The Goophered Grapevine

I am not one for ghost stories or farfetched myths that are told to either scare or influence people in a certain way. When reading the story “The Goophered Grapevine” that was the sense that I got from it. When the narrator and his wife go to visit the vineyard in South Carolina in hopes of buying the land for his wives health and also to become part of the grape culture they run into a man on the farm that goes on to tell them a “ghost story” that was supposed to make them not want to purchase the land.

          When the narrator and his wife first arrive at the vineyard they run into a man who seems to be enjoying himself while eating the grapes and “smacking his lips with great gusto” (Chesnutt 34). This was the first indication to me that something shady might be happening. Why was there a man on the vineyard that was supposed to be abandoned and for sale? This man was Julius McAdoo and the belonged to Mars Dugal’ McAdoo. Julius then tells the two prospective buyers that the vineyard is “goophered, -cunju’d, bewitch’.” (35). From this point he has them both hooked as to how it became conjured and uncle Julius goes on to tell them the story of how it became bewitched.

As this story continues that narrator sees that Julius “became more and absorbed in the narrative, hi eyes assumed a dreamy expression, and he seemed to lose sight of his auditors” (35). This to me makes it feel as though Julius is telling a story, one that may be fictional and that he has gone into his own, creative world to continue and live this story. After the story of how the vineyard was goophered and Julius had made his point that they should not buy it, the narrator asks him why he was eating the grapes from the vineyard if they had all died out. At this point throughout the rest of the story it seems as though this story was told by Julius to make them not purchase the land and ruin his business and lifestyle that he was living. It is later stated that “Uncle Julius had occupied a cabin on the place for many years, and derived a respectable revenue from the neglected grapevines.” (43). This shows me that the Julius told this story because he had a vested interest in the vineyard and would be better off if it was purchased so that he could maintain his home in the cabin on the property as well as make some money off of the grapes on the plot of land.

          I do not blame Julius for trying to persuade people of not buying that land that he is living off of and making profits on. But in my opinion the whole story that he told was fabricated and so as not to take away his livelihood. In fact this may have been the land of his master since they both shared the same last name, and there is even indication that the Mars McAdoo may even be his father because the narrator sees that “ he was not entirely black,” (34). This story, much like other ghost or horror stories that are often told, in very unbelievable to me and seems like a ploy to dissuade people from buying the last that contains his life. But I do think that I, the same way that he narrator was able to, would take the story with a grain of salt and be very skeptical of a story that contain goophering and cursing of fruits and would rather say that the reason the vines in the vineyard were ruined by the Yankee con man.  

Inequalities still Exist

Racism and sexism have been issues in the United States since it became a country over two hundred years ago. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, Dana is alienated by society based on race and gender. These are issues that are still prevalent in our society today.

Society's view of skin color caused Dana to be degraded, especially when she travels to the time of slavery. When Dana is in the 1800`s she is reduced to a slave. She is called not by her name, but is rather referred to as a nigger by her master and even some of the fellow slaves. She fights with Rufus to call her "black." She explains to him "I'm a black woman, Rufe. If you have to call me something other than my name, that's it" (Butler, 25). Alice, one of Dana’s ancestors from the 1800’s, tells Dana that she acts too white.  She says, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, whining and crying after some poor white trash of a man, black as you are. You always try to act so white. White nigger, turning against your own people" (165). Dana's thoughts and feelings regarding equality for blacks and whites alike have caused her to be scorned by her own race. Racism is not just a thing of the past; it also exists in the present. In Dana’s own time period of the 1970's, she is seen with Kevin by her employer and he makes rude comments  about them. He walks by them and utters, "chocolate and vanilla porn” (56). Dana is an outcast in both worlds due to her race.

