My critical analysis on The Maltese Falcon

For my choice novel I chose The Maltese Falcon, it was recommended to me by numerous people who said it was a fantastic book, to my surprise they were right. In this book you follow Sam Spade, a detective who recently has been given a case that ends up being much more complicated than he ever could imagine. The author, Dashiell Hammett, creates such a vivid scene of what is happening throughout this book that I could really visualize what was happening. What I wanted to focus my critical analysis on was Hammett’s way of expressing his main women characters through writing. In The Maltese Falcon there are only three women characters who all have very different personalities, all of which are very stereotypical of how men see certain women.
The three characters are Effie Pernie, Spades assistant. Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the very sexual client and possible suspect, and Iva Archer, Spades partner’s wife and also his lover. Each woman has a very different personality than the other and as I was reading I realized that each personality is it’s on stereotype. Effie is referred to by Sam as “boyish” and is often described as having a male voice and besides being referred to as a she once every few sentences it’s very hard to remember she actual is a women. Brigid is the object of Spade’s attention in the entire book, and although he knows that she is a possible suspect Brigid continues to get Sam’s help because of her sexuality. Iva is mentioned very few times however she is the “all accepting” woman who believes every word Sam says.
I connected this to Toni Morrison in not of how she talks about race but how race can be related to sexuality and sexisms in great American Literature. Morrison says, “American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views , genius , and power are without relationship to and removed from overwhelming presence of black people in the United States.” With each of these characters Sam has power over all of these women, it’s subtle for some but it does exists in The Maltese Falcon. In the end of the book (sorry to ruin it) Spade ends up sending Brigid to jail because of her involvement in the crime. So even though he’s in love with her he says “I hope to Christ they don’t hang you, precious by that sweet neck” Even just how Sam talks to Brigid you can tell he’s talking down to her, as if she weren’t to the level as he were. One of Morrison’s last thoughts of Romancing the Shadow is “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veile, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable. Or so our writers seem to say.” In the end, without any of his women, Sam is left alone as a white man. A white man who is supposed to be all powerful, but in reality he has nothing without his other characters, as Toni Morrison says.

Metanarratives

I think one of the biggest ideas that could cover every aspect of America would be the idea of a dream. Everyone has heard of America as having the American Dream. When that phrase was fist coined it meant leaving your home country and coming to America to get a job, start a family, and have enough money from that job to support your family. The American dream is what made people want to travel to America in the first place. However over the years that idea about an American dream has changed significantly. Now it no longer means having enough money to support anyone, it means never stop getting money. Even people who are American citizens now dream about having more and more money flow into their bank account.

The economy now has dramatically changed how people across the world see the American dream. They see people like Mark Zuckerburg who have a tremendous amount of wealth but agree to give a good portion of it to other people. They see people like the man with the “golden Voice” who is on the streets with next to nothing, and they see people like Justin Beiber who became famous off a voice. Even though the American dream is very loosely define in the present, I think that the idea of even having a dream is what makes America America.

Criticism by Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra starts off his article saying he doesn’t believe he is a critic but instead says he understands the world on a larger level. Overall in his take on criticism, Mishra stresses the points that literature was and is being taken for granted. What he was saying, to my best understanding, is that many people like the politicians and the wealthy just expect good literature to be there for them, however that’s not always the case. Mishra quotes Kazin many times and backs up similar beliefs in today’s criticism,

What Mishra focuses on for the majority of his article is literature from around the world and not just from America and Europe, he says, “There is no reason to assume that writing from Europe and America is all the matters or should matter to a critic today.” I completely agree with what he is saying here. Mishra gives the example of a well known Chinese critic named Lu Xunn, and I had absolutely no idea who this was. I think that many people in the world, myself included, get too caught up in America and Europe literature because they see that as the most important.

I agree with almost everything Mishra says about literature today, it’s becoming less and less recognized as something the world needs. Mishra says there is “little point in blaming New Criticism” and goes on with it’s not all their fault that that’s what most people are used to reading now. It’s hard to make a change back to what we used to consider good literature. What Mishra is really trying to get out there is that we need to start looking in other places for literature; places around the world have more than we would expect.

The Great Gatsby

So far in The Great Gatsby I’ve grown attached to Daisy. She is probably one of my favorite characters, I loved her in the begging because her dialog was always the best and Fitzgerald didn’t write about her a lot so it was always kind of a surprise to hear that her character was in the scene. In the first part of the book she is a very strong character and strong minded and that’s what I liked about her. At one part in the book (page 17) she is talking to Nick and she says “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” The day we picked out quotes that stood out to us this was mine, I picked it because I love the way she states and recognizes it, but at the same time wants to change it.
In this recent reading, I became less of a Daisy fan, and I think it was because of Gatsby. In chapter 7 when Gatsby first starts to take control of the situation with him and Daisy he comes on really strong, which is ok in the begging but I think his attitude starts to change Daisy’s character. On page 130 Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby are arguing about the love triangle that’s happening, Gatsby is about to say something and Daisy comes in with “Please don’t!...please lets all go home. Why don’t we all go home?” Though these later chapters it seems to me that Daisy is becoming less of the sarcastic, attitude character she was in the begging to more of a scared, timid character who won’t say her thoughts anymore.

What Will Happen With Harry Potter?

So this past weekend the newest installment of Harry Potter was released. Part one of two of the Deathly Hallows is the second to last movie of the Harry Potter series, and more than just a few people will be upset come next year when there will be no more Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley.

For my blog topic discussion of the week I wanted to see what everyone else thought would happen once there are no more Harry Potter movies. For the most part, our generation has grown up with not only these movies, but also the books. Once they are over will there be anymore movies that virtually everyone enjoys watching?
http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/harrypotterandthedeathlyhallows/mainsite/index.html#/downloads
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/44714/
http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/

Above are just a few of the articles and websites pertaining to Harry Potter characters, Harry Potter merchandise and the new Harry Potter theme park. What started off as just a few books has been made in to so many things. Of course people will still go to the Harry Potter theme park after the movies have all been made, but how will they add onto it like Disney World does if no movies are being made, how will they keep it renovated? Besides Disney movies does anyone think this has happened to any other movies?

I was also wondering what everyone thought would happen in say the next 50 or 100 years. After Harry Potter goes away for awhile do you think that because it was such a big hit it would be remade or added onto with different actors? I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be but do you think it would be possible? Any other thoughts on what has happened with Harry Potter or what you think will happen?

Blog of the week- week 1

This book really changed what I thought about the Vietnam War. Going into reading this book I had almost no knowledge of Vietnam except for what I had learned in history class. So after getting past the very graphic way of how he describes things I realized that even though this book was fiction it seems so real. This really made me try and better understand this war better. I’ve seen very few movies on Vietnam and read no books till now about it but I think The Things They Carried is such a good way to “see” the war though the eyes of a soldier. The Things They Carried takes away some common themes from movies, like Two Days in October like all the emotion soldiers felt and what they went through, but beyond that I really felt like TTTC was very individual on how to portray the Vietnam War.

Op-ed articles

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/opinion/19iht-edcohen.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

this article was really cool because it was about the Chilean miners, which I have been watching about in the news but it also dealt with deeper meanings about miracles and what happend to them down there emotionally and physically. I was expecially interested in this article because I knew Valentina, who was here last year, and after talking to her I was really intrested what Chile was really like.

Here's a quick summary:
Throughout the rescue, a couple of incidents kept returning to my mind, one in Chile, one in Europe.
As in Chile, an earthquake preceded the accident. Disarray characterized the Italian rescue attempt. With today’s technology, such an outcome seems unthinkable. The real Chilean “miracle” was man-made.