Well, I think it’s fair to say that BlogSpot has treated me well this semester. There were often times that I would be confused about a poem, story, or essay and turn to the blogs for extra help. As I looked back at my earlier posts, I noticed that I was a bit more humorous than I was later in the semester. In all honesty, I’d occasionally use humor to take up space in the blog I was working on. It wasn’t the best way to complete an assignment, but I think that it ultimately caused me to enjoy the blogs a lot more. As the course progressed, I noticed that I began to keep a professional tone through my blog posts. I centered my focus on analyzing the works, rather than using humor to fill gaps. I think that in the end, it had a much better impact on my comprehension level of a select work.

It was initially weird for me at first to grasp the idea that all of my blog posts were public to the internet. I think because of that, I began the course with blog posts that contained a bit of sarcasm or humor. For me, I imagined that the situation was as if the whole internet was reading my posts, so I wanted to come across as funny or witty. That’s obviously an absurd generalization, but it made me enjoy my blog posts much more knowing that somebody sitting behind an internet connection may read my post and emit a laugh. As previously stated, I eventually shifted the tone of my blog posts from comedic to serious. I think the reason for this is that I didn’t want people to look at my posts and think “oh, great, a clown. Make me laugh, clown.” This was especially one of my concerns when I finally thought “what is Dr. Rouzie thinking when he reads these?” I didn’t want to sacrifice my grade on the blogs, so, like I said, I altered the tone of my writing. The last paragraph makes it sound like I took the first part of the blog posts as a joke, but I assure you that that is not what I meant. I just wrote in a more personal style that made me enjoy posting.

I had always liked the part of class where we go downstairs and read/comment on people’s posts. At times, it was extremely insightful and helped me understand things about the poems or stories that I was originally blind to. I made a fair amount of comments on others’ posts because I loved to respond and help with someone’s feelings of confusion over a notion or whatever else in the story. This works the same way when it came to others commenting on my posts. I was sometimes confused about the stories as well and it always helped to have someone post a comment that allowed me to understand things. I loved the idea of people commenting on my posts. It helped me understand things, but also felt good when somebody agreed with something I said.

I think that overall, I am pretty satisfied with my blog posts. My strongest was definitely on “Greasy Lake”, whereas my weakest was on “Catastrophe”. I would classify my post on “Greasy Lake” as my best because I can remember really understanding the story when I was reading it. I remember taking in every metaphor and then choosing to write about them in my post. I did not cover every metaphor, but I discussed the ones that I really enjoyed. My post on Pinter was one of my weakest because I did not really comprehend the story too well. This was also one of the posts that included a lot more humor.

I think it’s pretty clear that the blogs helped me in the course. As I said, I enjoyed each of the times that the class went downstairs to the computer lab to read and comment on posts. I learned something that I didn’t each time we did this, so I definitely think that it’s a great idea to continue using BlogSpot for this course.

What you Redeem I’m Going to Pawn

Keith Baillis
March 9, 2009
English 250: Textual Analysis
What you Redeem I’m Going to Pawn

