Early in The American Adam, R.W.B. Lewis wrote that

narrative art inevitably...stains ideas with restless ambiguity. For the experience of the aims and values of an epoch is apt to be more complex and even more painful than the simple statement of them; and narrative deals with experiences, not with propositions. The narrative art, moreover, dramatizes as human conflict what is elsewhere a thoughtful exchange of ideas; and art projects — in a single packed dramatic image — conflicting principles which the discursive mind must contemplate separately and consecutively. (My emphases)

Ideas can be conveyed in the form of a story or in the form of a series of propositions. And as all alert English majors know, form is never completely independent of content. The content is always in some way “stained,” as Lewis puts it, by the form. (Compare this idea to Marshall McLuhan’s contention that “the medium is the message” and Susan Sontag’s argument in “Against Interpretation” that content is actually an aspect of form rather than the opposite of form.)

Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur could have said what he had to say about America in the form of a nonfiction essay. He could have expressed his thoughts in a series of propositions, say, like this:

On the one hand, America holds out tremendous promise of freedom and equality, and for many that promise is coming true. While I was in rural New York I observed people of a sort never seen before, indeed not even possible to imagine, in Europe. On the other hand, even though Americans champion the ideal of freedom, they seem oblivious to the reality that many of them still own slaves….

But Crèvecoeur didn’t use the essay form. He chose instead to express his ideas in a narrative form, in the form of fictional letters written by an ordinary American farmer to a British correspondent. So what we get are passages like this:

[W]here is that station which can confer a more substantial system of felicity than that of an American farmer, possessing freedom of action, freedom of thoughts, ruled by a mode of government which requires but little from us? I owe nothing but a pepper corn to my country, a small tribute to my king, with loyalty and due respect; I know no other landlord than the lord of all land, to whom I owe the most sincere gratitude. My father left me three hundred and seventy-one acres of land, forty-seven of which are good timothy meadow, an excellent orchard, a good house, and a substantial barn. It is my duty to think how happy I am that he lived to build and to pay for all these improvements; what are the labours which I have to undergo, what are my fatigues when compared to his, who had every thing to do, from the first tree he felled to the finishing of his house? Every year I kill from 1,500 to 2,000 weight of pork, 1,200 of beef, half a dozen of good wethers in harvest: of fowls my wife has always a great stock: what can I wish more? My negroes are tolerably faithful and healthy; by a long series of industry and honest dealings, my father left behind him the name of a good man; I have but to tread his paths to be happy and a good man like him.…

The general idea seems to be that the freedoms enjoyed by Farmer James and his father permitted them to profit from the fruits of their own labor, gradually amassing wealth to pass on to their posterity. Under such conditions work becomes a joy rather than a burden.

Because he’s writing fiction, and because good fiction demands concrete, lifelike details, Crèvecoeur fleshes out this picture of felicity-and-prosperity-through-freedom with a detailed accounting of Farmer James’s wealth: this many acres, this much beef, that much pork, and so on. This list functions to make Letters from an American Farmer more believable, helping us to willingly suspend our disbelief and also seducing us into its ideology — at least until, near the end of this list, we read that bit, so casually tossed in, about “my Negroes.”

Wait a minute, we find ourselves thinking. How can it possibly make sense to mention one’s slaves in a testimony to the marvels of freedom? And then we might notice the rather dark irony of phrases like “industry and honest dealings”: whose industry? And what’s so “honest” about slavery? Then there’s the idea that all Farmer James has to do to be a “good man” like his father is to do as his father did — including, presumably, to continue to arrogate to himself and his heirs the wealth produced in part by his slaves. Undermining Farmer James’s ideal of freedom is the reality of slavery, not only in the present but projected into the future.

The fictional form of Letters demands the enumeration of concrete details, but among those details are some that “stain” the book’s “ideas with restless ambiguity” — in this case, by suggesting that the freedom under discussion is not freedom for all but only freedom for some.

What are some of the other ways Crèvecoeur’s choice to convey his ideas in narrative form “stain his ideas”? That is, what are some of the ways in which Crèvecoeur seems to be trying to tell us one thing, but is prompted by the Letters’ form to tell us other things as well? Read more!

