The first time I read Passing, I read the summary on the back of the Penguin Book to see what the novel was about:

“Clare Kendry is living on the edge. Light-skinned, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a racist white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past after deciding to ‘pass’ as a white woman. Clare’s childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, and is simultaneously allured and repelled by Clare’s risky decision to engage in racial masquerade for personal and societal gain. After frequenting African American-centric gatherings together in Harlem, Clare’s interest in Irene turns into a homoerotic longing for Irene’s black identity, which she abandoned and can never embrace again, and she is forced to grapple with her decision to pass for white in a way that is both tragic and telling.”

When I began the novel, I was influenced by the summary on the back, but quickly discovered how false it is. Its first mistake is making Clare seem like the main character, but perhaps its greatest fault is in the way it describes Clare as possessing a “homoerotic longing for Irene’s black identity,” which if anything, it is Irene that has some longing for Clare’s white identity. And more so than just the identity, Irene seems very much in love with Clare. Clare is this strange, enticing being that Irene has a weakness to. She goes against everything that Irene believes in morally and while Irene harbors little sympathy towards Clare, she also feels a duty to protect her. Part of Irene loves Clare and another part wishes deeply to be her. When Clare starts visiting Harlem more frequently, she explains, “Why, to get the things I want badly enough, I’d do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away. Really, ‘Rene, I’m not safe” (83). As startled as Irene is to hear that, she realizes that she is weighed down by her own responsibilities as a mother and a wife. All she desires is stability, foolishly believing that creating this nuclear family, she would achieve a secure place in life, where she could protect herself and her sons from the cruelties of the world. Really, what Irene wished, was to live in a fairy tale-esque world, which Clare’s own beauty evokes so strongly (Hugh Wentworth even noting that she is a “blonde beauty that stepped out of a fairy-tale” (77)). Clare, the irresponsible risk-taker, has detached herself from all these commitments of motherhood and domesticity. She has affairs with other men and she goes out with no cares for her daughter Margery, who she blames as the one thing that really holds her back. Irene and Clare both desire freedom, without realizing that their image of freedom is in the chains that hold the other one down.

To add on to Irene’s worries is this strong attraction to Clare, which is somewhat reciprocated, but ruined by Clare’s affair with Brian. In the midst of this realization of their relationship, Irene thinks, “Strange, that she couldn’t now be sure that she had ever truly known love. Not even for Brain. He was her husband and the father of her sons. But was he anything more? Had she ever wanted or tried for more?” (113). While it seems like Irene blames Clare for disrupting her life, she helped her discover that her life was never as stable as she hoped. Part of this comes, I believe, from the Irene trying to force herself to create a heteronormative lifestyle for herself, when she is actually gay. What she “wanted more” of was really Clare. The thoughts that she would never see Clare again are ruined the second Clare appears. Acknowledging Brian and Clare’s affair forces her to face this reality that though she desires both–the stability that Brian provides as a man and the seductive beauty of Clare–she really cannot have either. Clare embodies all these challenges to Irene’s understanding of her race, gender, and sexuality. Unfortunately, she chooses to try and preserve her relationship with Brian, the only vague sense of security she has in her life. The unsettling end of Clare is the end of Irene’s chance for freedom as well, emphasizing how trapped people feel in these strict categories of identity.

Larsen, Nella. Passing. Penguin Books, 2018.

