Conversation #2

Today I met with my conversation partner for the second time. Surprisingly, it was actually much harder to communicate with her today than the first time we met two weeks ago. I assume this is because when we first met we were going over simple subjects such as introducing ourselves and talking about our lives. However in this second conversation, we talked about various topics that required the use of a more extensive vocabulary that my conversation partner found hard to grasp. This meant that we were spending much longer on each point of the conversation this time because I constantly found myself having to repeat sentences and trying to explain what a word or saying meant. However eventually, towards the end of the conversation, things began to flow more smoothly and the conversation progressed at a more natural pace.

My conversation partner informed me that she was not going to be around for a couple of weeks because she had to go back to Venezuela for a business trip. She told me that she was going back to sell her house and pick up her degree from a friend there. Also she told me that she was really looking forward to going back because she would get to see all of her friends back home. What I found surprising was that she was not interested in going back to the country itself, she was only interested in visiting her friends. She told me that she dislikes Venezuela because of the way the country is run and because of its government which she believes is corrupt and unhealthy for the Venezuelan people. This is why she loves living in the United States so much she says. This lead to a conversation about why she believes the United States is better than her home country.

When I asked her about the United States, she said there is so much more opportunity here, than her own country. She told me that back home 80%-90% of the population works blue-collar jobs and almost no one has a true white collar job, like the majority of workers in the United States. She also said that the school system seemed to be better and that she was happy to have her children going to school here. I asked about her children and she said that her older daughter was just entering high school. She was worried because she had no idea how the US college system worked and didn’t know how her daughter should apply for college and what she needed to do to get in. This made me realize how many unseen adjustments individuals have to make when moving to a new country. I certainly have no idea how I would apply for college in Venezuela or any other foreign country. In response to this dilemma, I told her I was not sure how individuals in the US on a visa were supposed to apply for institutions, such as universities or colleges. However, I instructed her that every high school has a college counselor who should know what steps are necessary for the application.

The difficulty in communication we encountered in this conversation makes me a little wary towards our future conversations. As the conversations progress they will invariably increase in complexity. This makes me nervous because it means that I will have to spend more time trying to make her understand what I am saying and spend less time actually speaking with and learning from her. 

Huck Finn Experienced?

Huck Finn Experienced?

1. Have you read the novel –Huck Finn- before?  If so where and why?

I read the book in my sophomore of high school for my English class. I really didn’t remember to much about the book so, reading it again refreshed my memory of the book and gave me an updated perspective on the novel.

2. If you have not read Huck Finn before, surely you know something about the novel and character from references and allusions in popular culture.  What do you know about either the novel and/or character?

3. What was your response to reading Huck Finn, and what do you remember from your reading?  Also, did you actually read the whole novel, or just parts of it?  Did you read Cliff Notes or Monarch Notes instead?

I got a new perspective reading the book for a second time. The first time I read it I didn’t focus to much on the aspect of racism in the novel. However when we talked about it in class, we focused almost entirely on the aspect of racism.

4. If you were assigned to read Huck Finn in a previous class, either here or in high school, how did your class as a whole react to the novel?  Why do you think your instructor assigned the novel?  How did he or she try to “teach” the novel?

When we read the novel in high school the class didn’t have any extraordinary reactions to the book. I think my instructor assigned the book mostly because it was the most banned book in US history and she wanted to focus on that aspect.

5. If you were required to read Huck Finn in a previous class, what sort of assignments were you required to complete, and what exactly did you do during the classes when

Huck Finn was being discussed.

I don’t really remember a lot about the class assignments for the reading. However, I know we were required to write an essay on the use of folklore in the novel, which I used as a framework for my blog post.

6. Huck Finn is still one of the most controversial and most banned books in America.  Why is it so controversial?

The aspect of racism in the book can be seen as both pro and anti racism. This means that the message behind the novel can be seen as negative or positive. Also the use of vulgar terminology makes it inappropriate for some readers.   