The captivity narrative as a genre and captivity as a trope have been prominent at least since biblical times. (Think of how much mileage the Jewish national mythology gets out of the Egyptian and Babylon captivities.) Today the idea of captivity circulates through pop culture (think of Gwen Stefani singing “Just a Girl” or The Melodians reworking Psalm 137 into “By the Rivers of Babylon”) and periodically dominates the news (e.g., Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard).

In this post I want to focus on Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity as a powerful work of theodicy — that is, an attempt to reconcile belief in the goodness of God with the fact of suffering in the world. Consider Rowlandson’s description, long after her captivity has ended, of her continuing misery:

I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other ways with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but His who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awfull dispensation of the Lord towards us; upon his wonderful power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety, and suffering none to hurt us.

Suffering none to hurt us! This from a woman who watched her youngest child die in her arms. Rowlandson continues:

I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me: it is then hard work to persuade myself, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the wheat, and, as I may say, with honey out of the rock: instead of the husk, we have the fatted calf: the thoughts of these things in the particulars of them, and of the love and goodness of God towards us, make it true of me, what David said of himself, Psalms 6.6. I watered my couch with my tears. Oh! the wonderful power of God that mine eyes have seen, affording matter enough for my thoughts to run in, that when others are sleeping mine are weeping. (175)

I find passages like these tremendously moving, but I’m not sure the book as a whole succeeds as a theodicy. In fact, when Rowlandson insists on “the love and goodness of God towards us” I’m not sure she believes her own words.

What do you think — does Rowlandson believe what she says? More broadly, does her Narrative succeed in reconciling the belief in “the love and goodness of God” with the seemingly random experience of captivity and loss? Read more!

So what do you think of Anne Bradstreet’s poem “The Flesh and the Spirit”? The poem personifies these two abstractions — aka the material and the spiritual, the worldly and the heavenly — and is structured as a debate between them. But it doesn’t really seem to be a fair fight. It uses the form of a debate yet gives all the best lines to the Spirit in order to demonstrate the Spirit’s superiority. The game is rigged. Recast the poem as TV politicotainment, and the Spirit would be Hannity and the Flesh would be that perpetual punching bag, Colmes. The Flesh never makes its strongest argument. (Perhaps Bradstreet doesn’t even believe the Flesh has a stronger argument.)

After first suggesting that the Spirit is crazy (“Art fancy sick, or turned a sot?”), the Flesh suggests that it’s better to pursue honor, fame, riches, and pleasure than things known “only in mind.” Wouldn’t it have been less partial to have the Flesh argue for such material goals as the creation of a just society and the alleviation of physical suffering? The Spirit claims that people in heaven do not suffer “From sickness and infirmity,” so she obviously thinks these are bad things; why not work with the Flesh to alleviate them in the here and now of the material world? Why not try to create a little more heaven here on earth? Come to think of it, why do the material and the spiritual have to be locked in a “deadly feud” in the first place?

Also, maybe the Spirit’s case is not as strong as at first appears. After dissing material wealth (“My garments are not silk nor gold, / Nor such like trash”), she describes the beauty of heaven using images of, well, material wealth: “precious jasper stone,” “gates of pearl,” and “streets [of] transparent gold.” If material wealth is “trash,” how can it be an effective metaphor for spiritual value? It’s a bit like saying “Roses are trashy” and then saying “Ah, my love is a rose”! Could it be that the poem’s spiritual message is undercut by the force of its material imagery?

To put it another way, does the very thing (the rich imagery) that does so much to strengthen the poem as a poem work against its effectiveness as a theological statement?

To put it yet another way, is the poem’s form at odds with its content? Or do they in some sly way work together? Read more!

Every time I teach William Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation I get the same complaint: it’s dull. But it’s not! Once you get used to Bradford’s Puritan “plain style,” his account of the Plymouth colony’s early years is more fun than Disneyland. Yes, it reveals the early colonists to be every bit as bigoted and theocratic as the Puritan stereotype would suggest, but it also shows them to be dedicated, gutsy, and at least occasionally funny. I would recommend paying special attention to the account of the sailor with the “lusty, able body” (on page 248); the beautiful and moving description of just how vulnerable and isolated the colonists felt upon being dropped off by the Mayflower (249-250); the heartbreaking account of the “starving time” (251-252); the hilarious description of John Morton’s rival colony at Merrymount, which ends with Morton being arrested after he proves too drunk to lift his musket (254-258) (remember, sometimes a musket is just a musket); and the explanation of the shocking, just shocking, discovery that there were “so many wicked persons and profane people” in God’s Own Colony (262-263).

