4/13/08

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois presents his views on the problems African Americans would face, the progress his race had made since the Civil War, and how well he thought the race could possibly do in the future. It had been mentioned in class prior to reading this text that W.E.B. DuBois had pretty different views than Booker T. Washington, but I did not realize that DuBois called Washington's ideas counterproductive and harmful to the progress of African Americans. Washingtong believed that everyone should be given an education and that hard work and laboring with the hands were not bad things. In fact, he thought each individual should appreciate the value of labor before he did anything else. Booker T. Washington also did his best to keep from getting involved in politics. He thought that African Americans going into positions of importance around the state and counties was detrimental because they were not ready or trained for such things. W.E.B. DuBois, on the otherhand, believed education of the individual should be based on that person's individual ability. He also thought that the idea of the vote and civic equality were necessary for the progress of African Americans. DuBois saw Washington's ideas as a way of submission and acceptance of segregation. I think that having these two opposite stances on the best way to bring about progress in their race would create a rift in that race. After reading Washington's text, I thought that his propositions and ideas made sense and would help bring about change for African Americans. But after reading DuBois' text and seeing another perspective, I'm starting to question whether or not Washington was completely right. But I also don't know if DuBois' more radical ideas for change are correct either.

4/8/08

I wanted to comment on Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery again. Throughout the whole book, Washington urges the African American community to see the immense value of labor and hard work. I found it obvious that one of his main goals in establishing the school at Tuskegee was to reverse the common idea that now that they were free, former slaves did not and should not have to work with their hands. He also wanted to instill the ideas of discipline, utility, respect, and selflessness for relationships between people. In reading this text, I thought that Booker T. Washington was being a little hypocritical when talking about the students going to classes and then having to labor in order to pay off their schooling. He criticized them for wanting to cut the work day short or somehow skipping out on doing the necessary work with their hands. However, when he was a child working in the salt mine, he turned the clock in the facility forward in order to get to school earlier and not miss class. This can be looked at two ways. First, he is consistent with his teachings that getting an education is the most important thing an African American could do to advance his position in society and the world. Washington as a young man was determined to get his education and was going to get his at pretty much any cost. On the other hand, Washington was causing the workers of the mine to work an hour or so less than they were supposed to during a normal work day. This goes against his ideas that hard labor is not a bad thing and that a person should not try to escape from doing his job. He would also condemn any student at Tuskegee Institute that would try to spend more time on his studies than was allotted during the day especially that student was using some of his designated work time to do so.

3/24/08

Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery presents a unique account from somebody who grew up during and after the Civil War. Washington’s autobiography describes life as a young slave boy on a Southern plantation as well as the beginnings of life as a free man. I thought it was interesting how the slaves that lived and worked on the same plantation as Washington did not feel much bitterness towards their masters who lived in the “big house.” They mourned for the one man who died and felt bad for those who were injured in the war. The slaves felt that being picked to keep watch at night over the men who were recovering was a very honorable position. Even when the slaves were set free by the Emancipation Proclamation, some of the older ones went back to their former masters and asked for work. This was also due to the fact that starting a whole new life at their age would be rather difficult. Booker T. Washington also had a unique desire for an education. I think it is obvious that this willingness to learn, even after only reading the first few chapters, is what propels him to be one of the great African Americans and a great leader for the people of his race. His longing for an education leads to his desire for the rest of African Americans to have an education similar to his. This is one reason why Washington goes on to establish Tuskegee Institute. His commentaries on the effects of ancestry and the Emancipation Proclamation on both races are very intriguing. It makes sense too that after the slaves were set free, the white people in the South were not much better off than the slaves who were going out into the world for the first time on their own. For years, the slaves had always done the labor and chores required to run a household. Now, there was no one to cook, clean, etc. The white girls had to learn how to take care of a house after having it done for them their whole lives. In addition, the ancestry of an individual gave a white man reasons not to fail at a particular job so as to not embarrass his whole family. The black man’s lack of ancestry makes him want to establish a good reputation for his family, but there is no family before him to embarrass if he does not do well.