Another major issue for Dana is her gender. She is treated differently because she is a woman. She was not even allowed to wear pants when she traveled back to the 1800’s. In the early 1800's all females wore dresses. Mr. Weylin thought she was a man because of the way she dressed and Ms. Weylin gave her the title of "just a strange nigger" (25) because she was not the stereotypical black woman of the time. She did not know how to cook, clean, sew, or raise children like any of the other female slaves on the plantation. She is viewed as crazy because she is a female who is educated like a white man, but she does not know how to perform the "basic routine" of a woman. Dana was not only expected to act like a black woman, but she was also viewed by white males as a sex slave. Female slaves were for the use and gratification of their owners and this meant that they could be raped and that would be acceptable. Dana’s gender was just another reason that she was treated differently. However, gender inequality is not just a thing of the past. According to U.S. Time, “U.S. women still earned only 77 cents on the male dollar in 2008, according to the latest census statistics and that number drops to 68% for African-American women and 58% for Latina women” (Fitzpatrick, 2010). These are significant differences that show that sexism and racism still exist in our country. They are not issues that you have to go back to the 1800’s to find.

           Alienation of race and gender still exist in our own society today. It may not be as obvious because there is not slavery anymore and women have more rights than they did in the 1800’s but it still affects many people. I think that we have come a long way as a society but we are not there yet.

"The Shawl"

There has been much research conducted in accordance with the long-term psychological effects that the Holocaust had on its victims. Nearly 70 years later there are still those people who are suffering from the insecurities and/or childhood memories of the atrocities they witnessed. Not only has the Holocaust affected the victims, but it has been proven that it is transgenerational as well. In an article written by Nathan Kellerman he states, “The offspring of both these groups, the so-called ‘second generation’, gain more awareness of the repressed pain that they indirectly have absorbed from their parents.” In Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” the reader can witness the crippling effect that the horrors witnessed had on the long-term mental state of the character Rosa.

In Ozick’s second story titled “Rosa”, the character is immediately introduced to the reader as, “…a madwoman and a scavenger.”(pg. 13) Ozick uses a strong sense of imagery to portray Rosa as a character that leads a disheveled life as she describes her filthy living space and the “dark hole” of a hotel room in which she resides (pg. 13). Furthermore, Ozick uses metaphorical literary methods to emphasize the state that Rosa’s life is in. Rosa believes herself to be a shell “already fried from the sun.”(pg. 16) When comparing herself to the other residents of Florida she describes them by saying, “They were all scarecrows, blown about under the murdering sunball with empty ribcages.”(pg. 16) Rosa’s perception of herself is again represented by imagery and metaphors as she views herself like “a ragged old bird with worn feathers. Skinny, a stork.” (pg. 23) Such strong, yet dark, language immediately notifies the reader that Rosa clearly has internal struggles that the reader later learns is as a direct result from the loss of her child in a concentration camp.

Elie Wiesel, author of the holocaust novel titled “Night”, accurate states that “time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain open.” This proves to be the case for Rosa as she refuses to accept the death of her daughter that took place decades before hand, still writing her letters and speaking to her as if she were actually going to read them. She continuously imagines how her daughter would be at this stage in her life, married, a doctor. Rosa’s psychological instability is also represented by the extreme actions she took when destroying her own business in New York. Ozick makes it a point to relate this incident with the mental effects that Rosa’s character is still suffering from her traumatic experiences of her past. The psychological implications of the Holocaust on Rosa are evidently still very strong even decades after the incident.

When I first read “The Shawl” I liked it because of the author’s ability to use imagery and metaphors to really draw the reader into the details of Rosa’s life. For me, it was easy to become involved with this character as a reader because the emotions going on with Rosa are so vividly presented. But as I reflected on what I had read it had a greater impact on me that meant more than just the process of reading the story. I began to really think about Rosa’s situation, and then understand the hundreds of thousands of other people who were similarly affected by the Holocaust, and are still suffering long after. It made me think further about the psychological effects that such an atrocity carries through generations of a family. For example, the children of the Holocaust who lost their parents before they really even had a chance to know them, perhaps clinging on to vague memories they had while they were still alive. The grandchildren that don’t have an extended family because all of their ancestors were wiped out by violence and hatred. I contemplated the insecurities that could result for an entire family and the lack of trust that they may pass on to their own children. At what point do these toxic psychological effects start to disappear? How many generations of a family that suffered from the Holocaust does it take to recover from unimaginable circumstances? “The Shawl”, to me, brings this awareness to the reader, and made me realize that the Holocaust is not so far back in the past as I used to think it was.