A few questions: At the beginning of his book, Bradford tells us he is writing “in a plain style, with singular regard to the simple truth in all things” (247). But is the truth of the Plymouth experiment really simple? And is Bradford’s plain style really so plain? Does it really give us the unvarnished truth, or is the plain style itself a rhetorical device used to make the untrue seem true?

Is Bradford’s History really a history at all? If not, what would you call it?

As examples of some of Bradford’s literary devices, consider the alliteration and internal rhyme that give so much zip to the phrases “to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies” and “fill their sides full of arrows.” Feel the poetic rhythm of “hideous and desolate wilderness” (each of the main words is a dactyl, with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables: hí-de-ous, dés-o-late, wíl-der-ness). Groove on the anaphora in “wild beasts and wild men.” (The original spelling is “wild beasts and willd men.”) In other words, sense the poetry animating the prose — and the poet’s heart beating inside the sober and orthodox colonial governor.

Oh, yeah — anyone who thinks the U.S. Constitution established a “Christian nation” should be sure to check out the Mayflower Compact (251) to see what the charter of a real Christian polity looks like.

As for the excerpt from John Underhill’s Newes from America, it can be difficult to read — in more ways than one. As far as I know, this book has never been published in a modern edition, and the copy in your coursepack is from a microfilm of the original. The copy quality is poor, the spelling is old-school (“seeing the Fort was to hotte for us, wee devised a way how wee might save ourselves”), and the book uses the “long-s” (which looks like an “f” with the cross-stroke on the left side only).

But the excerpt is also difficult to read because of its horrific content. It begins after the fighting at the Pequot village of Mystic is already underway. The Pequots, mostly women and children, have been caught by surprise in their “palizado” or wooden fortress but are starting to mount an effective defense. The Puritans, led by Underhill and Captain Mason and having taken a few casualties, decide not to force their way into the fort but instead to burn it down. Underhill’s account of the ensuing slaughter can be compared to William Bradford’s account of the same event in Chapter XXVIII of his History.

Both accounts can be compared to this R-rated scene from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911. What would you say are the some of the hallmarks of the language used to describe and justify the Pequot massacre? What about the rhetoric of empire more generally? And what about Michael Moore’s anti-imperialist rhetoric? Read more!

Summertime and the livin’ is easy. Bye everyone! I leave you with this year’s Grizzly@Adams Super Summer Classic: George and Ira Gershwin’s lullaby “Summertime,” from Porgy and Bess. To hear Billie Holiday sing this standard, click here. Ella Fitzgerald also has a fine version of the song. Amy Winehouse’s version is not quite in the same league, but still worth a listen. For an acid-rock version, try this one from Jim Morrison and the Doors. And for the 1959 film version, click here.

“Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin.’” Now that’s poetry.

Previous Super Summer Classics include “Summersong” by the Decemberists and “Hot Fun in the Summertime” by Sly and the Family Stone. Read more!

Senior Seminar. Here are your final exam questions, everyone — right after the jump. Remember, the exam is 10-11:50 a.m. Thursday, May 7. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the questions.

Sarah Joslin: You have written that “in a utopia…it’s absolutely necessary for one’s free will to be absolutely authentic, not some synthetic illusion pulled over the eyes by a manipulative government — this would indeed be an anti-utopia. Censorship lands smack in the middle of this conflict. It’s necessary for individuals to have free range for expression and development of identity, but it’s also necessary that these individuals don’t stomp all over their neighbors in the effort.”

So say we all. But censorship is not only a matter of what one is allowed to express; it’s also a matter of what is allowed to hear and read. And children in particular are typically prevented from hearing and reading a great deal, and this censorship exists precisely in order to limit the child’s free will. The most obvious example of this sort of thing is what we politely call a “religious upbringing.” I’ve never known of a religious parent going out of their way to expose their child to ideas that would undercut that child’s faith. Paradoxically (or nonsensically, or hypocritically), the parent wants the child to “freely” choose the faith even as the parent prevents the child from weighing the arguments against the faith or experiencing the potential spiritual joys of some other faith. In this sense I would say that every parent and every school and every church is a censor of the first order.

