Class Notes

The Bear by William Faulkner
*What is the name of the poem the father picked out from the bookcase and the boy thought it was just a poem about a girl...It was John Keats Ode to Grecian Urn.
*The theme of the bear is that the white man killed the bear which then killed the wilderness.

Dead Man
*Bill Blake starts out an innocent and is entering the world of experience. This is a common themes in William Blake's poetry
*In the movie, people always get shot in the heart...
* He is dead before he even gets on the train, hence the title Dead Man
*Nobody was abducted as a child
*Bill Blake was abducted by William Blake
*It was more expensive to do the movie in black and white then color but the director insisted.
*The movie is a circle. It starts and ends in the same place. The coal guy gives away the ending at the very beginning.
*Bill Blake becomes William Blake when he says he is William Blake and then asks "Have you read my poetry" then he shoots the man. Nobody told him that he would write his poetry with blood... Poetry is a destructive force (By Wallace Stevens)


Two great styles--yet opposite
*Hemmingway's sentences are short and simple (just the style not the theme)
*Faulkner's sentences are very long and complex

Inititation
*Men's initiation is very public yet women's initiation is very private.
*For initiation part of the person has to die-the part left lives on in a way the person never knew possible
*Initiation starts with the person getting taken away from their family
*When you are going through initiation you are in the belly of the whale
-As college students we are in the belly of the whale while in the classroom. The classes are part of our initiation. When we leave the classroom and college we should all be different people then we were when we began college.

Invisible Man by Ralph Waldo Ellison
*Don't try to understand the novel just immerse yourself into the blues
-(What Did I Do To Be So)Black and Blue by Luis Armstrong
-click here and scroll down to listen to the song
*Rinehart is a unforgettable character...yet he never makes an appearance in the book. He is a runner, a gambler, a lover, a preacher.
The invisible man starts to become Rinehart.