Ernest Hemingway was the model of an all-American man. He lived an interesting life where he enjoyed hunting and fishing, witnessed three wars, and married four times. His parents heavily influenced his work and what seems his relationships with his wives as well. The introduction says that “he found his mother domineering” (1962) and resented her for making him dress like his sister. He cared deeply about his masculinity and resented his father for being weak (due to depression). In each of his marriages, he left his wives for someone younger and more beautiful or someone with less of a focus on her career in order to validate his position over them. To more modern readers, Hemingway has been critiqued for the hypermasculinity of his work. This makes the piece “Hill Like White Elephants” interesting because of this tension between the man and the girl over an operation that they have differing opinions on. The story is famous because this American couple in Barcelona dances around the sensitive topic of abortion without ever saying or describing it directly. Though patriarchal ideals and toxic masculinity seemed to dominate Hemingway’s life, the girl is the more sympathetic character in the story and the man appears fairly supportive of the girl’s decision. It is interesting though that she is constantly described as a girl versus the woman who is their waitress, as if she is immature compared to the man and perhaps he is more competent than her, thus knows what is best. The tension between the two of characters reminds me a lot of Edith Wharton’s works like “Belated Souls” and “Roman Fever,” where the readers are thrown into this awkward situation and must uncover the source of strain between them. The man in “Hills Like White Elephants” encourages his partner to have an abortion, while trying to assure her he’d love her either way. He repeatedly says that the operation is “perfectly simple” and all they do is “let the air in” (1965). Although he appears supportive, he is trying to push her to receive the abortion by implanting this idea within her head that it is easy and natural. He uses this to manipulate her into thinking that she can make her own choices. Yet the girl is skeptical, not just about how the decision affects her body, but how the pregnancy affects their relationship. The man says that it is the only source of their unhappiness and that they can have everything (without it). The girl replies, “No we can’t. It isn’t ours any more…And once they take it away, you never get it back” (1966). Unlike the man, she sees that there is no way to return to their previous relationship whether she receives the abortion or not. It is a much more complex situation than the man can really understand because it is not his body at stake. At first, it seems like the girl feels hopeless because of the baby, but she also feels the immense guilt if she were to receive the operation. She sees the joy that she might have with and without the baby, yet any decision she makes will forever change her. It doesn’t give any specific context about their situation before this moment, but their suitcases are covered in labels of all the hotels they traveled around. Likely, they were on some sort of elaborate and beautiful foreign trip, expressing their love in many ways before they learned some ways into this trip that the girl is pregnant. Although they are in this exotic and foreign place, they cannot escape their American lives and troubles.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited” has a similar sort of setting. The story takes place in Paris with these American characters who seemed to leave the country to escape the boring lifestyle of America, but also the poverty from the Great Depression. There is this constant stress of money in the story that all of the characters face, yet it seems partly alleviated because they exist outside of the bubble of America’s Depression. Despite being in this foreign country, the characters still try to preserve their American lifestyle through the decorations of their homes or visiting typical tourist spots for Americans.

Charlie experienced the ups and downs of the boom and the bust, which created a strain on his relationship with his wife and ended with his daughter living with his sister-in-law. All he desires in the story is to get his daughter back. While visiting his sister in law, he declares how he is financially doing well: “There’s a lot of business there that isn’t moving at all, but we’re doing even better than ever. In fact, damn well…My income last year was bigger than it was when I had money” (1906). Charlie faces multiple aspects of social pressure to keep up a good reputation and erase his past damaged one. He boasts about his money to his sister- and brother-in-law to make it appear as if he has fixed his life. Although he does so in order to show that he is in a stable position to take care of his daughter again, his boasting feeds off the financial insecurity of his in-laws. But money is not the solution to everything and those who have it recognize that there is more to life, while those who do not envy it all the more. To prevent any signs of insecurity over their issues, the characters make it appear as if they are much more content than they are and harbor a resentment towards each other because of this envy. Reputation and appearance are all that they can really control in their lives and the necessity of preserving it is as important as anything else. This story is distinctly American because of its characters and its ideals. The foreign setting is a sort of facade of escape or paradise that the characters believe in, but their issues are still tied to their American identity and isolation.

Poetry is as much a spoken language as it is a written one. Wallace Stevens captures smooth sounds and rhythms in his poetry that create these unique tones to his poem that can capture both tranquility and a heavy intensity. He is recognized as one of the or “most skilled and original of America’s modernists” (p. 1968). His iconic and bizarre poem “Anecdote of a Jar” definitely stirs many questions in its surreal narrative of a jar. I wonder what that jar did in Tennessee and the poem does deliver an answer, but it almost extends beyond my imagination.