Would you agree? If not, why not? If so, is such censorship a problem? If it is a problem, what should we do about it?

Anthony Guerrero: You argue in one of your comments that “the degree in which Plato proposes censorship is disgusting, and would have the Founding Fathers rolling in their graves.” I agree. Plato’s Republic is not in any sense a liberal democracy. The Republic might well be a valuable exercise in philosophy, but as a blueprint for an actual society it can only be read as a dystopia.

My question concerns the nation we have today. Please think about the Constitution as it exists right now. Suppose that we do not change it a bit, and that we continue to abide by it faithfully. That is, we continue to have a First Amendment, a Fourth Amendment, etc., and our government actually does respect the rights guaranteed by them, and we continue to elect our representatives and senators and presidents as we do today, and so on. Is it possible that under those conditions the United States might turn into a dystopia? Explain.

Gregg Porter: In one of your comments you compared “Socrates’ idea of the ideal state” to what sounds very much like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: “Once the process of extra-uterine fetal development is perfected, society might indeed be able to raise legions of anonymously-parented children for its military, workforce, and general needs. All that without having to be pestered with troublesome emotional bonding….”

Sure. It’s easy enough to name some of the things we don’t want to use biotechnology for. It’s equally easy to name some of the things we do want to use it for (say, to cure cancer). What’s not so easy is to develop a set of bioethical guidelines to help us distinguish good from bad uses of biotechnology more generally. Not so easy — but that’s exactly what I want you to do for the final. Enjoy.

Lacie Paulson: You’ve written that “Socrates’s idea is anti-utopian,” in no small part because “[t]he women have no choice in who they marry.” Of course, marriage practices vary considerably from culture to culture, and to see how that might matter to our understanding of utopia, here’s what I want you to do. First, familiarize yourself with the myth of Shangri-La, one of the West’s most popular images of utopia. (Wikipedia describes Shangri-La as “a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains” and as “synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia — a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world”).

Next, look into the actual marriage and family structure of the real Himalayan kingdom of Tibet, starting here. Describe Tibetan polyandry to the class in some detail, then address the question of whether such marriage practices are intrinsically inimical to human happiness, and then compare and contrast Tibet to The Republic.

Rob Warden: My question for you is easy to ask but (I hope) not so easy to answer. Do you think transhumanism would lead inevitably to dystopia? Why or why not?

Sheth LaRue: You note in one of your comments that “eugenicism is still occurring today, maybe not as blatantly as it once was, but still occurring nonetheless. A quick search will find a number of dating websites for ‘perfect’ genes - although now it’s more about brains than brawn. There are even sites where you are judged before you can join…. Was Socrates all that insane in suggesting genetics be used as a starting point for choosing a mate?” At your suggestion I checked out BeautifulPeople.com and was suitably appalled — and jealous. But why are we appalled with this sort of thing? Is there really anything wrong — ethically, morally, religiously — with people systematically seeking out what they consider the most attractive mate possible? Isn’t BeautifulPeople.com right when it says that “it may not be politically correct, but it’s honest”? Finally, would a ChristianBeautifulPeople.com be possible without being an oxymoron? Why or why not?

Beth Tantanella: After commenting on the utopian family structure proposed in The Republic, you note rather archly that Socrates “is just thinking about the good of the community” and ask, “What is wrong with that?” Well, what is wrong with that? More specifically, what’s the best way to balance the good of the individual against the good of the community? If you haven’t done so already, please read Ursula Le Guin’s utopian story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and come to class prepared to summarize it and explain its significance in the utopian tradition.

Ashley Pacheco: In one of your comments you insisted that for a utopia to be a utopia it must be utopian for “all society.” At least for us today that makes sense: true utopia cannot rest upon an exploitative social hierarchy. The society must be ideal for all its members. But what if a society were to achieve that ideal not by accommodating everyone but simply by getting rid of those it doesn’t want? What if Hitler had succeeded in making Germany into his planned judenfrei utopia — I mean, what if post-Holocaust Germany really were utopian, at least in its own eyes, but only because there were no Jews left there for it to oppress? Or what if Israel were to succeed in creating its ideal Jewish state by excluding all the Palestinians? Getting rid of the “others” with whom part of a society is in conflict obviously simplifies the task of achieving utopian perfection.