“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie is a poignant story of hopelessness written in a comedic tone. It creates an endearing character out of an older alcoholic Indian and is used by Alexie to illustrate many of the issues in Native American culture. Homelessness and redemption are among the various themes included in the story that will be discussed. Humor, however, is certainly the most brilliant theme that works together with the character’s attempts of redemption and the hopelessness of being homeless.
One major theme in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is homelessness. The audience is able to see this from the first line of the story, which says “One day you have a home and the next you don’t” (Alexie, 12). This sentence dually refers to Jackson’s state of homelessness, living day to day on the streets of Seattle, as well as the cultural aspect of homelessness, bearing in mind that he is a Spokane Indian. Just as any Native American, he is linked to an unfortunate past of cultural denial, forced relocation, and stolen land and property. The concept of homelessness is present in many ways when the audience considers Jackson’s character away from the initial exposition. First of all, he is homeless in the exact sense of the word; he lives on the streets of Seattle. However, thinking beyond the literal meaning of the word homeless, we are able to learn a lot about Jackson from statements such as “I’ve been disappearing ever since” (Alexie, 13) and “I’ve been killing myself ever since she died” (Alexie, 24). These statements (referring to an assortment of pain through his life) show how the word homeless, in the materialistic sense, has been exceeded by two more profound meanings. The events of Jackson’s life have so strongly affected him that they have left him stranded in multiple denotations of the word homeless. His life of despair has resulted in becoming both culturally and psychologically homeless.
Homelessness has been a reoccurring theme through Jackson’s life. He is a Native American and already has to deal with his people’s ancestral suffering. If that isn’t enough, it seems that he has the roots of homelessness growing in him. He has never been able to stay in one place for a long period of time without losing what can be considered his current “home.” Flunking out of college can be one of the first instances of homelessness in Jackson’s life. When a student goes away to college, the campus becomes his or her new home. Jackson was given that opportunity, but unfortunately he failed out of school, resulting in the loss of his first home-esque setting. Then there are the failed marriages. When one engages in such an extreme act as marriage, they typically categorize that as the state they want to spend the rest of their life. Marriage is like two people’s “home” until death do them part. As stated, these marriages however failed, resulting in the next occurrence of homelessness in Jackson’s life.
Another important theme in the story is redemption. The story itself is, at first glance, based on a Native American man’s goal to possess his deceased grandmother’s regalia that was lost to theft. Looking deeper than that, though, there is an ongoing theme of redemption. The true reason that Jackson wants to acquire the regalia is to bring his grandmother back to life; to redeem her. He says “I wondered if my grandmother’s cancer started when somebody stole her powwow regalia. Maybe the cancer started in her broken heart and then leaked out into her breasts” (Alexie, 17). This reveals that Jackson’s external struggle withis to redeem his grandmother’s death. Another example of striving for redemption is with the three Aleut cousins. They have sat for eleven years, struggling to redeem themselves.
Through the story, Alexie uses humor to stabilize the seemingly negative tone brought on by Jackson Jackson’s life of despair. Through the initial exposition, the reader learns about Jackson’s bleak past when he says “I grew up in Spokane, moved to Seattle twenty-three years ago for college, flunked out after two semesters, worked various blue- and bluer-collar jobs, married two or three times, fathered two or three kids, and then went crazy” (Alexie, 12). The audience knows that Jackson is 41 years of age, failed out of college, has been divorced, and has been homeless for the past 6 years. Life seems to be constantly raining on Jackson, but one of his unique qualities is that he is nonetheless able to look at his own issues and employ the notion of humor to cope with them.
Humor acts as a remedy for Jackson’s own internal suffering. In life, the practice of humor is regularly considered its own medicine used to find relief during situations of negativity. The audience can see this a lot in the life of Jackson, as he constantly speaks and thinks in a witty sense. In one part of the story, Jackson is woken up from a drunken coma on a set of railroad tracks by a familiar police officer. The officer tells Jackson that he is taking him to a detoxification clinic in which he replies “No, man, that place is awful. It’s full of drunk Indians” (Alexie, 25). They both share a laugh at this, but beyond the expected response of laughing, Officer Williams seems to act as a voice for the audience. When he finds Jackson, he says the things they have been thinking and asks the questions they have been wondering. After finding him in that hung over state, he says “You Indians. How the hell do you laugh so much? I just picked your ass off the railroad tracks, and you’re making jokes” (Alexie, 25). In response to this, Jackson says “the two funniest tribes I’ve ever been around are Indians and Jews, so I guess that says something about the inherent humor of genocide.” Through this conversation, the audience can see that Jackson would much rather find a laugh and feel content than let it ruin his entire day. Jackson has inadvertently used humor as a treatment of his despair and seeming hopelessness. This is especially clear when one considers Jackson’s past. Not many people are emotionally hardwired with the capability of grasping and moving on from past events, such as multiple divorces, failing out of college, and being a homeless alcoholic. A sense of humor is a clear ingredient in the recipe for mental healing, which is demonstrated through the story by Jackson.
Throughout “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” the themes of homelessness and redemption are evident, as they are definitive of Jackson’s life. Jackson Jackson is a comical Native American who uses humor as a literal adhesive to unify each of these themes. This story is important to us because it preaches a message of appreciation to the readers. This definitely needs work.