The Future of Racism

Recently I read an opinion article posted in the New York Times that touches on the issue of racism and the place it may hold in the future of our society. I found it interesting to read this article a little more closely, as we have touched a lot on the matter of racism throughout the course. While, as a class, we have reflected on America’s history with racism, the opinions of this author represent a different twist on the issue, predicting the ways in which it might affect our society in the future.

Ross Douthat begins by questioning whether or not there is an “over-optimism” about the role that racism will play in our society. He mentions that if racism is just “an ideological and political problem that’s specific to a particular time and place” then as the old white generation dies out, racism in our country will continue to decrease. Many people, myself included, have thought of racism as an outdated flaw of our country. While it is still present, we like to think that it is constantly decreasing as the younger generations grow, and those who were immersed in a racial dominated society begin to pass away. I believe that something can be said for this, as the acceptance of a society where the institution of slavery was thought to be “normal” drastically changed when the slaveholder generation died off. Time heals some wounds, but not all.

Douthat counters the argument that racism is a thing of our past by stating, “I can think of a dozen reasons why public expressions of race-based hostility might become more common, not less, as the America of the Boomers gives way to the America of the millenials.” Douthat includes the internet’s ability to make the taboo a little less taboo, and our growing distance across time from the horrifying social injustices based on racism that took place in our country’s past, as significant reasons that we may experience a growth in racism. It makes sense. The “shock factor” of many things that may have seemed unthinkable to speak of in the past has now decreased due to the internet and media. A large number of people have become numb to extreme behavior, due to their consistent exposure to it. This makes people less likely to act out against a racist comment they may see posted on social networking sites, perhaps even passing over it as if they never saw it. Furthermore, the generations that are moving into adulthood never experienced the civil rights movement. Sure they read about it in history books, and they all know who Martin Luther King Jr. is, but they were not present to experience the drastic social changes that took place during this time. This makes our society vulnerable to an increase in racism if lessons learned are not passed on from generation to generation. Surely there will never be the institution of slavery, or the appalling Jim Crow laws that blatantly segregated races from one another, because politically these lessons learned from our past have been set in stone.

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/the-future-of-racism/

Kindred

In the book Kindred by Octavia Butler, Dana and Kevin enter the 1800’s, a world vastly different than the one that they were currently living in, and the thought of accepting slavery and making it a lifestyle would have frightened them. They were disgusted at the behavior that occurred on the Weylin farm was barbaric. Slavery was something that they had never been a part of and had been eradicated by the time that they had been born and living their lives out in California in the 1970’s. But when they were continually thrown into this brutal situation, they acclimated and became part of the slavery culture, despite their opposition to the institution.

            When Dana first is taken back to the 1800’s she does not quite feel the effects of slavery and the inhumane treatment of African-Americans. Dana is able to save Rufus from drowning in the river near his house. When she gets him safely to land she is immediately beaten by Rufus’ mother and is almost shot by Tom Weylin and she cannot understand why this is happening. She immediately returns back home in California at this point and cannot understand why she would be shot for saving the boy’s life. It is not until the second time that she returns when she figures out from Rufus that she had returned to the year 1815 and in living on a slave plantation. During Dana’s second visit Rufus, now 8 or 9 years old, calls her a “nigger” and she figures out what is going on with her time travel. When she goes to visit Alice and her mother she is introduced to slavery much the same way that Frederick Douglass is shown slavery when his aunt was whipped.  Dana sees a whipping of a slave by patrol men and learns the brutality that occurs during this time.

            But I think that the third time that Dana returns to save Rufus with Kevin is the time that they really become to acclimate and accept the ways of slavery. Dana and Kevin first accept that they should not tell people that they are married but rather that Dana is Kevin’s slave. This is one of the first moments when they begin to be shaped by slavery and change to fit into their situation (Butler 60). On this trip together Dana begins to notice that the time that they have spent on the Weylin farm has changed them. She thought that her and Kevin’s time was disturbing when she realized “How easily we seemed to acclimate.” (97). With their ease of life and ability survive dependent on their acceptance of the lifestyle; Dana and Kevin were able to change themselves. But as Dana continues to return to the farm, she has less trouble learning the life of slavery that is being lived on the farm and she is able to find her place as a “slave”. As the novel goes on and she spends more time on each visit on the ranch, she is more acclimated and used to the life. At one point she asks herself “When had I stopped acting? Why had I stopped?” (221) At this point she is now a part of this life and does not have to act like she once did but rather it has become her natural instincts to live this way.  

