Category: Blog Postings

From the streets of NYC, to Dublin and back.

The novel Let the Great World Spin opens up with the prologue titled “Those Who Saw Him Rushed”, in which McCann introduces the reader to the busy streets of New York City in the downtown area of Manhattan. He also describes vividly the activities of the people as they’re beginning their day in the early morning around “seven forty-seven”, as he puts it. In actuality, the prologue is describing the events surrounding the stunt that French high-wire artist Philippe Petit conducted on a tight-rope as he walked between the Twin Towers on the morning of August 7th, 1974. From this moment to the end of the first chapter, McCann takes the reader on a wild journey from the streets of Manhattan, the streets of Dublin, Ireland, to the late 20th Century housing projects of the Bronx.

Having read the first few parts of the novel, it is clear that McCann draws the reader in into the world he creates through his extensive use of vivid details. He is able to bring to life his characters and his settings through this. So far, I am captivated by his world and the voice that he gives his characters as well as the unique personalities they have and the way that they slowly develop into something much more. I am very interested in the complexity of Corrigan’s character because there seem to be so many layers to him. Although his journey ends up in tragedy, it is still interesting watching him grow and develop through the eyes of his own brother. I don’t feel that any certain character is alienated as they all have some share into the story, but I do feel that their mother also had a sense of mystery and complexity to her, especially with the incident of the man in the streets.

Warmth in the Cold Reality

Over the course of first seventy-two pages of Let the Great World Spin, we are led to travel over 5,000 miles alongside the characters. From Manhattan to Dublin, and from Dublin to Bronx and Queens. As we travel across the ocean with the author, we are introduced to distinct characteristics of each location: loud and lawless urban aspect of New York, and quiet yet unsettling suburban aspect of Dublin. Lawless part of New York is depicted through heroin and prostitution while unsettling part of Dublin is presented through homelessness and Northern Ireland conflict. I really love how the author does not sugar-coat these areas but exposes the harsh reality of each area.

As I read through the first chapter, my heart was weirdly comforted. I used the word weirdly because as I mentioned before, the problems and circumstances presented in this book is not that cheerful. But I was comforted by Corrigan. In the midst of this cold reality, he was able to project him warmth. Of course he had his internal problems as we witnessed throughout the chapter, but I think that is what makes him more humane. Just like any one of us, he struggled. But he was able to keep his willingness to help others in his own struggles.

I am reminded, reality is cold. Through Corrigan I am also reminded, the fact that reality is cold does not mean that we have to give up our warmth.

SHOOK

Let me just start off by saying that I am beyond SHOOK. I’ll give you a little background on how I function. You see, I tend to be absorbed into the world of whatever book I’m reading; I become the book. “Read Chapter 1 for homework,” Professor Purves said. “It’s a great read,” she said. While I do not disagree with either of those statements, they did NOT prepare me for what the book had in store.

The prologue begins with the whole “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” type of scenario where a man (Petit) is standing on top of one of the twin towers is New York City. Suspense is built as people of all backgrounds watch anxiously at what he is going to do. Is he going to jump or nah? The prologue ends with him starting to tightrope walk to the other tower, to everyone’s surprise.

Chapter 1 starts with the story of two boys and their mother and a physically absent father in Dublin, Ireland. The unnamed narrator is the older brother, while the younger one is John Andrew but goes by Corrigan, which is actually the family name. Now, Corrigan is a special character. He is what I see when I look into the mirror. “[Corrigan] might have been naive, but he didn’t care; he said he’d rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic,” his older brother describes him (McCann 21). Corrigan was blind in his love in that he did not discriminate in who to love, and he made himself vulnerable and open rather than be a skeptic like his brother. This is probably also the reason why I don’t find any of the characters as alien or baffling.

Corrigan really intrigues me; he seems to have no limit whatsoever. Even his brother rages on and on about how Corrigan is being taken advantage of. I believe McCann captures humanity beautifully: so beautifully, in fact, that I see myself in all the characters. Corrigan drinks starting at a very early age with the poor and the alcoholics, not to get drunk but to feel the pain of people everyone else considers trash. We see his love for people again when he moves to The Bronx, following the orders of the order of monks he joined. We see how is life is like through the narrator’s eyes, who follows because of a war in Ireland.

When the narrator joins Corrigan in The Bronx, he receives a culture shock. He sees a black person for the first time, and he cannot stop staring. Younger me relates to the narrator, because a village in India looks nothing like the Big Apple. After one hell of a rollercoaster ride in the Bronx, we end the chapter in a hospital bed, which made me fling the book across the room. Let me just end with saying that I am very much still SHOOK.