3/9/08

Kyle Lunsford
3/9/08
Reynolds
Blog #9
The reading for this past week and over the weekend, The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker, is a novel that depicts the life of girls on strike in 1909. The whole book is a journal of the narrator’s daily thoughts and experiences as she tries to fight for women’s rights, specifically that to have the ability to form or join a laborer’s union. I knew before reading this book that things were bad for female workers in the early twentieth century, but I was still amazed at the awful treatment they received while both working and striking. The conditions are similar to those in Life in the Iron Mills. The idea of women strikers breaks apart the many relationships in Mary’s, the narrator’s, life. The way Malkiel writes the story is very different from most. It is all based on the narrator’s account of events and her opinions. There are no actual conversations in the book, just Mary’s retelling of them. Eventually, she is kicked out of her family’s house by her father and has a falling out with her fiancée. By the end of the reading for Monday, Mary’s dad and Jim have begun to see her reasoning and side of the argument. Mary was very satisfied when she realized that Jim had changed his opinions and was happy just to have turned one person. So in the end, the strike was somewhat of a good thing in that it enlightened some people as to what struggles the factory girls had to go through. The rich and upper class people in this story were so cold and heartless even when the girls came to them and told them their stories. They gave some money, but to them it was pennies and nickels. After visiting with the girls, they would go on with their lives not thinking twice about the hardships the workers faced every day. Overall, I think the book is very feminist, which is its point, and appeals greatly to the females in the audience. It is a very convincing argument in its time as to why women should be allowed to be in unions and it leads into and mentions their right to vote.

3/2/08

In the movie we watched last week, Blade Runner, the futuristic idea of replicants is introduced and brings into question the humanity of the characters. One of the main themes is determining who is human and who is a replicant. The blade runners are basically bounty hunters whose jobs are to kill replicants that have escaped to the earth. They must decide the humanity of a person in order to determine if they need to act. To do this they use the Voight-Kampff test. Harrison Ford’s character, Deckard, uses this test on Rachel, a Nexus 6 model replicant. After 100 questions, he determines she is not human even though she does not know she isn’t. We never find out if Deckard is human or not. If he is, shouldn't he be being hunted? He never takes the test. In the beginning, I automatically assumed that he was human, but in the end his humanity is not distinguishable. He also questions if the replicants are really evil or not. The replicants have a safety net of only living four years so they don't become too human. But why create them if you are going to kill them in four years? The whole idea of giving memories to the nexus 6 models questions what is life. What does it mean to be living? Personally, I found this movie to have no real interesting plot that made a noticeable movement throughout the story. I thought it was very boring. Obviously, there is a lot of significance to the themes in the movie, but the movie did not capture my attention or interest. I heard that this movie is really popular, but failed at the box office when it first came out. I understand that last part but not why it is such a favorite.

2/24/08

Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills presents to the reader the harsh reality of the conditions and lives that the workers in an industrial-based economy have to deal with. The novel immediately describes the horrible conditions lived in by the workers when the narrator says that six families are crammed into two cellar rooms, and then it goes on to describe how Deb is hunchbacked from the labor. Her body starves for food while she really longs for love and some sort of spiritual connection. Hugh’s work at the furnaces of the mill causes him to lose his manliness and the other workers call him Molly Wolfe for his more girlish or feminized appearance. The sculpture of the woman Hugh Wolfe creates is one of someone who is longing for sustenance. The artist Hugh corrects a visitor to the mill who analyzes the work and says the woman longs for food and tells him that she actually is craving for something to motivate her to live. If only Hugh could recognize his talent and harness it, he could escape from the downtrodden life of an iron mill worker. Hugh ends up being sentenced to jail after Deb steals money from one of the visitors. This is after Hugh goes to a church service where the preacher’s language and message go over Hugh’s head. Here Davis is pointing out that the social problems of these types of workers may be cured by Christian salvation. Hugh, while in his cell, notices that the lowliest of society and even a dog has more freedom than him. He ends up dying in jail after committing suicide by slashing his wrist, but Deb ends up with a better life. She joins the community of the Quakers and is freed from the constraints of the life she led before. This ending is a somewhat hopeful outlook on the common worker’s situation. They may at some point in their life have the opportunity to escape the awful conditions in which they live. But it could also be viewed as a story that crushes the American Dream.

2/19/08

The reading that we had over the weekend, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street,” was very interesting. Melville’s writing is extremely detailed and he takes a lot of time to describe just about every part of a scene so the reader can get a really good picture of the situations that take place in and around the Lawyer’s office. The length at which he goes into describing the moods of Turkey and Nippers is astounding, but it creates a very slow pace for the story to move along at. The story of Bartleby is one that I do not quite know how to interpret. The character of Bartleby enters the story and does great work for the Lawyer but refuses to examine the papers. His constant refusal of “I would prefer not to” seems just a little insubordinate at first, but soon it becomes a central phrase to the story as the Lawyer cannot stop thinking about the reason behind Bartleby’s words. As the story progresses, these words become engrained into each of the characters’ speech as they hear them so regularly from Bartleby. As to what Herman Melville was trying to say or represent by the refusals of Bartleby, I do not have much of an idea. I ended up looking this story up online and most critics disagree as to what is the correct interpretation of “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Some believe that it deals with the depression and job dissatisfaction of the middle class. The view that I find most interesting is one that says the story is somewhat related to Melville’s personal life. According to this theory, Bartleby represents the author while the Lawyer is the average reader. Melville had success with certain books, but he preferred to write stories like Moby Dick, which were more contemplative, while the reader asked him to generate more stories of the other kind.