The poem “Sunday Morning” (p. 1969) initially evokes this image of a calm, regular setting but raises quickly to questions about life and divinity. The subject of the first few stanzas focuses on gods and goddesses and their relationship to a world beyond mortal reach, a paradise of beauty and blood and desire. Stanza VI depicts the sort of twisted paradise these gods live in:

“Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?” (l. 76-81)

It makes it seems as though immortal paradise really is not much different from the imperfect world of humanity. Even paradise does not create fulfillment in every aspect to these beings and perhaps even the souls of human beings if Heaven is supposed to be like this. It is as if the scene is paused at a particular moment and there is an unsettling feeling in the lack of change, in the eternally ripe fruit and perfect sky. The rivers who always seek but never find the sea reflects this constant search for something greater, even in paradise. People always want more to escape the void of loneliness and fear of obscurity.

I like the way that Wallace Stevens can poetically make me feel somehow miniscule and insignificant, though not in an entirely negative way. In “The Snow Man” (p. 1972), an icy and isolated winter portrait hangs heavily in the mind of the reader. Everything is frozen stiffly in place with no escape from the bitter winds that blow or the sound of a few leaves, signifying the last bit of life, silenced by those same winds. The poem concludes, “For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (l. 13-15). The Snow Man is an observer of all these events, yet also an embodiment of these same experiences. He is also stuck in one place with only his thoughts to keep him company. He realizes, like the silent fall of the snow, that he embodies a nothingness, which both does and does not exist. A common theme between many of Wallace Stevens poems is this cold emptiness that is conveyed through non-human elements, but represent very human feelings and fears. Not all his poems are so dark or depressing, though they feel as if they are quests to find some sort of answer to these great questions of life we have. Sometimes there are solutions and sometimes there are not.

Out of all the famous poets we’ve read so far, I think I’ve enjoyed William Carlos Williams’ work the most. He had an interesting background as well, in the sense that he did not go to school for English or writing, but went to medical school and was a doctor that wrote poems on the side. It’s nice to see the cross between these two different fields. He had a mixed heritage, which made him feel like a “quintessential American” (p. 1751) and encouraged him to celebrate the cultural diversity of the country. I also appreciate this aspect of his work as well, since they are light-hearted and celebrations of life and its beauty. I knew about the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” which is probably taught in every poetry class or the poetry section of an English class. And when we talk about this poem it’s always related to this idea that it has some great meaning or critique of America. The colors make up the American flag and there’s some deep significance behind the wheel / barrow and the rain and the chickens. It’s probably the most famous (overused) of his work, similar to Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” but they both have a lot of other great poems to read. I really liked the flowers and petals that appear throughout Williams’ different pieces. His poems have a sort of light humor to them, such as in “Dance Russe” where the speaker desires to strip off all his clothes while his family sleeps and sing of his loneliness. This bizarre and airy lyrical style seems to be more in his earlier work, as in “Portrait of a Lady.” It sounds like a conversation between the speaker and a beautiful woman he is trying to flirt with, which is this painting of a woman. While he tries to compliment her, he is interrupted by these questions of “Which sky?” and “Which shore?” which throw off his focus. In the end, he says “How should I know? / Which shore? Which shore? / I said petals from an appletree” (l. 19-21). He becomes fed up with trying to paint his own poetic version of this woman, since he can’t capture its beauty and distinction with mere descriptions. Perhaps Williams is having a little fun by trying to translate this painting into a poem, but finds that he cannot so easily create an enticing narrative for her.

In Williams’ later poems, he plays around more with grammar, form, and punctuation. My favorite poem is “The Pink Locust,” which continues on his petals/flowers motif. The speaker starts out by saying “I’m persistent as the pink locust, / once admitted / to the garden, / you will not easily get rid of it” (l. 1-4). Although flowers are typically seen as fragile and perishable, the speaker emphasizes the strength that flowers possess. The pink locust, a feminine symbol, follows its own rules and own desires. The delicacy of the flower doesn’t go away, but it doesn’t mean that the flower is weak. In fact, it is “incredibly resilient / under attack!” (l. 39-40). The poem seems to reflect Williams’ insecurities about poetry and being a poet, yet he perseveres, like the persistent pink locust, who will not give up even in the face of harsh criticism or doubt. And it is through this flower that he asserts his place in the garden of poets.

