A Thousand Splendid Suns – Blog 4

“If she could articulate it, she might have said to Nana that she was tired of being an instrument, of being lied to, used. That she was sick of Nana twisting the truths of their life and making her, Mariam, another of her grievances against the world” (26).

Since Mariam was a little girl growing up in the kolba, she needed the love and approval of a man. She goes to her father’s house hoping to live with him, his three wives and all of their children. Being the illegitimate child that she is, she is not wanted there so they marry her off to Rasheed after her mother kills herself. She begs her father to let her stay with them – begs for his love and acceptance – but her request falls on deaf ears and she is married off the next day. She tells her father that she never wants to speak to him again and when he tries to contact her almost ten years later, she refuses to speak to him. She stares out of the window at him, waiting and hoping for her to speak to him (just like he did to her the first night she came to ask to live there) and closes the curtain. He leaves a letter which she tears up without reading. The act of pride comes back to hurt her later when she gains hope in thinking she can get money from her father to help her family’s dire situation. Her hopes are crushed when she finds out that her father passed away many years ago. Had she read the letter he left her then she would have known that an inheritance awaited her.

After her initial apprehension to her marriage with Rasheed, she comes to seek his approval just as she did from her father. She goes from being disgusted by him to looking forward to making his meals. She accepts and even shows gratitude for her new life in this arranged marriage but it quickly goes sour after they both realize she is unable to have children. Mariam still seeks the approval she lost even after the physical and mental abuse from Rasheed. Then Laila shows up and Rasheed realizes that she can be the chance for having another son and they quickly marry to Mariam’s dismay. Laila ends up having a girl and Rasheed loses his admiration for her and she starts to get the same mistreatment as Mariam. The two women’s dislike toward each other turns to a close bond from this common unfortunate situation of abuse and unhappiness that they share. The other thing they have in common is their love for Laila’s little girl, Aziza. Laila does and up having a son who is doted upon by Rasheed unlike Aziza who he knew by the looks of her that she wasn’t his daughter. Aziza is the daughter of Tariq who was thought to be dead until he showed up at the door. The son tells Rasheed that he was there and Rasheed almost kills Laila by strangling her. Mariam grabs a shovel and kills him. She tells Laila to run away with the children and Tariq. She takes the blame and is sentenced to murder.

In Living to Tell About It, James Phelan said,

“Our judgments and emotions focus not on characters’ choices and what they mean for what does and does not hap­pen to them but rather on the progressive revelation of characters and their static situations” (8).

The static situation throughout Miriam’s life is her need for the love and approval of a man. In her early life that man is her father. She loves him and adores everything about him. He is her light. When he refuses her and marries her off she is crushed and refuses to speak to him ever again. She gains strength by making that bold decision and that gives her the strength to decide to accept her situation and look for happiness and gratitude in her marriage to Rasheed. This continues Mariam’s progressive revelation. She makes a bold decision to swing that shovel to save Laila and it gives her strength. Immediately after killing him, when wondering what they are going to do without a man, Miriam says, “There is a way and I just have to find it” (315). She makes the tough decision to tell Laila to leave with the children and says, “For me, it ends here. There’s nothing more I want. Everything I’d ever wished for as a little girl you’ve already given me. You and your children have made me so very happy” (319). It’s ironic that she killed Rasheed for the love of a woman and that it wasn’t a man who gave her what she needed in the end. She took a man’s life and gave her own so that Laila and her children could have the freedom from men that she would never have. Her progression ends with her being told to kneel down for her beheading and the narrator says, “One last time, Mariam did as she was told.”

This story as I described it above is the character narrator addressing the narratee. I was pulled in emotionally and connected with these two women, Laila and Mariam. I watched the dramatic events unfold in their lives and I wanted so badly for them to overcome all of the strife and adversity. I was hoping they could do it together, but, as in all wars, some must die. The author also reaches out to the authorial audience in this cultural narrative. The issues of the war in Afghanistan and the everyday life of these people is something I was never able to relate to on such a deep emotional level. I lived the experience through the lives in this narrative. Although this is a fiction story, there is fact to it. Warlords, terrorists and communists did reign over this area and many people fled for their lives or lived in war torn areas with bombs falling all day and night. The ones that fled were stuck in refugee camps where dysentery, filth and death were the norm. The author brought the authorial audience and the narrative audience together by showing what can happen to normal families stuck in war zones and weaving in facts from the actual war. This weaving opened my tear filled eyes to how it might feel to actually live in a situation such as these characters did, as these real people do.

 

 

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Blog 3

The semic code is very apparent throughout the beginning of the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. As the protagonist, Miriam, speaks of her father and mother (who she calls Nana) there are many semes which connote strong feelings that she has toward each. There is a positive connotation surrounding her father and the words she uses to describe him and their time together. He sat her on his lap and told her lovely stories of the places he has been; she was his “little flower” (4). Immediately following every meeting with her father, her mother chimes in and spews her hateful words into her daughter’s brain. She would tell Miriam not to believe his stories and that he cast them out.