Essay Topic

I think for my essay, I'll be writing about "Greasy Lake". Why? I felt that this story was the most interesting one that we read. I was on the edge of my seat as I read on, wondering what was going to happen to the boys. I thought that the story was told in a unique tone that made it hard not to continue reading.
As far as what I will write about, I think that I will cover a lot about the use of metaphors. I clearly remember how cool a lot of the metaphors were, so that will be included in my essay.

I may also want to write about "What You Pawn, I Will Redeem". I thought that was comparable to "Greasy Lake". I will surely read each story once more in order to distinguish which I will write about. I liked the idea of writing about the humor of the story because this short story is so rich of that.

"Dead Man Laughing"

"Dead Man Laughing" is a story that is mainly centered on the notion of humor, especially at the things in life that many people wouldn’t consider humorous. I read up on this on google and it seems that it is really an insight on Smith’s life with her family and the affects that humor had on it. I think it’s great that they use humor as a way to deal with the problems and feelings that the characters had in this story because I really think humor is one of the best medicines. If you can laugh at yourself, you can be content with yourself. Humor is used in this essay as a way to sidetrack people from difficult issues in life, such as financial status and death. Smith’s family finds a lot of humor in things that many people would not be able to look and laugh at, which makes this story a very interesting read. As they watch comedic television that pokes fun at the lower financial class, they are able to laugh and become satisfied with their own lives.

"Greasy Lake"

I thought that Boyle's "Greasy Lake" contained a load of good metaphors. For instance, when the main character is fleeing the man that he knocked out, he swims into a floating dead body, which turns out to be Al, the owner of the parked motorcycle. When this happens, he says, "it gave like a rubber duck, it gave like flesh." This takes us from the initial perception of a 19 year old to the shocking revelation that that is a dead human corpse. Another metaphor in "Greasy Lake" is "I spilled in the grass - in the dark, rank mysterious nighttime grass of Greasy Lake. I stopped there by the open door, peering vaguely into the night that puddled up round my feet." Water is used as a metaphor for car keys. Spilled refers to the car keys and puddled is used to describe the darkness of the night. Very cool. Two thumbs up for Boyle.

Por que?

I decided to do my blogpost on Diaz's masterpiece. Overall, I enjoyed reading the story, but there were various parts that caused me to lose a little interest. First off, I understand that Diaz was ethnically proud, but all the same, I do not think that the combination of English and Spanish kept the flow. When I read this short story, I was not near a computer or the Spanish dictionary that I normally carry with me when I initially read an unfamiliar short story, so I ended up feeling a little salty every time I read something Spanish and didn't know whether I just missed a significant detail. Next, I was a little confused about the details behind the Puerto Rican woman. I didn't understand why the father was having an affair and telling the children about it. These are children, or ninos, and the father decides to tell them about it? From my understanding of reality, I don't think that children are capable of holding onto a secret like that. It's just unrealistic that a father would tell two children about the affair he is having and not run a high risk of the mother finding out. It is

Good work, Printer.

I think that there are not really significant differences between Beckette’s text version and the video. The text was almost no different from the video. I have watched it three times, one of which I read along with the text. The only big textual difference I noticed was that Printer had a severe issue with saying “get going.” Through the play, he just changed the text from “get going” to “go on”… 4 times. Apparently somebody has an issue with the word get. In fact, I noticed that the word get appears 4 times in the text, and sure enough it’s the 4 times that were removed in the video. I don’t know what to think about that, but I’m at a loss. Apparently Harold Printer has a hard time grasping the notion of rationality. It had a severely adverse impact on my ability to comprehend this play. I’m glad I never paid money to see that video, because sometimes the worst things in life are free. I’m just kidding. I thought it was a good play and really didn’t notice any differences aside from the “get going" and a few insignificant textual altercations.

Hey

Hey everybody. I'm Keith and I am wearing a zip-up hoodie and a black thermal. Oh, and my sweats are gray.