Chapter VII Anchor passages

p.180-183 "So he just wanted a grandson," he said. " That was all he was after. Jesus, the South is fine, isn't it. It's better than the theatre, isn't it. It's better than Ben Hur, isn't it. No wonder you have to come away now and then, isn't it."

His trouble was innocence. All of a sudden he discovered, not what he wanted to do but what he just had to do, had to do it whether he wanted to or not, because if he did not do it he knew that he could never live with himself, never live with what all the men and women that had died to make him had left inside of him for him to pass on, with all the dead ones waiting and watching to see if he was going to do it right , fix things right so that he would be able to look in the face not only the old dead ones but all the living ones that would come after him whe he would be one of the dead....

...and when he got to be a youth and curiosity itself exhumed the tales which he did now he had heard and speculated about them, he was interested and would have liked to see the places once, but without envy or regret , because he just thought that some people were spawned in one place and some in another, some spawned rich (lucky, he may have called it: or maybe he called lucky, rich) and some not, and that (so he told Grandfather) the men themselves had little to do with the choosing and less of the regret because ( he told Grandfather this too) it had never once occurred to him that any man should take any such blind accident as that as authority or warrantto look down at others, any others. So he had hardly heard of such a a world until he fell into it.

Anchor passage 2

pp.187-188

That's the way he got it. He had learned the difference not only between white men and black ones, but he was learning that there was a difference betwen white men and white mennot to be measured by lifting anvils or gouging eyes or how much whiskey you could drink then get up and walk out of the room. That is, he had begun to discern that without being aware of it yet. He still thought that that was just a matter of where you were spawned and how; lucky or not lucky; and that the lucky ones would be even slower and lother that the unlucky to take any advantage of it or credit for it, feel that it gave them anything more tender toward the unlucky than the unlucky would ever need to feel toward them....

So he knew neither where he had come from nor where he was nor why. He was just there, surrounded by the faces, almost all the faces which he had ever known, always known (though the number of them, despite the efforts of the unmarried sister who pretty soon, so he told Grandfather, and still without any wedding had another baby, decreasing, thinning out, because of the climate, the warmth, the dampness) living in a cabin that was almost a replica of the mountain one except that it didn't sit up in the bright wind but sat instead beside a big flat river that sometimes showed no current at all and sometimes ran backward, where his sisters and brothers seemed to take sick after supper and die before the next meal, where regiments of niggers with white men watching them planted and raised things that he had never heard of.

He would have coveted the rifle, but he would himself have supported and confirmed the owner's pride and pleasure in its ownership because he could not have conceived of the owner taking such crass advantage of the luck which gave the rifle to him rather than to another as to say to other men: Because I own this rifle, my arms and legs and blood and bones are superior to yours except as the victorious outcome of a fight with rifles: and how in the world could a man fight another man with dressed-up niggers and the fact that he could lie in a hammock all afternoon with is shoes off? and what in the world would he be fighting for if he did? He didn't even know he was innocent that day when his father sent him to the big house with the message

Anchor passage 3

p.198ff

He went to the West Indies. That's how he said it: not how he managed to find where the West Indies were nor where ships departed from to go there , nor how he got to where the ships were and got in one nor how he liked the sea nor about the harships of a sailor's life and it must have been hardship indeed for him , a boy of fourteen or fifteen who had never seen the ocean before, going to sea in 1823...

What I learned was that there was a place called the West Indies to which poor men went in ships and became rich, it didn't matter how, so long as that man was clever and courageous: the latter of which I believed that I possessed, the former of which I believed that, if it were to be learned by energy and will in the schol of endeavor and experience, I should learn....

I had a design. To accomlpish it I should re

Interpretive lens of Greek tragedy

The following are some insights borrowed from Greek Tragedy by Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

Chapter 5 : Family Romance and Revenge in the House of Atreus
* Though the Greeks sometimes imagined marriage as the death of a maiden, or compared the premature death of a maiden to marriage to Hades (e.g., Iphigenia at Aulis and Antigone), for Elektra marriage beneath her station is a form of death.
In what ways is this true of Ellen, Rosa and Judith?* Elektra presents herself as a victim; she enters singing of her lineage. She is in mourning for her wretched life...and her father's fate, slain by his wife and Aigisthos...She mourns not only the dead but also her absent brother, who should come to free her and avenge his father. At the same time , she is impatient and angry at his delay. Her pain is increased by the contrast with her mother. Clytemnestra's children are in exile, whilethe mother lies in a bloody bed with her new husband
Is this also in part Judith's dramatic trajectory?
*On a psychological level, the play reveals that we can sink ourselves in our own mourning, condemning ourselves to living death by attachment to the past
*The role of the children in the family is strongly distinguished by gender. Orestes has been brought up as the avenger, while Elektra has been treated asa servant; dressed in rags, fed crumbs from the family table, unmarried and childless, she must wait for Orestes to begin her life.
Is there a similar dynamic between Judith and Henry?

Chapter 6: Victims and Victimizers
As an imitation woman, Medea is complex and dangerous. She is not simply the sympathetic betrayed woman. From the beginning the Nurse directs us to fear for the children. Medea presents the murder or sacrifice of the children as inevitable, but it is only inevitable because she has chosen to use them as bearers of the gifts, and even then, if she can get away, why can'y she take them with her?...The only way to destrpy Jason completely is to kill the children, not because he loves them so dearly (she loves them more) but because it was very important for a Greek man to leave progeny...She will take revenge by destroying the future of his house.
Are there hints of Medea in the portrait of Rosa that Faulkner paints?

Absalom, Absalom Discussion Schedule

Friday May 27 2011In person meeting ,The Bernardine Franciscan Learning Center 11am-noon
Please be prepared to discuss Chapters I-IV

Monday May 30 2011 Online WizIQ meeting Group reading and discussion of Chapter V, 7-8pm

Friday June 3 2011 In person meeting, The Bernardine Franciscan Learning Center 2:30-4pm
Group reading and discussion of Chapter V continued

Monday June 6 2011 Online WizIQ meeting Group reading and discussion of Chapter VI, 7-8pm

Friday June 10 In person meeting, The Bernardine Franciscan Learning Center, 2:30-4pm
Group reading and discussion of Chapter VI continued

Monday June 13 Online WizIQ meeting Group reading and discussion of Chapter VII

Thursday June 16 In person meeting, The Bernardine Franciscan Learning Center,2:30-4pm, Group reading and discussion of Chapter VIII

Friday June 17 In person meeting, The Bernardine Franciscan Learning Center, 2:30-4pm, Group reading and discussion of Chapter IX

Week of June 20: Video postcards posted to this blog from Lafayette County, MS and Ole Miss Gilder-Lehrman Seminar on Faulkner andthe American South.