Both Mumbo Jumbo and Ragtime use history to add to the realness of their texts. In Ragtime, Doctorow uses "false documents" that likely aren't true but for the most part can't be disproven to fill in the gaps of real history used in his book. For instance, he depicts J. P. Morgan talking to a seagull in a bout of loneliness, something that cannot be proven nor disproven. Moments like this make Ragtime feel real. Mumbo Jumbo takes place around the ragtime period as well, and during the Harlem Renaissance. Jes Grew is an anti-plague that spreads dancing and liveliness, a metaphor for the spread of black culture. The novel identifies things like ragtime and jazz as elements of Jes Grew, but Jes Grew's origins go back thousands of years. Reed uses what I presume to be (mostly) real Egyptian mythology and mumbo jumbo lore as actual history in Mumbo Jumbo. By using African history/mythology to set the novel, Reed accomplishes multiple things: he creates an Afrocent
I wrote this after reading the first two chapters of Black Swan Green. It is my first impression of Jason: Jason Taylor is a kid who cares very much about keeping up appearances, similarly to Bruce Bechdel in Fun Home. However, unlike how Bruce hid his homosexuality, stammering is the sort of thing that the harder you try to hide it, the more apparent it becomes. He refers to his condition as "Hangman", and has four commandments for it: "Thou shalt hide from speech therapists; Thou shalt strangle Taylor when he is nervous about stammering; Thou shalt ambush Taylor when he is not nervous about stammering; Once Taylor is 'Stutterboy' in the eyes of the world he is yours " (31). He really wants to maintain his social status and that makes him anxious about his stammer, which makes it all the worse. I've experienced a similar sort of "mental echo chamber" where the more I think about a certain problem, the more it affects me. However, I've
When I read about Guitar's involvement in the Days, it reminded me of Meursault. They both committed murder, but in totally different situations. I want to compare and contrast their situations and find some meaning in them. Meursault committed murder without any clear motive, and with little feeling in it. He holds nihilistic beliefs that allowed him to do that. In contrast, despite a deep aversion to murder, Guitar commits murder out of a sense of duty, as if it were a responsibility of his. His reasoning is that he has to keep the ratio the same between black and white people. He also harbors deep hatred of white people, in contrast to Meursault, who seems to have nothing against Arabs. Meursault and Guitar are in opposing classes. Guitar knows that black people get no justice in white courts; he believes he is defending his people by killing innocent white people (although in his mind, there are no innocent white people, as every one of them is a potential nword killer)
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