History as Fiction - Erin

            At the end of the Novel, Kevin and Dana return to what once was the plantation they spent so much time on, to find nothing there. “As nearly as we could tell, its site was now covered by a broad field of corn. The house was dust, like Rufus” (Butler 262). That really struck me because it is really easy for this history to either be completely erased or to become romanticized. The problematic “plantation weddings” come to mind, where people get married on these gorgeous southern properties that used to be the site of the horrors that Dana and Kevin witnessed during their time spent in 1815.             This moment where Dana and Kevin arrive to find a field where the plantation once was strongly reminded me of my experience on the Habitat trip in Mississippi. On our first day in Mississippi, Mr. Sutton drove us around Clarksdale to talk about the local history of the area. He talked about class distinctions to help us understand the socioeconomic structure of the area to

As I read Slaughterhouse-Five, all I could think was that if I were a character in the book I would definitely be poor old Edgar Derby. He’s definitely the “mom friend”, and while some of this obviously comes from him being older and feeling the need to look out for the young boys he was surrounded by, I still definitely relate to that feeling of responsibility to taking care of the ones around me. He’s a high school social studies teacher, so he doesn’t really fit in with the “war hero” character. I think this explains some of his compassion and care for the young soldiers he has been grouped with. These teenage boys who have been shipped to another country to fight in a war they had nothing to do with are the same age as his students and I imagine that this pains him some. All these teenage boys who are being killed in this war should have had their whole lives ahead of them, like the students he taught and I think that Derby’s age allows him to somewhat see through the “glory” of w

When I came across articles about gender when researching for my panel presentation, I realized how little I had focused on the aspect of gender within Mumbo Jumbo, and upon my query, several of my peers felt similarly. I think part of this is due to the fact that there are so many other complicated issues and themes to focus on and discuss, that I was effectively distracted from the issue of gender, or lack thereof, within the novel. One thing that is a noticeable common theme among all the female characters in the book is how they are oversexualized. Earline is possessed by a spirit, Ezrulie, who fulfills the trope of the evil temptress, seducing the poor, innocent train conductor who has a family at home and was defenseless to her feminine wiles. By portraying Earline’s sexual expression as negative and a bad thing that needed correction through removing the spirit, he is condoning that behavior in the same way that western culture, the very thing he’s trying to

I focused a lot on Henry K. Thaw in my last blog post, talking about how Doctorow uses the contrast between him and Houdini to create a social commentary on the state of class in the United States. However, the more I think about Thaw and his situation, the more frustrated I get. To me, it shows continuation of the class privilege in America. We briefly touched on this in some of our class discussions, but his immense power and privilege that he gets from his money and class status separates him from the rest of society, even when in jail. In Ragtime, Doctorow uses Thaw as a contrast between the working class immigrant communities in New York at the turn of the century, during the first big surge of capitalism in America and the class inequity that comes with it. Yet, what I keep coming back to is the fact that in real life in the early 1900s, Thaw shot and killed Stanford White in public and in front of witnesses, and still got away with it. I know that Doctorow ha

Ragtime can be a bit confusing at first; it jumps back and forth between storylines, half of which are about unnamed characters. Once the reader manages to get a grasp on the different storylines, it becomes interesting to watch them overlap and become more intertwined. However, at this point in the book, the beginning feels like a completely different book because of the shift. The first half of the book seems to be focused on the issues of class, juxtaposing the upper-class Henry Thaw with the immigrant life Houdini. Later, Doctorow seems more focused on the racial aspects of Coalhouse’s storyline. This narrows on the racism Coalhouse faces despite his efforts to be an upstanding citizen, as well as his responses to continual discrimination.   Along the lines of criticism of class differences, Houdini is placed in the same setting as Henry Thaw when he is in prison while Houdini is performing an escape. In class, we talked a lot about how Houdini became an icon fo