The Little Black Boy

So I am in the car, in traffic trying to get home. I have just spent my whole weekend stuck in school, on a leadership retreat. I am absolutely exhausted thinking on Leaves of Grass and on what I was going to write my blog on. I then looked out the glass car window and saw a black, little kid he was doing real hard work. I had no words to describe what he was doing, his face, his actions, movements. I once again closed my eyes. I arrived home, with the image of this little kid in my head. I turned on my computer and opened Walt Whitman’s poem, Leaves of Grass. I started reading poem 11, 12, and couldn’t find anything to write about but then I got to poem 13; the first 5 lines made the image of the black little boy arise to my mind once again.
“The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses—the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain;
The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard—steady and tall he stands, pois’d on one leg on the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band;
His glance is calm and commanding—he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache—falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.” (Poem 13. Lines 1-5)

Walt had the perfect description; it was simple, concrete, direct, and complete. I felt in the place of these two characters, poems do something, something that you cannot experience by yourself, not even through your eyes. It makes you have a focus, it does not permit you to wonder all around. He describes everything that he is seeing in a subtle and simple way.

Then Whitman ends this poem by
“And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,

And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional;

And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else;
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me;

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.” (Poem 13, lines 19 - 23)

Here he is repeating what he wants to say. Adding and adding more necessary detail to form a complete image in your mind. When reading poems readers like to not only read, but to see, feel, smell and these are two passages in Whitman’s poems that show different ways of forming images.

Expressing Your Feelings

I have always loved poems, I have loved the way by which you can express your feeling and emotions through it. I have loved the way you can make them sound however you please, add any rhythm to it if you want to. They have no boundaries. They are a way of self expression. Through poems you can transmit all sorts of feelings such as: happiness, sadness, disappointments and more. Through poems you can also express and tell moments in your life, describe people around you and many more.

In Walt Whitman’s book of poems: Leaves of Grass, in his first poem he uses a lot of feeling description. Starting by his first sentence: “I CELEBRATE myself;” I can clearly see that he is expressing a proud feeling type. Proud towards something that he has accomplished. Then as I continue to read through I found that he talks about sharing, and about being responsible for each other. When he says: “And what I assume you shall assume; For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.” By now the first stanza is over and so far he has proven my love for poems, which is the way than one can express our feeling through them. Walt then starts talking about loafing himself, showing the opposite feeling as before, as disappointment. He keeps on using expressing words to describe himself in that precise time lapse of his life some of these words include: “mad, love, loafe, undisguised”.

After all I really liked the way in which Walt Whitman through his poems tries to let some of him to the world. Expresses what he feels, and what he has lived. “Backward I see my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders; I have no mocking or arguments-I witness and wait” (Poem 4)

The Two Sides Of Description

As I continue to read A simple Soul, I realized that Flaubert continues with his same style of description in great detail. When I finished the book I realized how simple this book was. I mean anyone who read it would easily say it was about a woman named Felicite and the tragic life she had. But then I wondered. What pulled me into the story? What made me be into it? The answer was simple, it was the style of Gustave Flaubert. He does not use extravagating language, on the other hand he uses medium sized sentences, organizes them in an easy way to read fast and through. One of Flaubert’s most successful style techniques was the descriptions he used. He used two different types of descriptions he used direct ones, which left a complete image of what he is describing in our minds: “His body was green, his head blue, the tips of his wings were pink and his breast was golden.” (Chapter IV). And he also used some more complicated and sophisticated such as: “Already at the threshold, she caught sight of Virginia lying on her back, with clasped hands, her mouth open and her head thrown back, beneath a black crucifix inclined toward her, and stiff curtains which were less white than her face. Madame Aubain lay at the foot of the couch, clasping it with her arms and uttering groans of agony. The Mother Superior was standing on the right side of the bed. The three candles on the bureau made red blurs, and the windows were dimmed by the fog outside.” (Chapter III).
In these two sentences we can see the variation of description that Flaubert used.

And this is what kept me entertained throughout the book. Another technique that Flaubert used to keep the reader into the story was the topic jumping. He switched topics to keep us engaged to it, and in order for us not to get bored.