I remember being in middle school and having to memorize Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (p. 1630) and reciting it in class. It was about 20 twelve year olds all going up one at a time to say this poem that they had memorized line by line with no concern about the actual meaning of the poem. It was one of the first poems I ever read and because it is so famous and frequently referenced, I’ve never forgot it. I think now that I’ve gotten older and I’m sort of walking on this path of life and I’m soon to reach a fork in the road where I’ll have to make career decisions, this poem seems especially daunting now. I never paid much attention to the “yellow wood” (l. 1), but now I wonder it’s odd significance. The color gives feelings of fall, when the leaves are yellowing and aging rather than spring, when the leaves are fresh, green, and in their prime. A yellow wood, though beautiful, seems sour and old, reflecting this fear of being older that the speaker possesses. Once he reached the fork in his path, he pondered on the two choices, hoping he could come back some day and see the other road, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if i should ever come back” (l. 14-15). Frost chooses to use a lowercase “i” in this one line, which makes it stand out since his poems follow a typical grammatical structure. The difference between “I” and “i” could be a present and past self, or even a mature versus immature self. The “i” is hopeful to return to this fork and perhaps all forks in the road and see every option and opportunity, but “I” understands that this is but a passing moment in life and accepts that there is no turning back.

I’m glad I got to read Frost’s other poems as well. While I was reading the introduction, I wondered what made his “farmer poems” so famous and why even write about farm life if he didn’t really live one. But his work is beautiful and descriptive and even though it follows a more traditional form of rhyme and lyric poems, they’re still very engaging. His poetry reminds me of the beautiful and simple prairie life from m My Ántonia and “The Wood-Pile” (p. 1629) and “Desert Places” (p. 1636) especially reminded me of Jim Burden and his conflicting emotions for the countryside. Both poems take place in the winter and have a slow paced, isolated tone to them. “Desert Places” is a witty and ironic title since the snow is covering the land in a blanket of cold. The woods are covered, the animals are hibernating, and the speaker observes how “lonely as it is that loneliness / Will be more lonely ere it will be less” (l. 9-10). As beautiful as snow may be, there is an eeriness to its quiet. Everything is in a deep, death-like sleep, but the speaker is awake and isolated from all this beauty. The loneliness of the winter reminds me a lot of that cruel winter in My Ántonia for the Shimerdas and Jim. It also speaks to the loneliness that Jim would feel in the countryside, whereas Ántonia always felt fulfilled in this land of the red grass.

Trilogy (p. 1819)
This excerpt in the Heath Anthology of H.D.’s The Walls Do Not Fall and Tribute to Angels is a brief glimpse at her work on a search for salvation. The first poem, The Walls Do Not Fall, portrays a dystopian, war-torn society. Stable aspects of life, such as the air and the ground, suddenly collapse and choke the speaker. She calls the air “independable” (l. 17), because instead of giving life, it is taking it. It as if the world is slowly sinking into a hole and there is nothing that these people can do but continue searching for that old stability:

“we are voyagers, discoverers
of the not-known,

the unrecorded;
we have no map;

possibly we will reach haven,
heaven” (l. 26-31)

The poem presents this bleak atmosphere, but the wanderers survive through the chaos of their surroundings. What was once familiar is now foreign and they must learn to adapt. I love the play on words in the last two lines, which present a hopeful, yet dreary tone as well. Haven, safety may only be found in heaven, death. There is no map to heaven and no escape from the consequences of war.