I trust we can see the problem with predicating utopia on ethnic cleansing. But isn’t that in a sense what Charlotte Perkins Gilman does in Herland — create a feminist utopia by getting rid of all the men? Sure, it’s not as if the Herlanders killed the men themselves, or even wanted to. The men are eliminated by other, fully acceptable means, but the result is the same: a society free to perfect itself because it no longer has to deal with a “troublesome” element.

How can Gilman be defended against the charge that she takes too easy a way out, creating her utopian society by means of what might be called “gender cleansing”? Read more!

American Studies. Here you go, folks: final exam questions after the jump. Remember, the exam is 3-4:50 p.m. Thursday, May 7. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the questions.

Gregg Porter: In one of your comments you cited Mount Rushmore as a particularly obvious instance of the cultural construction of nature. After directing us to this clip of Superman II’s General Zod doing to the United States what the United States did to the Sioux, you reminded us of the Crazy Horse Memorial, which, in the words of Chief Henry Standing Bear, aims to remind “the white man…that the red man has great heroes, too.”

That got me to thinking about the 1990s controversy over the placement of a large Christian cross just outside of Auschwitz. Please read this excerpt from Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll. Then compare and contrast the cross at Auschwitz to the sculptures on Mount Rushmore as examples of the geographical inscription of cultural hegemony.

Matt Felton: In one of your posts you lamented that kids today seem “disconnected from nature.” But why is that disconnection a problem, exactly? Given that most forms of outdoor recreation cause at least some harm to nature, isn’t it better if people just connect with nature via the Discovery Channel?

Erin Throckmorton: You’ve written that “consumers will never be able to be green completely.” Sure, not completely green — but there are plenty of people who believe consumers should at least try to be more green. Please read up a bit on consumerism, anti-consumerism, green consumerism, and Green America and report back to us on the current prospects of saving the planet by harnessing the powers of the marketplace.

Dorothy Medina: In one of your comments you described the beauty of the “pristine, rugged mountain country” surrounding the San Luis Valley. You wrote also of the local shepherds who graze their flocks here every summer. Please draw on your own experience and compare and contrast local sheepherding today to that described 150 years ago by John Muir in My First Summer in the Sierra. Pay particular attention to Muir’s description of the shepherd Billy — does that description strike you as accurate and fair?

Jacob McClure: You’ve indicated that you think “[c]onservatism, in its true meaning, would seem to be the most congenial to environmentalism.” Please read up on the political philosophies of conservatism and green conservatism, then check out Republicans for Environmental Protection, and then come to the final prepared to discuss the prospects for a conservative environmental politics in America. Why do you think environmentalism has for so long been seen almost exclusively as a “liberal” concern? Is there something intrinsic to American conservatism or the Republican Party that prevents them from going green? Read more!

American Lit II: As promised, here are your final exam questions. Remember, the exam is 1-2:50 p.m. Tuesday, May 5. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the questions.

Kenneth Babcock: You have observed that “[o]ne of the main differences between The Age of Innocence and O Pioneers! is the difference in how the authors give women power. In O Pioneers!, Cather gives Alexandra power by making her a strong and smart individual…. [I]n The Age of Innocence, Wharton’s female character is powerful by deceit. May is subtle and very smart about getting the things that she wants. She plays Newland Archer for a fool. She even has May sarcastically tell Newland, “It did go off beautifully, didn’t it?”

Please continue what you’ve started here by comparing and contrasting May Archer and Alexandra Bergson in more detail, paying particular attention to how they do or do not exercise power. Then do the same for May Archer and Ellen Olenska. Finally, let us know what, if anything, you conclude from these comparisons.

Melissa Slemp: After pointing out that O Pioneers! and The Age of Innocence are both “stories of families who are struggling” and that both “involve romance on some level,” you claim that “The Age of Innocence is a better novel simply because it captures the conflict between men and women. It really shows the games that we play with one another and the lengths we will go to to find and receive love.”

