Lozo's Blog

     Throughout Kindred , there has been one dynamic that has especially bothered me: the one between Dana and Rufus. Specifically, the way she systematically excuses his behavior, even when it gets to the point where he is constantly raping and beating Alice (who, Dana seems to often forget, is her ancestor too).      As Rufus does these horrible things, Dana recognizes that they are horrible things to do, but doesn't associate that with Rufus as a person. She seems to think of Rufus as the little boy that he was when she first met him, and is incapable of seeing his actions as a direct consequence of his character. As he becomes more and more similar to his father, she does not accept that this is the person that he is and that there is no changing him.     That is, until the very end. The only point where Dana realizes that Rufus is evil is when he puts her safety in question, and that is when she takes direct action by killing him. Why didn't ...

     Mumbo Jumbo. A phrase we have all heard throughout our lives to describe gibberish, nonsense, and the ridiculous. As a extremely stigmatized term, I wonder: why would Ishmael Reed use it to name his novel?  In fact, for someone who seems to be trying to destigmatize a lot of the things in his book, why would he seemingly make his novel so much more confusing for readers who have probably never heard these terms before?     I think the answer has been right in front of us the whole time: he's trying to weed out the atonists. Now, hear me out. In the context of the novel, a possible explanation is that the atonists are purposefully trying to delegitimize the book by adding in typos, making it seem more confusing, etc. But let's take it outside of that context for a second. What is Reed's actual reason for making everything so confusing? I think it's to both weed out and anger the atonists, the enemy. What would be an atonists worst nightmare? A nove...

 "Happily ever after" is a phrase we have heard very often in stories every since we were little. The stories all follow a similar pattern: there's a problem, two people fall in love and solve the problem at the same time, and they live happily ever after. However, with a book like "Ragtime", this pattern becomes very complicated, because of the multiple plots going on at once without any real sense of logical progression. So what does the conclusion look like? Death. That's what it looks like. While reading, I noticed that in order to wrap up the book in a seemingly quick and simple way, Doctorow just kills off all the characters he doesn't know what to do with. Coalhouse? Dead. Mother's younger brother? Dead. JP Morgan? Dead. Father? Dead. In fact, it seems like the only significant people left alive might be Mother and Tateh, who do  get a "happily ever after" ending.  So what led Doctorow to this choice? Honestly, I think it might have ...

 One of the biggest discussion points we've had in class so far (which isn't a surprise, because the name of the class is History as Fiction) has been the role that historical figures play in the novel. Authors have been fictionalizing (if that's even a word) actual historical people since the beginning of time, but there is a key difference in the way that E. L. Doctorow does it. Not only does he incorporate actual people, but he often completely changes their personalities. He makes up events. He even sometimes completely disregards logic in order to bring two characters together who would not have been in the same social circles whatsoever. For example, as we discussed in class, the whole scene with Harry Houdini and Harry K. Thaw in the prison made absolutely no sense because Houdini wasn't even doing his escape in that prison in the first place, but Doctorow decided to ignore historical facts and change the course of the lives of two people who really did exist.  I...

  When I was little, my parents would have me try many different activities. Music, ice skating, swimming, soccer, and more. And even though I liked some of these things, somehow one triumphed in the end: ballet. How this came to be, I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t remember much. But from then on it was over. Everything else disappeared. Ballet was my thing, the thing that I was good at. I made friends there, and it became my passion. But it also came with a downside. Every day, at school, I would be made fun of. I would have people come up to me asking questions like “can I see you twirl?” and “where’s your tutu?”. I didn't show that it affected me, but it did. I was a strong kid. No matter how much mocking I received, I would just come back stronger, more confident. I would tell whoever would listen that I did ballet, and it would become common knowledge wherever I went. That is, until I became a teenager. I became embarrassed, ashamed even. I didn’t want anyone to know. I still ...