 “Mariam would listen dutifully to this. She never dared say to Nana how much she disliked her talking this way about [her father] Jalil” (5).

Miriam feels she has a duty to be respectful of her mother’s feelings but she doesn’t agree with what her mother says. She doesn’t want to believe her father is a liar because he is the only person who makes her feel worthy of any of the wonderful things life has to offer. This juxtaposition of the feelings Miriam has toward her mother and father are how the proairetic code comes into play. You can instantly feel the negative connotation surrounding her mother and the positive around her father. The reader can make a prediction using these opposing values that there will be an internal struggle for Miriam to figure out her place in this world that she was born into.

This juxtaposition of feelings toward her parents can also be used to figure out the symbolic codes within the text. There is a constant struggle between Miriam wanting to be dutiful to the woman who is raising her and Miriam needing her father to make her feel loved, special and part of something bigger than the little kolba in the middle of a remote clearing of weeping willows deep in the woods in which her and her mother reside. There is a battle between right and wrong. It is wrong that she and her Nana were cast aside but her father does do right by making the effort to spend time with her. The difference between the rich and the poor is also apparent. The father doesn’t think of the consequences that might become for Nana when he sleeps with her. He just wants what he wants and will take it, just as the rich and powerful have the right to do BUT Nana is left with the burden of an illegitimate child in a culture that doesn’t permit such business. Her own father disowns her and she is shunned to a remote location. She is surviving without the lavish adventures and lifestyle like Jalil has AND she is left alone, allowing her bitterness to swell more and more with each visit from Jalil, and each story he tells. Miriam is caught in a world of mixed feelings as well. She wants to feel special and loved but doesn’t want to disrespect her mother.

The cultural code is also present in her mother’s fate. She became an disgraced outcast by making a decision to sleep with a married man. Miriami is also getting the repercussions of her mother’s choices – her own mother thinks of her as a harami. The fact that there is a word to describe a child born into such a situation is indicative of the culture that these people are living in.

The author sets evokes the resistant reader when he uses the hermeneutic code to give a foreshadowing of Miriam’s fate, at least for the first fifteen years of her life. He says on page 5, “though she would live the first fifteen years of her life within walking distance of Herat, Mariam would never see this storied tree. She would never see the famous minarets up close, and she would never pick fruit from Herat’s orchards or stroll in its fields of wheat.” The reader can infer that Miriam’s fate will not be much different from her mother’s unfortunate engagement at the age of fifteen. Sam Fine took a deeper inferential walk in his blog when he talked about how Miriam might have the same misfortune in marriage such as her mother had at the age of fifteen. Another enigma set up by the narrator revolves around the father’s intentions. It is significant that he chooses to send his sons to drop off supplies to Nana and Miriam when he could just as easily sent a servant.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Blog 2

Khaled Housseini wrote this book to educate others about the dire situation in his country. There is a qualitative progression to the story. The reader is always aware that things are not going to work out well for the women in the story. There is the repetitive form of the war that is always surrounding the characters. Their town or country is always being taken over by wither communists or some sort of terrorist group. This gives the foreshadowing effect of instability and unrest for these characters.

That feeling lasts until the end of the book because even though Laila has found her childhood love and they are a family, I found myself waiting for something bad to happen to them. The book even ends with talk of how bad the neighborhood she grew up in has become.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Blog 1

Since Mariam was a little girl growing up in the kolba, she needed the love and approval of a man. She goes to her father’s house hoping to live with him, his three wives and all of their children. Being the illegitimate child that she is, she is not wanted there so they marry her off to Rasheed after her mother kills herself. She begs her father to let her stay with them – begs for his love and acceptance – but her request falls on deaf ears and she is married off the next day. She tells her father that she never wants to speak to him again and when he tries to contact her almost ten years later, she refuses to speak to him. She stares out of the window at him, waiting and hoping for her to speak to him (just like he did to her the first night she came to ask to live there) and closes the curtain. He leaves a letter which she tears up without reading. The act of pride comes back to hurt her later when she gains hope in thinking she can get money from her father to help her family’s dire situation. Her hopes are crushed when she finds out that her father passed away many years ago. Had she read the letter he left her then she would have known that an inheritance awaited her.

