NathanielWilliams's Comments on Blogster

Reply to blog post: Blogs and Education (Revisited) by robburton
Comment written 2 months ago

I think that the blog format certainly pushes us students to think harder and write more carefully. However, I think you should do more to make the discussion we're having in class more accessible for those who only read our posts online.

Maybe creating some course assignments that are only given in class, or passing around an attendance sheet every once in a while so that you could post a reading list and discussion prompts ahead of time on blogster without allowing students to stop coming to class? I'm not sure that there are all that many people on blogster that would take the time to read along, but it would be quite fitting with the ethos of online community to at least make doing so a possibility.

Overall it has been a great experience. Thank you, and enjoy your break!
Reply to blog post: Hitler, cough cough....I mean Sam Walton. by ChicoElyse
Comment written 2 months ago

Joe-

So many young people who have recently gained the right to vote read these blogs that I want to thank you for demonstrating so well the values of the modern Republican Party. You're a classy guy...
Reply to blog post: Eliot Crane: Madness and Truth by jenbirdieblack
Comment written 2 months ago

Another excellent post...you really did a great job summing it all up.
Reply to blog post: by
Comment written 2 months ago

I agree with most of your thoughts on this...we certainly know very little about what causes schizophrenia, I just submit that scientists are able to find tangible physical differences in the brains of those who suffer from it. My only point in that regard is that I think there is a difference between mental illness and odd research pursuits. I would hazard a guess that there is a stronger than average correlation between those with mental illness and those willing to entertain a lot of the nebulous ideas that occult authors talk about- I just don't see causation.

I definitely think that Lucy was just waiting for it. Given that his father committed suicide I'm surprised that she would have a gun in her house. But someone truly determined to take their own life is not going to be dissuaded.

I should have talked about it more directly, but I think that a lot of Khan's perspective is just a rhetorical device to give weight to the ending where we see that there was more to Eliot than met the eye...that he sucked into his web the central casting empiricist that was Khan's wife.
Reply to a comment on: by
Comment written 2 months ago

I am at a complete loss as to why you would think I am overly optimistic about American Society- which for the record I do not consider my society, only the place where I live. I've lived in enough places to know that where you live doesn't have to define you. I think people are people, and to place aspects of one's personality on some nebulous force of nationality is a cop out.

Of course many people are only concerned about themselves, and of course this is true of many Americans. What I reject is the idea that to be self-absorbed is the ideal of American society. I understand how many jerks there are in America but to be American is no excuse. Jasmine seems to take her own personal shortcomings and say "it's ok, I'm an American now, and it's good to be selfish in America." Many people may think that selfishness is a defining trait here, and while an empirical case can be made for that I do not see how a normative justification can be formed. Because things are a certain way doesn't make them right.

I think in many ways Jasmine does have America figured out, and I would not disagree with many of her observations. Americans do seem to value material goods more than might be ideal, many Americans are selfish. But I consider these to be human flaws, and I think Mukherjee offers a wonderful piece of commentary on the human condition. I am simply saying that for me it is not a positive commentary- and does not represent any ideal of "Americaness" that we should be proud of. In "Jasmine" I see more of a damning social commentary than I do Horatio Alger idealism.
Reply to blog post: Morphing Marilyn's by lilred
Comment written 3 months ago

"Jasmine is not entirely in control but it could be argued that her type of control is more the passive rather than the active. Although she did not create any name, she has embraced it and enjoys the challenges that accompany each name..."

I think thats a great way to describe what happened. I thought of it like this: if my wife started calling me Suzy today it would be her choice, but if she were still calling me that next month it would be my choice.
Reply to a comment on: by
Comment written 3 months ago

I say that her visions were not mental illness primarily because the narrator tells us that Elizabeth was involved in some sort of cosmic showdown, and that this wore her down so much that she went mad. By the internal logic of the story Elizabeth first and foremost had a religious experience that affected her mental health and not the reverse. Stepping outside of the internal logic of the text I think that Bessie Head used the idea of visions as a literary device to convey philosophical beliefs that she didn't know how to write about directly.