I think you’re right that O Pioneers! does not turn on a “conflict between men and women.” But what is the central conflict driving Cather’s novel? And why is the conflict between men and women so special that you would cite it as the key to the superiority of The Age of Innocence?

Night Hawk: In one of your comments you wrote that you “like The Age of Innocence because it relates a little more to what I have seen in lives of people today. Many people today put on acts to please other people even though it isn’t really who they are. In O Pioneers! people are struggling to get what they want and to improve their lives, which is also what people do these days, but I haven’t noticed it as much as people putting on acts to please other people.”

Your comment got me thinking about the idea of authenticity. Consider Henry James’s characters Frederick Winterbourne (who seems to be one of those who “put on acts to please other people even though it isn’t really who they are”) and Daisy Miller, who is always just herself. It seems to me that Daisy Miller, at least in this one respect, is like Alexandra Bergson. Then there’s Alice Walker’s character Dee Johnson, aka Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, from “Everyday Use,” who seems about as fake as they come. And then there’s the (authentic) Gracie Mae Still and the (inauthentic) Traynor or “1955.”

Given the frequency of this type of character pairing — authentic vs. inauthentic — in American literature, and given the current popularity of expressions like “Keep it real,” I’m thinking maybe Americans are obsessed with authenticity. But is authenticity even possible in America today? Is anyone truly authentic any more? What is authenticity, anyway?

Jerry Montoya: You wrote that “[o]verall Wharton's novel is not as great as O Pioneers!” Fair enough. You go on to note that Newland Archer and Alexandra Bergson “both seem to be thrust into a life that they didn't choose for themselves.” But hey, aren’t we all? You add, “the main characters share a longing they have to be more intimate with the people they truly love.” Again, don’t we all?

It’s the first of these two ideas — the idea that we find ourselves thrown into circumstances we didn’t choose — that I want you to explore in your answer. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger uses the term thrownness to describe something like what you’re talking about. Read up a bit on “thrownness,” explain the concept to the class, and then let us know how you think it might help us understand some of the more memorable characters we’ve encountered this semester.

Lifeguard: You’ve written that Roxana of Pudd’nhead Wilson “is truly an interesting character. She seems so real…. I really felt for her. I [was] always wondering what and how she will come back into each setting.” I think you’re onto something important here — namely, the way our personal investment in Roxana carries us through the story. We don’t care all that much whether Tom is brought to justice for his crimes. We don’t much care what becomes of the Italians or whether the townspeople ever understand the true intelligence ov Dave Wilson. We care about what happens to Roxana. Without her, Pudd’nhead Wilson is just a clever satire. Whatever power the novel has is almost all due to her.

Would you agree? If so, do you think the novel is weakened by the fact that the ending has so little to do with Roxana? Explain.

Jonathan Andujar: I liked your observation that, despite their many differences, Beyonce and Roxanna have at least one thing in common, namely the way they both wind up “commanding the attention of the white men in the audience.” There is, of course, a long and tortured history of, shall we say, problematic relations between white men and black women. What is suggested about that history and those relations by some of the other works we’ve read this semester?

Erin Throckmorton: In one comment you wrote that Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Roxana is “the best part of the book. Very strong and you have to admire her indeed!” I would say much the same about Aunt Rachel in “A True Story.” Please compare and contrast these two memorable characters, and let us know what, if anything, you conclude from these comparisons.

Diedre Mark: In a comment about Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California,” you wrote that “Ginsberg is asking America where she is going and asking Whitman what he thinks of it all.” Okay, but why Whitman? What’s the significance of the fact that Ginsberg appeals to Walt Whitman in this poem rather than, say, Henry David Thoreau or Benjamin Franklin?

James Williams: In your essay on James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” you noted one critic’s claim that the story is a “cautionary tale about the dangers of ‘hip culture’ and addiction.” In response you compare Sonny’s heroin addiction to “a Cuban refugee making a raft out of empty soda cans and attempting to make it to Florida.” I understood you to be saying not that using heroin is good, but that Sonny’s heroin use tells us something good about him. It signifies the fierceness of his desire for something better than the ghetto offers him. As you put it, “It’s about paying whatever price is necessary to create light in a dark place.”