7. Is Huck Finn still relevant to you as college student today?  Should it continue to be taught in college classrooms?

I think the book is a vital component of America’s literary canon thus, it should be taught to give a perspective on other works of the time period.

8.  The general consensus among critics is that Huck Finn is a brilliant and powerful novel, but also a flawed and problematic novel.  What do you think might be flawed and/or problematic about the novel?

The novel does not flow smoothly throughout. While brilliant, it seems to be, somewhat, randomly thrown together. This makes it a novel that is hard to judge from the standpoint of a literary critic.

Folklore in Huck Finn

After answering the question about the bad luck omens on the first Huckleberry Finn quiz, I realized that much of the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is based on Folklore and superstition. Many of the critical events and turning points in the novel are foreshadowed by omens and superstitions involved in the folklore of the time.

The time period before Huck meets his father is foreshadowed by multiple signs and omens. The first sign that foreshadows a coming evil is Huck’s killing of a spider in the candle. During the 1800s when Mark Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, common folklore held that spiders were somewhat immortal so seeing one die was considered a terrible sign. The next superstition that leads Huck to the conclusion that his father is coming is the body found in the river. When the body is first discovered the townspeople agree that it is the body of pap, Huck’s father. However, Huck dispels this claim by stating. “I knowed mighty well a drowned man don’t float on is back, but on his face. So I knowed then, that this warn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. So I was uncomfortable again.” Huck again uses folklore to foreshadow his father’s arrival because the body could not be pap because only a woman could drown facing up. The bad omens continue when Huck overturns a salt shaker and is unable to reverse the bad luck because Miss Watson stops him from throwing salt over his shoulder. From this point on Huck realizes that his knowledge of folklore and bad omens is insufficient so he decides to consult someone who is well versed in folklore, Jim.

When Huck discovers a boot print with a cross on the heel, he decides to consult the slave Jim, a master of folklore. Using a hairball, which supposedly contains a spirit, Jim deciphers that Huck’s father is still alive. True to Jim’s prediction later that night Huck returns to his room to find his father waiting for him.

From the discovery of his father, the trend of evil omens and folklore turns and we see the first good omen, the rising of the river. Huck proclaims that the rising river has always brought him good luck. True to the trend of good and bad omens in the book the rising river brings Huck two essential things a canoe and some timber logs. Both turn out to be vital for Huck’s escape plan, the canoe as transport and the logs as a distraction for pap. Also later, the good luck of the rising river continues to hold and a log raft, which furthers the escape plan, is discovered. The good luck of the rising river foreshadows Huck’s escape from his father.

Unfortunately after Huck’s short run of good luck, bad omens quickly follow. On Jackson’s island Huck finds and handles a snakeskin, which according to Jim is one of the worst omens. True to the bad omen the snakeskin leads to Jim being bitten by a rattle snake and becoming ill. Luckily, however, being well versed in folklore Jim knows what to do to combat the snake bite and is able to cure himself. The bad luck continues until the ending of the first part of the novel.

After finding the snake skin, both the raft and the canoe, which were vital for Jim and Huck’s escape, disappear. The bad luck continues when their raft is smashed by a steamboat and they are forced to swim ashore. Huck even highlights these catastrophes as the work of the snake skin by stating “We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it?” Clearly Mark Twain wanted to emphasize that the snakeskin had some influence on the events proceeding its discovery.

Clearly much of the first part of Huckleberry Finn is driven by the notion of good and bad omens. This should not be surprising due to the climate of the time period and Mark Twain’s well known infatuation with superstitions and folklore.

                

Conversation #1

Today I met with my conversation partner for the first time. She said she has been living in the United States for almost a year now, coming here from Venezuela. I asked her why she had moved, from her home country of Venezuela, and she said that her husband had been recruited for a job here in the United States and that had forced their entire family to move. The fact that her entire family had to move countries because her husband had found a better job in America surprised me.

I have never thought of moving and living anywhere outside the US. I am comfortable here. Everything is familiar to me, I know the way things work, and most importantly all of my relationships are here. I realized that moving to a different country, while exciting, must be a daunting task for any person. The closest thing I can compare it to is going away to college for the first time. Then again, even at a new college everyone knows your language. I asked her how her transition into American culture was and she gave me some surprising answers.