Addition to 2/13/08

Well, it turns out that Tateh and his daughter reappear in the story after not being heard from in awhile. I am glad Doctorow brings them back, and I believe it makes for a better ending to the story. By reuniting the two families, Doctorow foreshadows the eventual marriage of Mother and Tateh. I find this interesting because much earlier in the novel, Evelyn Nesbit seemed to be in love with Tateh and the girl, and now Mother seems to have done the same. Tateh’s change of his name is also intriguing since by adding a fictitious title to the beginning of his name, he gains much more acceptance into the world and this advances his business. The arrest of Emma Goldman is an allusion to how celebrities and other famous leaders get in trouble or are unfairly accused of causing difficulties from the public just because of their influence on their followers. Mother’s Younger Brother is a perfect example of a young American who has no real purpose or drive to his life. He spends his life moving around a lot and trying different career paths and ways to feel fulfillment. Once he joins Coalhouse and his gang, Mother’s Younger Brother feels he has found his “home” where he truly belongs. This is evident by how he paints his face and that he feels good when he fights with them and helps them make bombs. He seems to have finally found his idealistic purpose and eventually dies fighting for this principle. When Coalhouse holds up Morgan’s residence, the authorities call in Booker T. Washington and Father. Washington eventually convinces Coalhouse to stop the holdout. Washington and the authorities do not see the modification that Coalhouse made to his demands, but Father does see it. He tries to convince the people of New York that Coalhouse is somewhat reasonable, but he dies anyway in a way that seems to the reader as intentional by Coalhouse. One last thing I noticed was the reaction of Father to the baseball game. He loved watching the game with the boy but he did not like the fact that the teams were made up of mostly immigrant players. This disgust might come from a feeling that baseball is supposed to be an American game and these immigrants are not yet viewed as Americans in Father’s eyes. In today’s game, there are many baseball players that come from other countries. The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Japan, Mexico, etc. contribute a large number of players to Major League Baseball. I find it interesting that this point of mixing ethnic backgrounds in baseball spans the length of its history.

2/13/08

Well, it turns out that Tateh and his daughter reappear in the story after not being heard from in awhile. I am glad Doctorow brings them back, and I believe it makes for a better ending to the story. By reuniting the two families, Doctorow foreshadows the eventual marriage of Mother and Tateh. I find this interesting because much earlier in the novel, Evelyn Nesbit seemed to be in love with Tateh and the girl, and now Mother seems to have done the same. Tateh’s change of his name is also intriguing since by adding a fictitious title to the beginning of his name, he gains much more acceptance into the world and this advances his business. The arrest of Emma Goldman is an allusion to how celebrities and other famous leaders get in trouble or are unfairly accused of causing difficulties from the public just because of their influence on their followers. Mother’s Younger Brother is a perfect example of a young American who has no real purpose or drive to his life. He spends his life moving around a lot and trying different career paths and ways to feel fulfillment. Once he joins Coalhouse and his gang, Mother’s Younger Brother feels he has found his “home” where he truly belongs. This is evident by how he paints his face and that he feels good when he fights with them and helps them make bombs. He seems to have finally found his idealistic purpose and eventually dies fighting for this principle. When Coalhouse holds up Morgan’s residence, the authorities call in Booker T. Washington and Father. Washington eventually convinces Coalhouse to stop the holdout. Washington and the authorities do not see the modification that Coalhouse made to his demands, but Father does see it. He tries to convince the people of New York that Coalhouse is somewhat reasonable, but he dies anyway in a way that seems to the reader as intentional by Coalhouse.

2/4/08

E.L. Doctorow presents an interesting story in his novel Ragtime. Based on certain events and people the reader can assume that it takes place in the first decade of the twentieth century before World War I. Doctorow writes his book in an intriguing way. He starts the narration of the book as a boy of a family that lives in New Rochelle, New York. Then, several times, he introduces new characters and writes a chapter or so from their point of view or that of someone close to them. For example, Harry Houdini, the famous magician the boy wishes he could see, ends up running his car into a pole outside the boy’s house. After two chapters of the beginning of their story, Doctorow includes a chapter about a poor immigrant family trying desperately to make ends meet. Next is the story of Evelyn Nesbit and her husband Henry K. Thaw who murdered the well-known architect Stanford White. When first reading this collection of little beginnings, I found them somewhat random and not connected. However, once you read a few more chapters, you begin to see the stories starting to interweave. The chapter that contains the story of Sigmund Freud and his visit to the United States mentions a man in Freud’s car who sees a beautiful woman holding the hand of a little girl outside on the street. You think nothing of it when you read it, but after reading the following chapters, the connection is made that the woman holding the girl’s hand is Evelyn Nesbit and the little girl is the daughter of Tateh, the man making paper cut outs as a living.
I found class discussion very illuminating when we discussed Ragtime. The quote from Scott Joplin that was included at the beginning of the book makes sense now. If you read the novel quickly and just read it to get through it, you will miss a lot of symbolism and important details. There are many hints at the conflict that immigration caused in America for instance. The boy’s father owns a flag making business that is booming because of the growing patriotism in America. This is due in large part to the growing number of immigrants in New York and the surrounding area since the immigrant population feels very patriotic and proud to be in this great country.