Let the Great World Spin – Chapter 1

The prologue of the book starts us off at the World Trade Center in Manhattan. There is a lot of tension there because of a figure at the edge of a building, with no one sure why someone would be up there. At the start of chapter 1, we are taken to Dublin in Sandymount to the childhood home of Corrigan and his brother, Ciaran. There is also the place Corrigan used to go to get drunk with the other drunkards. The book then goes to New York City, where Corrigan now lives and Ciaran also goes there. Corrigan’s apartment appears to be a central area to the story and is where the other characters like Jazzlyn and the other hookers are introduced as people that Corrigan wants to help.

The beginning of the book sort of reminds me of my childhood and what it was like to be carefree and asking all these questions and wondering what’s going on. The tone sort of shifts however when Corrigan’s drinking and smoking problem is introduced, the father not being with them and the mother eventually dying. This is a point in the book where it becomes a lot more sad and where I can’t relate much to except for my dad not living with me either. There is also a spiritual feeling I get when hearing Corrigan talk about his relation to God and how devout he is, even though this is pretty opposite of who I am. Ciaran sort of has more similarity to me in his nature of questioning things and being a bit more real on how things are. The ending of the chapter is also very sudden and depressing which adds to the importance of the moment, as incidents like that in real life are also sudden and usually unforeseen. Overall, the tone really changes after the first few pages from being bright, to a bit more dark. However, it was a good read and does really pull you in with the real life elements and character differences.

Of things far and near; Of things different yet the same

Manhattan. Dublin, Ireland. The Bronx. A bar in Queens. Three of these places in the same city, and the other on the opposite side of the ocean. These locations, on the surface, may seem like just a random place. Yet each of these places has a name. An identity. The author of this book, Colum McCann, took us to each of these places and immersed us within each of them for a few pages. We were able to notice the social differences in each of these places around 40-50 years ago. From the business-people of Wall Street to the projects in the Bronx, the drunk-filled streets of Dublin to a quiet bar in Queens – all of these differences are made apparent. Such vivid description has only led me to have a greater appreciation for New York City, to embrace the differences in culture between the boroughs yet bond over our similarities.

The book so far led me through a roller-coaster of emotions. From a mother’s never-ending love for her alcoholic son to a mother-daughter pair of hookers, there is no one word to describe the characters or my feelings after reading this. Even though all of the characters developed their own interesting personalities, a few stood out more than the rest. Corrigan, for one. Corrigan is seemingly trying his best to find religion yet has so many questionable traits that it is hard to tell. His internal conflict between his piety and desires  truly interests me.

One thing that really surprised me from the beginning was the young age of most of the characters. Corrigan having his first smoke at 9, getting drunk at 13; Jazzlyn, a street hooker no more than 17-18 years of age. This really lead to me realizing what a different world we live in than what it was 40 years ago. A much safer, sheltered world for sure.

Is it a better world? Only you can answer that for yourself.

Behavioral Signs

By Jolaynie Bonito

Behavior has several definitions. It could be defined as the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others or the way in which an animal or person acts in response to a particular situation or stimulus or the way in which a natural phenomenon or a machine works or functions. A sign is an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.

So a behavioral sign must be defined as an indication that someone is acting a certain way in response to something else in its environment.

Behavioral signs in this text basically means that in society we behave a certain way that can be perceived as beautiful. The way we behave became something as a part of our routine. If someone did something that could possibly be viewed as “ugly”, it would hinder that person in the “productive – reproductive routine”. In today’s society everything is determined and very precise, everyone plans out what their next step is going to be and how to look better than the next person. It is constantly happening all around us with the help of social media and advertisement of both men and women who fit a certain description of “beauty”.

Telos

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines telos as “an ultimate end”. In other terms, telos can be referred to as having a goal or purpose. In “The Beautiful and the Ugly are One Thing, the Sublime Another: A Reflection on Culture” by Stanley Diamond, the word telos is used in the following sentence, “For culture is itself a transcendence, making available a commonality of language that can be combined and recombined into the most illuminating construction of the human telos”. In this statement I believe Diamond is conveying the message that human beings will alter cultural practices to better suite their own goals, or telos. Throughout this section, Diamond describes how culture itself is being diminished in society due to either “productive-reproductive routine”, or “mechanical materialism”. Meaning that some humans are currently living with the notion of simply reproducing and surviving on a day to day basis , or satisfying their materialistic wants. These can both kill a society’s cultural values and goals. Are goals set for just individuals, or for entire groups? Are all goals deliberately made? All over the world people are heavily influenced by different platforms of media: television, magazines, social media, etc. Using beauty as an example, in America there has been an increasing trend in having bigger lips, which sky rocketed after reality star and entrepreneur Kylie Jenner had her lips enlarged. This even caused the viral Kylie Jenner Challenge which actually caused some participants to have permanent damage to their mouths. Overall, a telos is an ultimate goal that can either be one set for an individual or group by the individuals themselves or influencing factors.

