I was too cool for gloves, that's what my coat pockets are for...

The irony in To Build a Fire is, well, unfortunately funny.  Here’s a man, having very little, if any experience out in cold weather, going about a trip to find his friends, while the temperature is roughly seventy below.  Yet, despite the warnings of traveling alone and how severe the weather can be, the man continues on his trip; his only companion was a dog.  The irony of the story was how the dog knew that the journey was dangerous and the man too ignorant and arrogant to turn around or start a fire sooner.  Ultimately, it causes his death and the dog is left confused and runs off to find “…other food-providers and fire-providers.”  As human we are regarded as superior; we have the ability to walk on two feet, talk, listen, read, write, etc., while dogs and other creatures can not therefore making them inferior.  However, despite the knowledge that a human may be able to access, the intuition and instinct residing within us, can sometimes be neglected, a fact we learned via the man in the story.  The story is funny in a sense because London writes down a classic example of human ignorance and makes the dog the superior character in the story.

On another note, I empathized with the character.  His ignorance regarding the cold weather is something I recently experienced myself.  In Bullhead City, Arizona, where I am from, our precipitation consists of rain, maybe one to two inches a year and snow, well, it hasn’t snowed in Bullhead in roughly twenty years.  It was a new concept and a rather cold one at that.  I remember the first good snowfall we had here in December and I didn’t know what an ice scraper was.  I was so mad because my windows were frozen, I had nothing to get the ice off, and oh yeah, I thought I was too cool for gloves, that's what my coat pockets are for.  Put the combination together and it spells disaster.  Well what I did was brush the snow off my car with my hands and sit in my car with the defroster on waiting patiently for my windows to defrost.  I learned very quickly just how cold snow was, thankfully, it wasn’t seventy below and I didn’t die.  I did learn a great lesson however: gloves are awesome and ice scrapers and very much worth the five or ten dollars.

Similarities: the good and the bad

            I was very fond of the two chapters from Sister Carrie.  I related to Carrie on a few different levels and although the feminist in me disagrees with particular statements Dreiser made regarding women, I still felt a connection.  In the first chapter, the city and the man who she was speaking with on the train fascinate Carrie.  Dreiser writes, “To the child, the genius with imagination, or the wholly untraveled, the approach to a great city for the first time is a wonderful thing.”  When moving up here to Sioux Falls, I had never been further east than Flagstaff, Arizona or further north than Durango, Colorado once when I was very young.  It was a road-trip that I believe I will never forget because everything I saw completely amazed me.  The mountains, the fields (after a while however the fascination with that ceased), Mount Rushmore, and buffalo all captivated my imagination and opened my mind to what else the world could be besides desert; it was truly a wonderful trip. 

            In the third chapter, when Carrie is out job-hunting, she comes across a retail store and the items in it are explained with much detail:

“They were handsome, bustling, successful affairs, with a host of goods, shoes, stationary, jewelry…dainty slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and petticoats…[they] all touched her with individual desire.”

Having come from a town in which shopping for the past seventeen years was limited to Wal-Mart and two grocery stores, the mall quickly caught my attention.  Having similar job-hunting issues as Carrie however, limited the amount of spending actually completed.  But it was a moment of pure bliss to realize the world offered more than Wal-Mart in regards to shopping.

            Stepping away from how Sister Carrie relates to my life personally, it’s a novel that was first published in 1900 and it still has much relevance to America today.  People embarking on new journeys everyday, America’s obsession with material objects, and the most recent, job hunting.  I heard on the news today that in California, 700 applications were turned in to a school district for one, yes only one, janitor position; 699 people will be looking for another job tomorrow.  How much can the world change in over 100 years?  Apparently not very much.  I’m very interested as to how the novel continues and come to an end.

"...It quaintly came to him as a human, living thing..."

Four the past eight and half years, I had lived on the outside of a war I could have cared less about.  The events that occurred on September 11, 2001 were insignificant to an eleven year old who was concerned whether or not the boy at the front of the class liked her or not.  The war following that day was similar in outcome, until recently. 

Growing up, my family has always been very proud to be American; I come from a long line of family being in the military.  I never understood the importance of war and the need for a military until I reached high school and began to wrap my young teenage brain around other things.  High school was the beginning of what we “wanted to be when we grew up.”  Coming from my hometown, there are not many opportunities past high school except working on the railroad or joining the military.  The military was a popular choice, especially among most of my friends; it was guaranteed pay and education for four years of service, and for a few, it was their chance to make a difference.  For one of my friends however, a mere month before his twentieth birthday, it was his last chance at anything.  I went through life for 18 years not caring about war and thinking it was pointless.  That people were making a big deal out of the death toll and in the big picture, what’s a couple thousand people?  June 2008 changed my perspective. 