After her initial apprehension to her marriage with Rasheed, she comes to seek his approval just as she did from her father. She goes from being disgusted by him to looking forward to making his meals. She accepts and even shows gratitude for her new life in this arranged marriage but it quickly goes sour after they both realize she is unable to have children. Mariam still seeks the approval she lost even after the physical and mental abuse from Rasheed. Then Laila shows up and Rasheed realizes that she can be the chance for having another son and they quickly marry to Mariam’s dismay. Laila ends up having a girl and Rasheed loses his admiration for her and she starts to get the same mistreatment as Mariam. The two women’s dislike toward each other turns to a close bond from this common unfortunate situation of abuse and unhappiness that they share. The other thing they have in common is their love for Laila’s little girl, Aziza. Laila does and up having a son who is doted upon by Rasheed unlike Aziza who he knew by the looks of her that she wasn’t his daughter. Aziza is the daughter of Tariq who was thought to be dead until he showed up at the door. The son tells Rasheed that he was there and Rasheed almost kills Laila by strangling her. Mariam grabs a shovel and kills him. She tells Laila to run away with the children and Tariq. She takes the blame and is sentenced to murder.

 

The Color of Magic – Blog 2

The genre of this book is fantasy with some aspects of sci-fi. There are some logical and scientific explanations to the “magical” components of the text, but I don’t think there are enough to consider it sci-fi. There is no way you could scientifically explain Earth being balanced on the back of a turtle. This book was created because readers want an outlet for escapism into a fantastical world. Fantasy breaks free from mundaneness and takes the reader on an imaginative adventure.

I have an idea of where this text is going. I believe some of the organizing principles are concerning the importance of money and how it can destroy the good in human nature. This world balanced on a disc is counter balanced by a world comprised almost entirely of gold. This is indicative of the value we place on money. The visitor from the Counterweight Continent, Twoflower, is an insurance underwriter. The author alludes to the true nature of the business when the innkeeper says, “[Insurance], it’s called. It’s like a bet that the Broken Drum won’t get burned down” (62). He’s shows us using humor that the whole business is just a gamble that the insurance company usually wins. It’s ironic that the inn does end up burning down and it’s because of Twoflower.

“Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them.  Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.” – Chuck Palahniuk (www.litreactor.com)

The author does this well throughout the book. After having a conversation that didn’t go in his favor, this is said of the lieutenant, “The lieutenant snorted in disgust, and strode off around the room to bully his men” (61). The author showed the lieutenants’ personality through his actions rather than telling us. You can see that this is a man who doesn’t take well to not getting his way. He reacts badly and takes out his frustration on his men. The author didn’t tell us what to think, he allowed us to figure that out on our own by observing this man’s actions. Another example of this is when he gave us an insight into Zlorf’s personality. “People who said this in earshot of Zlorf tended to carry their ears home in their hats” (63). Duly noted; don’t mess with Zlorf. This is a very strong aspect of the author’s style.

Color of Magic – Blog 1

What I’m reading for in The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett is to get lost in the story. I enjoy fantasy novels that take me away from reality and I’ve already found myself doing that. What I’m finding strange is that now, as I get lost in the story, I am simultaneously aware of codes and the meaning behind the words. I don’t want to read like I normally would – which is to get completely lost in the text and become the ideal narrative audience. I don’t want to believe everything the narrator says without question. A lot of meaning to the story is lost this way.

The story is a based the strange concept that the world is a flat disc that is swum around the universe on the back of a giant turtle. There is a visitor, Twoflower, who is from the rumored Counterweight Continent which is very abundant in gold. The traveler has a magical trunk with legs that follows him wherever he goes; it carries the largest gold coins made from the purest gold. He cannot speak the language so he carries with him a black book that tells him what to say. He meets up with Rincewind, who isn’t very highly respected as a wizard. The wizard agrees to be Twoflower’s guide after a very generous gold offering. Twoflower wants to see all of the excitement that this land has to offer. He wants to meet renowned heroes and be in the middle of a bar fight. He left his meaningless job as a clerk, although his wages would make most in this land envious. He wants to live, not just make money.

Rincewind takes the four days advance pay that Twoflower gave him and ran off to start his own practice with the fortune he acquired for four days work as a guide; but instead he is brought in by guards to the Patrician. The Patrician orders Rincewind to be the best guide and make sure that Twoflower goes back to the Counterweight Continent with a good report of this land. If Rincewind is successful then his offenses will be pardoned.

Value Graph Color of Magic

Fight Club Blog 4 – Christina Ellis

The narrator wants the reader to become the type of person who is cynical and a bit of a loner but he knows that most people aren’t like that so he has to be cunning. In chapter 7, Joe talks about his obsession with Tyler. He says, “How could I compete for Tyler’s attention?” So now he’s mad at Marla for ruining his meditative times during the group meetings and stealing Tyler’s attention from him. The author knows they have to portray the image of absolute craziness but still make it accessible and relatable to the reader. It’s not very common to become obsessed with a friend and having all of their attention – Joe is on the broad end of the spectrum in that respect; however, it is common to feel upset when a very close friend is making a lot of time for someone else when you want to spend time with them. The latter is something everyone can relate to, especially during the teenage years and early twenties. The narrator causes skepticism with the craziness that comes from Joe’s obsession but then reels the reader back in with more normal thoughts such as when Joe says, “I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.” The author uses this tactic throughout the book. One second you think the narrator is crazy as hell and the next you can relate to what they feel. There are more than two personalities in this book. Being a lonely person is just one of the many types of readers that the author speaks to.