The Body of an American (p. 2346)
John Dos Passos delivers a chilling critique of the affects of war, especially on those soldiers used, abused, and forgotten during WWI. This short story of “The Body of an American” follows John Doe, who lost his life in the war. I found myself holding my breath reading that first paragraph, which seems to be some sort of official or legal document regarding the “body of an Americanwhowasamemberoftheamericanexpeditionaryforcesineurope” (2356). Passos uses this interesting style to introduce readers into the story by showing how this isn’t a typical war story. The spaces in between can be seen as short breathes that someone takes while speeding through this speech and summing up this person’s entire life into one, rushed sentence. The overall style of the story is very interesting as well. It is poetic, almost like lyrical prose, while also capturing multiple voices, and creating an overall experience of the rough and manic ride through war. All of this sort of seems to take place in the narrator’s thoughts while at John Doe’s funeral. John Doe is that body of an American. His generic name doesn’t match the specific details of his childhood but serve to show how he is a distinct individual, while also being the body of many individuals who died during the war. He had a past and now he has no future. The narrator notes that “Where his chest out to have been the pinned” all sort of Medals of honors (2350), yet none would fill the cavity that resides there. There is such a biting tone throughout the piece of this is how America abuses its people. They honor the soldier’s work and awards but he is tragically nobody but a “John Doe.” They stripped him of everything that he had to offer–his heart, his soul–and all that is left is this hollow body of an American to praise and glorify.

E. E. Cummings created his distinct and iconic poetic style–also called as “a form of literary cubism” (p. 1859)–through the manipulation of typical English writing rules, such as punctuation, grammar, and diction. The introduction to E. E. Cummings in our Heath Anthology describes how he wrote about simplicity, nature, and uniqueness, while opposing conformity, groupness, and artificiality. Just his poetry style speaks to this, but the content, chopped and skewed, looks to the beauty of individuality and the ugliness of the mundane. His poem “my sweet old etcetera” (p. 1862) encapsulates this idea of the dullness of being average or conforming. Throughout the poem, “etcetera” is scattered through, interrupting the thoughts and descriptions of the the speaker’s family members. He says “my / mother hoped that / i would die etcetera / bravely of course” (l. 12-16) and his father talked “about how it was / a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my / self etcetera lay quietly” (l. 17-20). Not much context is given in the poem, but there is a war going on and it seems as if everyone in the speaker’s family is involved in some way in supporting the war in some way. The speaker seems disinterested in falling into their same beliefs, exemplified by the way he describes his parents talking to him, as if they are giving him a boring lecture. He does not care for the honor or privilege of fighting for his country and becomes lost in the dreamlike and empty “etceteras.” He never completes a full thought and instead wonders around, trying to avoid becoming the generic soldier his family wants him to be.

I particularly enjoy the way E. E. Cummings plays with words, describing ideas in ways that we never think about, but somehow make sense in his poetry. I like his use of the word “manunkind” that embodies the cruelty he’s seen in people. It is one of his later poems and has a much darker tone to it. In the end, the speaker suggests abandoning this universe for a better one somehow, which emphasizes the hopelessness of recovery in this universe, that manunkind has ruined. I’m more of a fan of the earlier work that possesses a lighter, more playful tone. My favorite poem from this reading was “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls” (p. 1861), which I hesitatingly call a sonnet (since it has 14 lines, though it is still free verse). The descriptions were especially interesting and bizarre to me. Part of the difficulty of reading poetry is trying to understand everything, but there is more merit in understanding just enough and the feelings that the writing evokes. This poem stars with a description of the women: “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls / are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds” (l. 1-2). At first, the word “unbeautiful” stands out as if the speaker is insulting the Cambridge ladies, as if they were once beautiful and now are not. But despite this description of their appearance, the have “furnished souls” and “comfortable minds,” as if they are unbothered by superficial values and are fulfilled in other ways. While they are curious women, they are uninterested in the “scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D” (l. 10), characters and persons so generic, this could describe anyone. Their minds can stay comfortable and clean because they do not concern themselves with the petty gossip of the crowd. The best lines are at the end, describing Cambridge “in its box of / sky lavender and cornerless,the / moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy” (l. 12-14). The sky is this paradoxical cornerless box with the moon, a fragment of angry candy. The tone of these last few lines is lost on me, but I love their poetic vividness. Something about the paradox reminds me of how those concerned with artificial social affairs restrict themselves to a more sheltered experience (which the angry rattling moon scorns?), while the Cambridge women experience the limitlessness of the world.

Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington’s piece Up From Slavery is a complex one that has received much criticism since its publication. His slave narrative can be seen as a promotion of black complacency and submission in an oppressive white society. He mentions both white and black folks being victims of the institution of slavery and never writes about blame or bitterness he harbors to those that have discriminated against him. His audience likely played a major role in the way that he wrote his autobiography, especially in the way he tries to appease towards any white guilt. He builds up his credibility with this audience by showing he looks forward to future progress. There are also moments where he wants to humanize slaves to show his audience that they are loving and forgiving people. He explains that many of the slaves in the South did care deeply for their masters, even the ones who fought to protect slavery: “Some of the slaves would even beg for the privilege of sitting up at night to nurse their wounded masters. This tenderness and sympathy on the part of those held in bondage was a result of their kindly and generous nature” (1349). He does word this as a universal feeling of all the slaves, which is an exaggeration, but here he emphasizes the kindness, sincerity, and loyalty that black folks have. It works to evoke an empathy towards the slaves in the readers and paints them in a sort of higher moral ground than the white masters who wish to keep them caged. However, this does invalidate and erase individuals who did feel resentment towards their oppressors and he writes in such a way that it seems as if the slaves did not care if they were freed or not (which he later has to explain that they all did in fact desire freedom).

A lot of the biography leads to the buildup of Washington’s famous Atlanta Exposition Address, a highly controversial speech delivered to both white and black folk from the North and South. Washington explains how audiences are different and he tries to individualize he speeches towards the audience he addresses. For this speech, he recalls, “the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them” (1363). This is the central idea of his work, both in the address and it seems in the autobiography as a whole. He wants to start creating that bridge between the white and black community to make a unified country. He often uses the term friendship to describe how he hopes their relationship can develop into something kind and helpful to everyone. However, the major problem with his speech is that he primarily addresses the white community and focuses on the effort that black folks have to do in order to create a union between the races. He wouldn’t be in the position to tell his white audience what they did wrong or what they must do, but it was a feel-good speech unfortunately only for one side.

The Souls of Black Folk

While many black folks criticized Washington for his promotion of submissive behavior, their voices were drowned out by his fame and support. Years later, WEB DuBois wrote this piece going more into depth about the state of the relationship between the white and black community and how Washington’s ideas were harmful. He starts out his piece, which is primarily sociological analysis, with a short memory from his childhood. In school, a girl had promptly rejected his card when he tried to give it to her. He describes how he realized “with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others…shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows” (1375). He elaborates on this veil that he saw separates people from each other. There is also this desire to either be a part of this world, the white world, or to destroy the barrier between them that he did not find appealing at all, which that interaction helped him understand. In any case his world was much more free, occupying the vast sky above this restricting veil. This is an important introduction to his in depth analysis and critique of Washington’s speech and of the state of American society post-Emancipation.

DuBois’ world was different from Washington’s. DuBois was not born into slavery and he started his schooling and education at a young age. While Washington emphasized that former slaves held no bitterness towards white folks, DuBois explains that their feelings and struggles cannot be replaced through forgiveness. He also realizes the importance of being critical of Washington, who acted as the face of black success in America. DuBois explains how in this messy post-Emancipation society, black folks “began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem…To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships” (1378). Instead of accepting the responsibility of bridging the gap between the two races, DuBois shows how they must be more critical of it. It is not only their problem and it is not even a problem that they created in the first place. But now, after Washington’s detrimental promotion of black submission, DuBois desires to deconstruct these ideas. For so long, black folks have been carrying this weight on their own, while there is a whole other community that continues to place more weight upon them. They should not aim for the bare minimum that is emancipation from slavery, since poverty and discrimination proves that is no freedom at all. They deserve to spend any dollar at the opera house just as well as any other.