Bessie Head wrote in a piece titled Why Do I Write: "All who know me know that in everyday waking reality I am an absolutely solitary person. Friends walk through my life, talk, smile and shake hands, but no one is near me. This is not true of my dream world at night. My dream world is crowded with thousands and thousands of people. It is not fancy or pretty-pretty but a practical, busy world where people are planning for the future and make known to me their preferences. My books are rooted in this source and all commentary and communication from this source have been carefully recorded in all my books." Head also once wrote in a letter about the struggle to find a "mouthpiece" for her thoughts, saying "I sometimes stand still for hours in the room struggling to find someone to say it with form" (Brown, pg.94).

Personally, by the time I had read the first 30 pages I didn't think that Elizabeth was truly mentally ill as people who experience the type of vivid and engrossing hallucinations that Elizabeth described are almost never able to recognize a delusion while it is occurring- something that Elizabeth claims to be able to do. I used to volunteer at a mental hospital, one that a family member worked at for 30 years, and both myself and this family member thought that Elizabeth is unbelievable as a schizophrenic. She is far too in control of what she experiences, and her experiences are far too poetic and allegorical.

I say she saved the world because of what Sello tells Elizabeth on the bottom of page 198, namely that Dan had been accumulating a type of fire that had destroyed civilization after civilization, and that Elizabeth's role in allowing Sello to spot Dan's weakness had prevented Dan from gaining enough power to use it. We are told that the soul of Buddha's wife, who had prevented Buddha from gaining too much power (and thus becoming evil) was inside Elizabeth during the timeline of the book, and that combined with Elizabeth's soul they had once again prevented someone from becoming God (which by the logic of the text seems to be a bad thing).

Overall, the analysis in this blog was an attempt to just look at the logic of the book. It was not easy for me to just look at the text without considering outside factors. It's like how one can believe that the New Testament is about someone who was delusional, but the New Testament is not about delusions- its the story of the Son of God and how we redeemed the world. Whether we believe it or not is up to us, but the text is clear on the message it delivers. That Bessie Head published this as fiction saves us some trouble in deciding how much of the story we want to take as LITERAL truth.
Reply to blog post: Into the Chaos: Elizabeth's Brutal Honesty by jenbirdieblack
Comment written 4 months ago

I'm sorry if I didn't follow correctly. I guess I took the way you began your post with a question about sanity, and said "We are looking into the soul of a woman who is going insane, who knows she is going insane." as an indication that the mental state of the author/narrator is your main area of interest. I really didn't mean to be offensive with the condescending remark, but I think that a lot of people in our class are getting hung up on the narrative devices used in the text and are not looking very closely at underlying meaning. That is, we can empathize with an insane person, but we usually don't give much credence to their ideas. That is the mindset that I think is condescending.
Reply to blog post: Into the Chaos: Elizabeth's Brutal Honesty by jenbirdieblack
Comment written 4 months ago

If Immanuel Kant, incomprehensible as many of his writings were, was a black woman who came from apartheid South Africa would we discuss his philosphies, or his mental breakdown? His ideas were likely just as real to him as Bessie's/Elizabeth's were to her. I agree with you that her writing serves as a mirror for the reader, but I think that viewing the story simply as a tale of collapse is a dishonest analytical framework- and somewhat condescending. To the extent that Bessie Head played into this I think she was too fatalistic about the chances of someone in her position being taken seriously and resigned herself to being an outcast- and I think she intentionally blurred the line between what she thought, and what she thought other people thought about her. Or didn't.
Reply to blog post: Life "frames" are unavoidable by JuliaGerhard
Comment written 4 months ago

Excellent post! I think you showed great empathy, as well as a solid understanding of the context of Elizabeth/Bessie's life. You said "There is no question about the fact that we all belong to certain frames, but we only become aware of them when we get the reaction of surrounding people or society on our frame." -- I think this is very relevant to Elizabeth, who seems very reluctant to form relationships outside of her head.

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