Flaubert's writing style

Style is essential to have in mind when you are writing. “Writing style is the manner in which a writer addresses a matter. A style reveals the writer's personality or voice.” In class we have recently been focusing on style and personally I am really enjoying it. Your writing style is like your personality, it portrays who you are.

In tonight’s reading, which consisted in reading A Simple Soul by
 Gustave Flaubert, I found his style to be extremely descriptive: “She was
immediately dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the
brightness of the dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the crowd
of people all hopping at the same time.” (A simple Soul chapter 2). Here he was not only descriptive in the surroundings but he did also mention details. He described all things that were around.

Another example of Flaubert’’s description is: “The sleepy waves lapping the sand unfurled themselves along the
shore that extended as far as the eye could see, but where land began,
it was limited by the downs which separated it from the "Swamp," a
large meadow shaped like a hippodrome” (A simple Soul chapter 2). Here we can see that the was Gustave Flaubert uses description is by: listing and separation by commas. He lists in the sense that he is naming and illustrates each piece and detail of things, in this case of the beach. And he separates these listings by commas.

Throughout the text the way that Flaubert describes is not just a paralyzed scene, he describes as actions keep occurring, and does not stop the story.

Ending Feelings

Throughout the book I noticed that most if the jokes that Thomas Pynchon made, and that in order for us to understand them we needed to have a good background and historical knowledge of the United States in the 1960’s. Since the beginning I knew that this was a satirical novel, and at first it was very hard for me to find and to catch all the of the satirical jokes, so instead of being funny and relaxed at the beginning for me this book was tense and I was looking all around for jokes that I could not catch. But then as I got used to them and relaxed I was able to find the satirical part of it.

Now regarding the end of this novel I can say that Oedipa ended up with her life made up a mess and all that she loved is now all gone and destroyed. Starting by saying that she completely lost her husband, Mucho. And that Dr. Hilarious is now gone completely insane, with many other factors Oedipa was completely ruined. And when the novel ends Pynchon is not really putting all the focus in the auction and the Tristeros, but even before that he is focusing on Oedipa and the sense that she lost everything she had for something that could have been a joke in the Inveraty.

Clues Leading To Confusions

As I continued to read this book I found that by this point Oedipa is living a mystery, to which she wants to find the solutions and has been able to find some clues one of these is: “She tailed him all the way back down the littered, shifty, loud length of the Market and over on First Street to the trans bay bus terminal, where he bought a ticket for Oakland. So did Oedipa”. (106) The problem is that this is not like any other kind of mystery movie or book that I have seen or read, in which generally as time passes by and the characters go finding clues, these will help them get closer to solve the mystery. In this book Pynchon does it kind of backwards, I mean he does give clues but instead of these clues leading the character towards the solution of the mystery, it leads her to more doubt and confusion. The night that Oedipa was wondering she was able to put many clues together but she was really confusing her more and more each time.


It is also important to state that by now Oedipa is having some emotional changes in her life. Meaning that she is feeling separated from Mucho, since he became in a victim of LSD. And it was also interesting for me to see how good Oedipa is doing in terms of her psychologically stability, during all this chaos and problems all around.

Finding Satire

After and as I was reading this chapter I found myself with many questions and comments. First of all I have to say that so far the names mentioned by Pynchon are really strange, weird and funny. I mean Oedipa, Mucho, Pierce, Metzger, Mike Fallopian, Mr. Hilarius. What kinds of names are these? Or would you ever name any of your children this way? Now that I was informed that this book was satirical I am finding the names as part of it.

Then regarding this precise chapter I have to say that as first it was really easy and simple, when oedipal was in the bar with Metzger and Mike Fallopian. But then, Oedipa decides to go to the bathroom, and sees a weird looking symbol, one that she cannot recognize. This shape was like: a "loop, triangle, and trapezoid" (p.38), beneath it said: “Kirby”. In the book, in this moment, after Oedipa saw this shape she is very confused and has no idea of what it might represent. And neither do I. But then I thought what might Pynchon want to say with this? Is he including any of the elements of satire in here? Hyperbole, target, irony or absurdity?