Lear

“‘Lear’, that sounds familiar,” I thought as I was assigned this word. I was taken back to Junior year English Literature class when my teacher was spouting “King Lear” in his lectures, and myself liking the grand, regal name, but not really knowing what it meant. One definition, according to Dictionary.com, is that Lear means learning in Scotland and Northern England. Secondly, According to Merriam Webster, Lear is a legendary king of Britain and hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare that about the development of madness of King Lear after he resigns and bequests his kingdom to his three daughters, which brings grave consequences for all. Lear is the King of Britain. Before he divides his kingdom among his daughters, he gives them a test in which he asks them how much they love him. The oldest daughters, Goneril and Regan, give him positive answers. Then the youngest and the favorite daughter, Cordelia,  tells him that she loves him more than words describe, something along those lines. This response “pissed” him off so much that he gets into a fit and disowns her. Then, she is off to marry the French king, with her father’s permission, of course. But, Lear soon learns that he made a terrible mistake. His older daughters do not respect the little power that he still has. He goes insane because his daughters betray him. This tragedy is particularly famous for its observations, notions of human suffering and kinship.

Words:250

Structuralism

Structuralism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is defined as, “a method of analysis (as of a literary text or a political system) that is related to cultural anthropology and that focuses on recurring patterns of thought and behavior.”

Simply put, structuralism is a way of analysis focusing on recurring patterns of thought and behavior in societies. How societies think, adapt, and behave over different periods of time is studied deeply by anthropologists using structuralism.

In “The Beautiful and the Ugly Are One Thing, the Sublime Another: A Reflection on Culture” Stanley Diamond criticizes Keats for believing that “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever” and discusses this in depth in relation to differing societies and cultures. He believes that beauty and joy are very different when seen from new perspectives and new cultural views. He says that “Ultimately, all forms of structuralism and mechanical materialism define human activities as universally conceived functions that lose their cultural-historical specificity.” Diamond thinks that studying recurring thoughts and behaviors in societies defines human behavior as widely known functions that lose their cultural-historical specificity. He believes that, for example, eating is a universal function but everyone eats in different ways and eats different meals. Therefore, Diamond is accentuating that all forms of structuralism define human behavior to be universally known functions that are losing their cultural-historical value. 

Contingency

According to the little, yet very telling information we know about John Keats, he seemed to be sure of one thing throughout his short life (only living 25 years). He was absolutely certain that the only thing that one needs to know in order to survive in this dominating and exploitative world is that “beauty is truth, truth beauty,” a phrase first coined in his poem “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Though this is heavily disputed throughout Diamond’s piece, there is one word that completely invalidates Keats’ belief system, which is contingency. If simply Googled, which is a commonality for anybody of the 20th century that doesn’t understand something, you will immediately get a definition stating that contingency is “a future event or circumstance that is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty.” In other words, it is something that could happen, but can’t be said with certainty that it will happen. Keats’ philosophy from one of his most famous poems is a prime example of contingency. This is so because a thing of beauty can’t be enjoyed forever, let alone a human being’s lifetime, because it won’t always be beautiful. Any piece of writing, specifically including Keats’ famous line, represents a frozen time in history. Of course, from Keats’ minute perspective, beauty seems to stay constant forever, because beyond human limitations to imagine any other world but ours. This obviously excludes some variations brought on to us by the Television and our own imagination, yet even then, we are only picturing the world changing around us, not us changing around the world, which is what is really happening. For a second just picture the future, let’s say… 500 years from now, what do you see? I can probably guess that it involves flying cars, futuristic buildings, and robots. How did you picture the people? Probably at least similar to what we have now, am I right? We don’t realize that in that time, we will have much smaller jaws and teeth, but much larger eyes that seem to bulge out of our heads. Why don’t we picture that? It’s simple: humans are stubborn creatures that would much rather believe that the whole world will change before they do because they think they have total control of their destiny, both socially and physically. My point is that since people believe that beauty is in their eyes, they can control it and know exactly what they are looking for. However, in reality, Diamond proves throughout his piece that time is one of the biggest controllers of beauty, not humans, as something beautiful from Keats’ time can be considered ugly today. Therefore, Diamond believes that the only thing certain in the world today is the struggle for something and the contingency that that very something can be obtained, rather than actually obtaining it. If it were certain what we would get and what we need, we would only have one culture, not the millions we have today. In simple terms, life and its joyous wonders are from the battle itself, not the actual achievement of getting it.