While reading the short story by Crane, The Open Boat, the one scene that made me stop and re-read it over and over again was when the “soldier of Legion lay dying in Algiers.”  Crane writes the significance about the soldier “…was less to him than the breaking of a pencil’s point.”  A point that I had cared less about as well.  But what really got to me was the line, “Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing…it was an actuality—stern, mournful, and fine.”  If I had read this story a mere 8 months ago, I would have deemed this part of the story insignificant, now however, it’s the one part that caught my attention.

Life is more than just a pencils point breaking and every life lost matters to someone.  I hope for others, ignorance doesn’t stand in the way of empathy as it did for me.  

Who are we?

Recently in class we discussed the topic of Americanization and heritage.  It brings up such questions as, “who are we?” and “where do we come from?”  A little off the topic but still relating to Americanization was DuBois’ article titled The Souls of Black Folk.  In the article by W.E.B. DuBois he asks similar questions; is he a Negro or an American?  In today’s society, many of us are still asked similar questions; what’s our heritage? our race? our religious beliefs? etc.  How many of you have recently filled out a job application?  Or a college application?  I know I have and at least four of the questions related to my heritage.  DuBois makes an interesting point, “—An American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body…to merge his double-self into a better and truer self.  In this merge he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost.”  The point DuBois is making is still a topic of conversation even in the America we live in today. 

I have dark, thick, curly hair because my grandfather was Italian and my friend Daniel lived with his grandmother, a wonderful woman who speaks no English, however both of us, with different heritages, can agree on one thing, we’re both American.  I am an American college student struggling to find out where my place in this world may be; he’s an American soldier fighting for our freedom and safety.  We both embrace the red, white and blue and stand with our hands over our hearts when the National Anthem is playing.  We both understand and appreciate our heritage as well though.  My mom makes Italian food for almost every meal; he still speaks fluent Spanish at home.  My point is DuBois was struggling with the concept of being American and I struggle with the concept of being anything but American.  There will always be a connection between what and who our ancestors were, and it will impact our lives, but the force of that impact depends on how we, as individuals, decide who we are.

We're All a Little Crazy

While reading Huckleberry Finn, I was interested by the amount of superstitions that were prevalent in Jim’s life; his ideas about having a hairy chest will bring good luck and touching a snake would bring bad luck.  I know in class when we mentioned the superstitions I thought they were a bit off the wall and that Jim needed to take a grasp on reality.  Later that day however, I remember that I was just a bit off the wall as well.

            For as long as I can remember I have always believed in karma and the ability to jinx just about anything.  One of my biggest pet peeves is on game day and the weather is just about as perfect as it gets and someone says aloud, “what a beautiful day!”  I just about have to restrain myself for punching that person because within half and hour it seems the weather usually takes a drastic turn for the worse.  Another case is a pair of the good game gloves.  In soccer I play goalkeeper and so I have to wear these clown gloves to protect my hands and fingers and to give me a better grip on the ball when I catch it.  Anyways, one season I bought a new pair of gloves for the game we had coming up.  We were having a rough beginning of the season having lost five games and I was determined not to lose anymore.  I wore those new gloves in our next game for our first win of the season, a season in which we finished with five losses and thirteen wins.  Still to this day, I say it was because of those gloves, a pair I still keep in my bag at games.  Call me crazy but it is possible to jinx the weather and have a pair of gloves that result in a thirteen game win streak, just like its possible for Jim to be cursed from snake skin or a free man because he has a hairy chest.  It’s a humbling notion to believe we can’t control everything and that perhaps everyone in the world, at one time or another, has believed something just a bit off the wall.

Stand still and Be quiet.

While reading “Up from Slavery” by Booker T. Washington, there was one phrase that really caught my attention. It was after Washington had written an article on the Negro ministry and was condemned for about a year because of his written observations. He goes on to say, “My experience with them, as well as other events in my life, convince me that the thing to do, when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing, and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.” This quote fits the profile of many works of literature. One novel that comes to mind first is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s novel about a young white boy helping a runaway slave has been through its ups and downs in the literary world. It’s been banned from schools, libraries, and even in the modern literary world, it’s importance is still being debated. Although Twain has long since been dead, he wrote something down that at the time was considered wrong by a white man. He and his novel were both condemned, but now, it’s a classic American read, usually required among high school students.
Other works of literature that fit this profile are: John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath; J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia; William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies; John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men; Alice Walkers’ The Color Purple; and the ever still popular, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. These are among a few on a very long list. It’s an interesting thing to realize that most of the great novels I have read were at one time banned and condemned and are now just pieces of what makes up great, classic literature.