            I think that the acclimation that they go through in the 1800’s takes its toll and full effect when they return home. Both Dana and Kevin have a difficult time returning to their previous lifestyles. The changes that they have to go through, especially Kevin, who had been gone for 5 years, were hard on them. I think that the acclimation process that they both had to go through, both on the Weylin farm and at home changed them as people. The changes that they made when they returned back in time to adjust to slavery and stay alive, but in my opinion I think that this changes that were made grew on them and they were actually apart of the institution of slavery and had acclimated quite easily, much the same that slaves, their owners, and children did during these times.  

"The Woman Warrior"

While Maxine Kong Kingston’s story of “The Woman Warrior” descriptively informs the reader of the way life used to be in China, it is also attempting to provide the reader with an understanding of a much more complicated situation, familiar to many immigrants. Through telling the story of her disgraced and deceased aunt, the narrator provides insight to the struggle of a balance that emigrants must endure in their new home. This struggle is one of maintaining old traditions, while still trying to adapt to new ones in a new country.

Living in China in a time where women were meant to be plain, no nonsense, and sex was never spoken of; the narrator’s aunt becomes pregnant by someone that is obviously not her husband. Because her husband had been gone for years, the villagers began to notice her protruding belly. Because of this illegitimate pregnancy, the villagers attacked her home and livestock, bringing disgrace upon the family, and making an outcast out of the narrator’s aunt. This disgrace is something that the narrator’s father clearly still carries with him. “Don’t let your father know that I told you. He denies her.” (Pg. 5) The narrator’s mother clearly expresses the shame that her aunt brought upon the family, in an effort to prevent her own daughter from making the same “mistake”. It was “…a story to grow up on” for the narrator, and one she was meant to never repeat, even in a new land (Pg. 5).

After telling the situation of her aunt, the narrator then ties in the struggles that past and present can have on an immigrant. The narrator states, “Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.” (Pg. 5) How, trying to comply with the traditions of their parents, yet fit in with the surrounding society, does a first generation American create the perfect balance, be it a moral one or a cultural one? According to the narrator it takes a sense of understanding what exactly is Chinese to begin with, yet she finds difficulty in distinguishing between “…what is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?’ (Pg. 6)

The narrator then explores possible reasons for her aunt’s pregnancy in China, by suggesting such causes as rape, incest or lust. “Women in China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil.” (Pg. 6) Here the narrator is suggesting that it was a pregnancy caused by rape and one that she did not desire. The narrator suggests lust as a factor by stating, “…a wild woman, kept rollicking company.” She quickly rejects this idea though, as she couldn’t imagine a Chinese woman of such nature. “He may have been somebody in her own household,” suggests that incest had occurred. Through examining and contemplating the nature of her aunt’s pregnancy, the narrator seems to mention all causes that are present among American society as well. Sure, a woman’s home will not be attacked by an entire village if she conceives a child out of wedlock, but women in American society often do have to pay a price for this as well. Judgments, financial tribulations, and the lack of support for these women in our own society present the same sort of idea as in “The Woman Warrior”. It is the woman’s fault, it is the woman who must suffer, and this is the parallel that the narrator can draw between her ancestry and her present culture.

Power and its influence

            Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred, introduces a story that is slightly different from the other texts we have been reading during this course. This interestingly this novel deals with the topic of time travel. Dana, a young African American woman is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her husband Kevin, when she mysteriously gets transported to another time period. When she wakes up she is in the south and hears the screams of a young boy drowning. This young boy is Rufus, the son of Tom Weylin, a plantation owner.

After realizing that she may be transported to this time period again, Dana makes it her goal to try to educate and prevent Rufus from becoming the cruel slave owner his father is. After hearing Rufus call her a nigger Dana states, “His air of questioning confused me. Either he really didn’t know what he was saying, or he had a career waiting in Hollywood. Whichever it was he wasn’t going to go on saying it to me” (25). This is her first attempt at educating Rufus, but as we continue to see later her attempts are challenged because of the horrible environment he is being exposed to. Everything that he knows he has obtained from his parents or from observations around him. Although Rufus’s young instinctive moral sense gives Dana hope that he might not grow up to be like his father, his good instincts prove to be no match for the power he is later given.

