statement to Lucius, “you may run from sorrow, as we have, but sorrow will find you” translated to me that nobody will live a completely perfect life and that is because sorrow will always be there. Just as the people of the village are trying to maintain and keep their village in order, they are experiencing pain and even living in fear, which is sorrow. No matter how happy and perfect they try to make the village they are living in, there is still going to be a negative aspect to it and that’s life. The elders chose to leave the mass culture and begin the experiment of the village to see how much control they have and how long they will have control. They wanted to form a society to their likings with their standards.

24.   The colors in the movie play a major role in the myth and how it was carried out. The villagers view yellow as the “safe” color and red as the “bad” color. Yellow seems to represent innocence and protection in the movie. The villagers wore yellow cloaks for safety whenever they were close to the forbidden forest where the beasts lived. The beasts wore red cloaks that represent danger. The people of the village made sure there was no red present on their side, because that would be a sign of danger and that wasn’t acceptable in their world. When the beasts would come over to their side they would put red streaks on the villager’s doors as a warning and they left carcasses of animals around exposing a hollow headless body with a lot of blood. That gruesome scene is a warning, which is negative. Yellow is represented as a positive color for protection while red is the color of danger.

25.   Mr. Walker says they have chosen to create an alternative reality to protect the villager’s innocence by not exposing to them to the “real” world.

26.   The world we live in is filled with crime, but the elders excluded it from their village so their people wouldn’t have to deal with troubles. They feared that would lead to the corruption of the village if they let those things in so they kept them out and kept their people safe in their made up world. While the elders are trying to preserve the villager’s innocence, they are amplifying the people’s ignorance. The situation is ironic because while the elders made up the myth to instill fear in their people and keep them innocent, the villagers don’t know that the myth is actually made up. The elders took advantage of their innocence and scared them into a certain way of living.

27.   Just as the myth controls the villager’s behavior, there are myths present in American culture that perpetuate our culture as well. A lot of myths exist during our younger years. For example, the most common myth is Santa Claus. In order to get a visit from Santa you had to be on your best behavior, if you weren’t then you would be on the Naughty List and would receive coal instead of presents. The myth of Santa encouraged good behavior because we knew the reward we would receive. Both myths are used as a form of control. In “The Village” the myth controls people’s entire way of living, while the myth of Santa controls a child’s behavior and promotes good behavior. Both myths are intended to protect the innocence of the people.