Yes: to create light in a dark place. Baldwin of course uses light and dark metaphorically throughout the story, right on up to the final paragraph, where we read that the nightclub patrons sit “[i]n the dark,” that Sonny sits “in the indigo light” of the stage, and that the drink the narrator has bought for his brother “glowed and shook above [Sonny’s] head.” What do you suppose Baldwin is trying to accomplish with this light/dark imagery? Read more!

American Studies. Dave Foreman is not your stereotypical treehugger. Wikipedia introduces him as follows:

The son of a US Air Force career officer, as a young man Foreman supported the Vietnam War. He received the highest honor of the Boy Scouts of America, the rank of Eagle Scout. Foreman first became involved in political activism as a college student, supporting Republican Senator Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1964 and founding the New Mexico branch of the conservative youth organization Young Americans for Freedom. After graduating from college in 1968, and attending the Officers Candidate School of the US Marine Corps, Foreman’s radicalism began to take shape.

Nowadays environmentalism is so completely associated with the left that it surprises us to learn of Foreman’s conservative roots. But are environmentalism and conservatism really at odds? Which political philosophy — liberalism, conservatism, socialism, libertarianism, anarchism — seems most congenial to environmentalism? While we’re at it, which religion seems most congenial to environmentalism? Read more!

Senior Seminar. The concluding chapter of We gives us a chilling description of the interrogation of I-330 and other suspected members of the Mephi. Here’s the key passage:

In the evening of that day I sat at one table with Him, with the Benefactor (for the first time) in the famous Gas Room. They brought in that woman. In my presence she was supposed to give her testimony. This woman stubbornly said nothing and was smiling. I noticed that she had sharp and very white teeth and that this was beautiful.

Then they led her under the Bell Jar. Her face became very white and since her eyes were dark and big, this was very beautiful. When they started to pump air out from under the Bell Jar, she threw back her head, half-closed her eyes, and squeezed her lips — this reminded me of something. She was looking at me, strongly gripping the armrests of the chair and looking, until her eyes closed completely. Then they dragged her out, quickly brought her back to her senses with the help of electrodes, and then put her back under the Bell Jar. They repeated this three times and she still didn’t say a word. Others, who had been brought in together with this woman, turned out to be more honorable: many of them started to talk after the first time.

This description is not particularly graphic. What makes it so powerful? I would argue that its horror is deepened by the matter-of-fact tone in which it is described, which is to say, by the failure of the recently lobotomized narrator to recognize it for the torture that it is and to be revolted by it.

OK. You all know what an America-hating knee-jerk liberal I am, and you probably recognize the photo above as one taken at Abu Ghraib prison, so you can probably guess where I’m going with this. What horrifies and disgusts me most about my own country’s barbaric treatment of “enemy combatants” is not so much that it happened in the first place. It’s the ongoing strenuous refusal of so many influential Americans to acknowledge torture as torture — and beyond that the lack of outrage among Americans generally.

That waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in fact constitute torture has been acknowledged by everyone from the International Red Cross to Republican Senator John McCain (see here), yet any number of influential talking heads still refuse to acknowledge that truth (see here). But so far only a few low-ranking soldiers (like Charles Graner and Lynddie England) have been prosecuted for torture. The high-ranking officials who authorized torture in the first place are still at large. One of the most important of these people, John Yoo, is now a law professor. Another, Jay Bybee, is a federal judge. As for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush — I’m not holding my breath. As Bob Dylan once reminded us, “All the criminals in their coats and their ties / are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise.”

Here let me quote the key concept from the work of David and Nanelle Barash, who define dystopia as the denial of a biologically-based human nature:

In justifying this nightmare society [of 1984], Winston’s torturer, O’Brien, explains: “You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.” Fortunately, O’Brien...is wrong.

Well, is there “something called human nature” which is intrinsically outraged by what we do? Or has that something been hammered out of us? Is O’Brien right or wrong?

If we think of “the soul” in We as a kind of shorthand for all that makes us uniquely human — imagination, love — then is Zamyatin suggesting in the passage above that part of being human is the ability to recognize and be revolted by torture? If so, should we say that America has lost its soul?

I’ll give you my answer to this question after you’ve all replied.

P.S. For a recent essay likening torture at Guantanamo Bay to that in Nineteen Eighty Four, take a look at Scott Horton’s “Revealing the Secrets in Room 101.” Read more!