When we first are introduced to Rufus he is a young boy, and despite being constantly bombarded with the ideas that the color of his skin gives him the authority and superiority over African American people, he shows Dana that he is still humane and compassionate by trying to protect her from his parents. This can be seen in one moment in the text when Dana is reading to Rufus and Margaret continuously attempts to interrupt and get Dana to leave. To Margaret’s surprise Rufus responds, “‘don’t say nothing!’ Rufus took his head off her lap. ‘Go away and stop bothering me!’” (103). Rufus choosing Dana over his mother shows the type of bond that they have established. He seems to demonstrate more respect towards Dana in situations like this.  However, his actions also show how much his father’s behavior has begun to influence him. Dana describes her observations,

Rufus turned his head and looked at her. The expression on his face startled me. For once, the small boy looked like a smaller replica of his father. His mouth was drawn into a thin straight line and his were coldly hostile. He spoke quietly now as Weyling sometimes did when he was angry. ‘You’re making me sick, Mama. Get away from me!’ (104).

Rufus is slowly transforming into his father and this is one of the moments when Dana begins to recognize this. He has disrespected his mother because he has seen his father do the same multiple times. Therefore he has already been conditioned to think that this type of behavior along with the way slaves are treated is acceptable. This moment is significant because it shows that despite Dana’s efforts to educate him, this seems to foreshadow what Rufus’ behavior will be as an adult.  Rufus can’t help but act this way because it is the only way that he has been taught to act towards other individuals.

             

                Upon Dana’s fourth transport to the south, she returns to a completely different Rufus. The young boy she last saw is has now grown into an adult. She quickly finds out that he is a changed person. Upon returning she arrives to the scene of a fight, between Rufus and Alice’s husband Issac. Dana finds out that this fight is occurring because Rufus raped Alice. Once again we see the effects of his father’s behavior. Rufus has used his superiority and power to try to get something that he wanted even if it means he has to use violence to get it. Dana is shocked by this revelation. She states “I gazed down at him bitterly. Kevin had been right. I’d been foolish to hope to influence him” (123). It is during this moment when Dana realizes that her previous efforts to alter this child’s future were futile. I don’t think Dana was foolish to try to change the type of person Rufus could turn to. However, it was definitely going to be a hard task considering that Rufus is surrounded by this negative behavior. He can’t help but act based on what he has seen and been taught by his father.

            As an adult, Rufus succumbs to the corrupting influence of the authority that is given to him. He is now able to use what Dana wants; freedom, and Kevin, against her. Knowing that Dana is desperate to be reunited with Kevin, he fools her and does not send the letters she has written to her husband. Unbeknownst to her, she patiently tries to wait for his return and willingly does as she is told. Once Kevin comes back to rescue Dana, Rufus is determined to get not let her leave the plantation. As Dana attempt’s to escape, Rufus declares, “‘you’re not leaving!’ he shouted. He sort of crouched around the gun, clearly on the verge of firing. ‘Damn you, you’re not leaving me!’” (187).   Once again he is using his power and the threat of violence to try to get what he wants. It seems like he has grown attached to Dana and fears her abandonment. However, just like Alice I feel like Rufus is always trying to obtain what he can’t have. He knows that Dana is not supposed to be in his time period but he is reluctant and selfish to try to keep her there. He not only tries to manipulate her life but also the lives of everyone on the plantation. Like a true plantation owner he manages to do this through the only way he knows, corruption, manipulation, the use of fear and violence.  

             It is interesting to see how power can change someone for the worst. However, I feel like you can’t blame Rufus for the future he was destined to have. Dana tried to change this but the influence of his father was far too strong. One thing that I was left wondering was if Dana would have spent more time on the plantation to teach Rufus while he was becoming an adult if that could have made a difference? Dana tried to change him as a child but while she was back in her time Rufus was becoming an adult and wasn’t there during that time to continue her teachings. So it would have just been interesting to see if that would have made a difference in any way.