1/28/07

The last several chapters of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court brought about an interesting conclusion to the story. The way Mark Twain wrapped up the novel did not answer some of my questions, but it also did not leave things available to be doubted.
It turns out the Yankee’s scientific advancements of the sixth century resulted in the total destruction of the society and kingdom he was working to create. He overcame the large numbers of opponents, but his group of followers were killed by the amount of death and decay. It is somewhat ironic that it turned out this way, but it answered my question as to how history was not going to be altered by the Yankee’s implementation of thirteen hundred years of invention and scientific achievement. All of the inventions that were ahead of their time were bound to change history, but if no one remembers them, the course of history will not change in the slightest. In addition, the enemy he wanted most to overcome, the Church, ended up being behind the Yankee’s downfall. Another interesting thing I noticed was that the spoken languages of Clarence and the Yankee were switched. By the end of the book, Clarence spoke just about perfect 1800’s English, and as the first and last chapters of the book indicate, the Yankee speaks in the English of King Arthur’s time. His view on where he belongs also changes by the end of the book. For a time after first being transported to the sixth century, he feels that he is either in a dream or has time traveled away from his home. In the postscript, the Yankee indicates that he now believes his time travel and the fight at the end were all a dream and that his true home was with Sandy and Hello Central in the time of King Arthur. One thing that does not make sense to me is that Merlin’s magic, which failed to work every other time throughout the book, seems to have worked in the end sending the Yankee back to the 19th century. His time travel is the only concept from the book that physically does not make sense, but at least Twain is consistent.

1/18/08

The readings and discussions of this week were more interesting than those of last week. I believe this is due to the addition of the Mark Twain reading titled A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. This novel seems to grab my attention more than previous readings because its story is intriguing and always has questions that are unanswered. These questions without answers keep me reading because I do not like leaving something without a conclusion.
Robert McMath’s History by a Graveyard: The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Records was a short, interesting read because it shed some light on the life of factory workers and the below par working and sometimes living conditions. This work was also intriguing since the records, paperwork, and photos that were included in it are now here in the Georgia Tech archives for students and faculty to investigate. This fact makes me want to go search the rest of the archives for similar information in that and other time periods because who knows what kind of other stuff has been buried with time. I believe I made an interesting connection between History by a Graveyard and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court when it comes to each of the works descriptions of managing factories. The factory manager in Robert McMath’s work, Oscar Elsas, hired a company to place agents in the midst of the workplace to spy on and hear out the employees in order to figure out how rebellious they were feeling. In Mark Twain’s novel, the man who has been transposed to the sixth century does a very similar thing when he is building up the civilization around him. He places men he believes to be loyal inside the new factories and workshops, so he does not lose control over the population that he commands.

1/11/08

The essay “Engineer’s and the New South Creed: The Formation and Early Development of Georgia Tech” by James E. Brittain and Robert C. McMath, Jr. is an interesting piece of writing that traverses the history of the founding of the Georgia Institute of Technology. There were many aspects and opinions that were considered when decisions about what kind of role the school would play were made. The results of these decisions determined how the school would contribute to the city of Atlanta and the New South.
Initially, the Georgia Institute of Technology was modeled after the Worcester Institute because of Worcester’s great success as a town after the installment of the school. The state of Georgia wanted similar success for the city of Atlanta so that it could be seen as a contributor to the industrialization of the South. The curriculum that resulted was one that taught all classes of people the benefit of work. This system seemed to break down the barrier between the two major classes and allowed lower class individuals to enter the world of engineering the same as their educated counterparts. Georgia Tech’s students in the institute’s first decade were given most of their engineering experience in the shop. However, after a fire destroyed that building, their studies were more directed to learning theories and concepts of how things work rather than to work those things. Georgia Tech succeeded in aiding the industrialization of the South and this is evident by the number of graduates that stayed in Georgia or in other southern states to work. The main point of the South’s motivation to have a technical school built was to help it compete with and become less dependent on the North.