This tactic of going back and forth from crazy to relatable is what makes it so easy for the reader to become a “space monkey” and go through the motions of the text. The narrator wants to keep control of you as much as he wants control of Tyler, and even Marla. He doesn’t want to lose you by causing you to think this is too far-fetched and crazy. The actions of these characters are lunacy, however the feelings such as loneliness and skepticism are common. The author wants you to feel both to the extreme that you can almost understand this man. His extreme actions are justified by his satirical ideas which the author slyly puts in a less crazy way so the submissive reader doesn’t become highly resistant.

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Fight Club Blog 3 – Christina Ellis

The hermeneutic code. The book begins with a huge enigma surrounding the location, characters and their actions. The narrator explains that even though they were best friends for a while, Tyler is now holding a gun to his mouth and threatening to kill him. This situation becomes even more perplexing when the narrator (who I’ll call Joe since he remains nameless throughout the book) starts talking about drilling holes to make a silencer and the building blowing up from the bomb he knows how to make. The reader is posed with many questions about the events that led them to be in this situation and what kind of people these men are.

The proairetic code. The reader can determine that the story begins with the end. There is the huge climactic event happening and Joe even counts down throughout the first chapter to build up anticipation. Gun in the mouth and building about to collapse in ten minutes. A window explodes and napalm is easily made. Nine minutes. Murder-suicide. Eight minutes. Smoke out of the windows. Seven minutes. Desks and filing cabinets plummet to the ground. Six minutes. Marla and the love triangle. Who is Marla? What the hell did she do to cause this?

The semic code works from the very beginning to set the tone for these characters and the entire story. There is something seriously wrong with both of them to be trying to kill themselves and others. Napalm, blowing up buildings and murder/suicide are what surround them from the start. The reader can take an inferential walk to guess that this story is not about mentally stable people.

Fight Club Blog 2 – Christina Ellis

There is a repetitive form throughout this text. There is a constant with the narrator wanting to live a normal life and Tyler wanting the overthrow everything. There are a few themes that are brought up many times during the text. The narrator grew up without a father, the unfairness of the system (specifically with the narrator’s job and the classes), and the monotony and mundanity of his normal life – he wants to be the revolution, his life is supposed to be more than it is.

Having already seen the movie, I know that Tyler Durden doesn’t exist. I tried to look for signs of that while reading the book, while still reading in the memetic register and becoming a submissive reader. I thought it was very strange that most of the time when he was talking there weren’t quotation marks around what he was saying. When Marla is around seems to be the biggest indicator that something is off. The narrator admits that Marla and Tyler are never in the same room around him but they have sex every night. Then she dances around showing the narrator that she has nothing on underneath – a very odd thing to do to the roommate of the man she sleeps with every night.

Fight Club Blog 1 – Christina Ellis

I want to be a submissive reader so that I can feel all of the aesthetic emotion the text has to offer, but, at the same time, I want to read for the rhetorical dimension to see when the narrator addresses the reader and what their purpose is for addressing them. I’m hoping I can do this simultaneously without taking the fun out of reading the story for the first time. I want to be aware of the pretense of the narrator. I will attempt to “observe the struggle between what the text projects and the manner in which the addressee takes up the projection” (Weebly, Rhetoric of Narrative). I want to read for enjoyment of the story but also for how the author achieves the thematic effect of controlling values through style and form. I know the premise of the story so I want to see how the narrator chooses to deceive the reader into thinking Tyler exists. I’m going to read the whole story through and then come back to do the value graph and summarize. I want to experience the text and all it has to offer before I dissect it to see how it works from the inside.

The narrator struggles with the boredom of his life. He lives in a building of the same kind of people, buys the same kind of home furnishings and goes to the same job he hates every day. His job deals with recalls for vehicles. The job constantly reminds him of death and the unjustness that exists between the classes. He sees how the rich upper class hide potentially fatal flaws in their products in order to save money. He goes to accident sites where people have died because of these hidden mistakes. The formula used to decide on whether or not a recall is made is the number of vehicles multiplied by the probable rate of failure multiplied by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (30). Whichever costs the company less money is the right choice. This job and growing up without a father are what create his split personality. Tyler Durden is nihilism and male bravado. There is a side to the narrator that desperately wants to break free of monotony and live a life of chaos and disorder. He wants to rebel against not having a father growing up and the unfair ways of the world.