The first question I asked her, after we had talked about her background and mine, was how was the transition to English coming from a mostly Spanish speaking country. She promptly responded, “What transition? I only speaks English in the classroom.” I was surprised by this response and pried more into the subject. Apparently since she has lived in the US, everywhere she regularly goes restaurants, grocery stores, school, she can communicate by exclusively speaking Spanish. This struck me as strange because I do essentially the same things as her in the same region as her and, I have never had to use Spanish to communicate. This made me realize how segregated, even today, the communities of the area are. Was it just a language barrier that divided us?

I asked her how the Spanish speakers she interacted with on a daily basis go around without English. She said that almost everyone was able to get by without speaking any English because the community she lived in was mostly Hispanic. She also said almost no one was even trying to learn English. This seemed strange to me. Why would you move to a different country and not try to learn the language and interact with its citizens. She said that there was actually a big divide in the Hispanic community that she lived in. People that came to the US from countries in south and central America, panama, Guatemala, Venezuela, etc. actively tried to learn and engage in English upon arrival to the US. However, most people from Mexico feel they can get by without English and do not try to learn it. I had no idea that there was such a divide in the Hispanic community here in Fort Worth.

I asked her whether most people who moved here were successful in learning English, if they actively attempted to do so. She told me, while some people were willing, there was really no place in the community where they are forced to use English so, it is easy just to revert back to Spanish instead. That is why she started the program at TCU. She has been taking English classes for many years but, hasn’t had enough hands on practice in English to really develop a tongue for it. However, the TCU program, which emphasizes using conversation partner, forces her to engage in active, conversational English which she claims helps her language development immensely.

Magazine Article 2/13

Thinking about what article, from the 1930s, I wanted to write about was fairly simple. I wanted to write about something influential, something that affects us even today nearly a century after. While flipping through magazines, various ads for products that I didn’t even know existed provided mild entertainment but, soon I came across an article that I knew would be ideal to write about. The article encompassed the theme of a coming of age story on, not only an individual but, a cultural scale. I chose an article from 1928 depicting the last decade of life in America under prohibition.

                During the time this article was written, the prohibition era was coming to an end. The opening line of the article reads “National prohibition, with a total cost for enforcement of more than 170,000,000 to the federal treasury alone, will round the eighth year of existence tomorrow.” Clearly the writer, while trying to be unbiased, is failing and letting some of his true emotions show. This emotion seemed to come from a common thread of unrest during prohibition. The rest of the article goes into the other unseen costs of the prohibition era.

                The writer systematically goes through the other costs of prohibition, the cost for the department of justice, the cost for the federal court, the cost of the loss of revenue. Going through all these he seems to maintain an air ambiguity but, he doesn’t need to use any emotion. The numbers speak for themselves. Figures of exponentially increasing federal court costs and hundreds of millions in potential alcohol tax revenue lost, tell the story of what the climate was like in prohibition America. Then at the end of the article the writer highlights his last and most emotionally driven argument, the loss of life.

                The final section of the article depicts the toll of human lives, lost due to prohibition. The writer explains how 126 civilians have lost their lives due to the violence caused by a decade of prohibition. He then goes on to emphasize how, along with the civilians, forty-seven “officers of the law” lost their lives in prohibition. Also stated were the arrests made by prohibition officers during the era, 64,986 in just seven years of prohibition.

                Clearly this article was meant to make one point, prohibition was a mistake. The writer of the article tries to depict all of the detrimental aspects of prohibition in attempt to move his readers to action. The prohibition was essentially a coming of age story for us as a nation. We tried to limit a major freedom we’d had since our nation’s founding and we failed. We came out of prohibition losing hundreds of millions in federal dollars during some of the most financially unstable times in our nation’s history. But most importantly, we learned from our mistakes and gave up on prohibition, instead of mindlessly enforcing it like so many other nations of the time.