The JCI Prison Scholars Program

Tag: literature

  • Topics in the Humanities Feb 9 2016

    Topics in the Humanities Feb 9 2016

    Guest post by Shane Barnett

    We were honored to have Professor Paul Jaskunas from MICA present to us the first chapter of his novel “Cybelle” this past Tuesday, a story about the coming of age of a rural West Virginia girl battling to overcome mediocrity. In his first chapter, Jaskunas illustrates the struggle of Cybelle to maintain her dysfunctional family while still managing to meet the demands of college so that she can attain the means to her lofty aspirations. So far, “Cybelle” is a somber story of the personal struggle that so many of us daily face. Such is life.

    Professor Jaskunas captivated his audience with his soft-spoken narration of the very intriguing depths of female nature, dealing with men and sex and where these things can lead when haphazardly approached. The story so far seems to be a description of the age-old inter-relationship of woman to man in using her assets to obtain the security she needs for survival, as she tries to overcome her dependence upon him – a vicious cycle of give-and-take that so often is our existence.

    Our class became a panel of critics full of questions and suggestions for the author. We wanted to know why he does what he does and how he does it. We wanted him to tell us more. What does Cybelle look like? Where is her story headed? Is she destined for success and the proverbial happy ending, or failure and tragedy? We did our best to exhume the details from the mind of our subject in order to ascertain the motive for his composition and the objectives for his forlorn heroine. From what I can gather, Cybelle has a long hard road ahead, but where that road leads has yet to be seen, even by Jaskunas himself, as he leaves us with awesome insight for our own development of plots and characters. “Let your characters be as chemicals in a scientific experiment … create conditions for them and see what reactions ensure…”

    Good luck, Cybelle!

  • advanced literature, dec 6

    advanced literature, dec 6

    We finished the class by watching the 1954 animated version of Animal Farm, directed by Joy Batchelor and John Halas, which is an interesting movie in its own right, but a very watered down version of Orwell’s allegory. I’m sure none of the men Thug_Notes_Animal_Farmwere surprised that the ending of Animal Farm was depressing, but possibly some were disturbed to realize just how terrible things finally got. But I have to say, most of the animals were asking for it. They followed the pigs blindly and naively; they didn’t pay attention to what was going on around them; they trusted that Napoleon had their best interests at heart, they forgot the past, and they didn’t look out for themselves.

    At the beginning of Chapter 10, years have passed since the rebellion. Many of the animals involved in it are dead. Most of its ideals and promises are dead as well. The younger animals simply accept Napoleon’s historical account and the way he runs the farm. They are now far worse off under Napoleon than under Mr. Jones. The windmill, before it’s exploded, is used to mill corn and increase profits. The pigs, under Napoleon, have become worse than the humans. The commandments have been changed so that the pigs are considered superior to the others.

    This is a very cynical story. Orwell seems to be suggesting that all power corrupts. There’s no way out. In our own lives, we can either join the pigs, and become corrupted, or go on quietly with our own lives, and be led blindly and naïvely. There is a moment of potential enlightenment when seems as though thinganimal_farms could be turned around when Boxer is taken away to the slaughterhouse, and Benjamin has a heroic moment when he tries to mount a rescue operation.  But in the end, even Benjamin is cynically resolved to the disastrous fate of pig rule.

    There can be no actual hero on Animal Farm because totalitarianism eliminates all heroism.  There can be no daring individual acts because all such acts end in death. On Orwell’s Animal Farm, it may well be that cynicism is not just an optional disposition; it is a duty. It is the only possibility of opposition. It’s the realist’s version of hope, the only disposition that can penetrate beyond the implacable barriers of oppression.  The cynic does not accept power, but nor does he accept the tyranny of the status quo. As usual, another depressing book to end the course.

     

  • advanced literature nov 17

    advanced literature nov 17

    Our second book of the semester is Mike’s choice: Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea. I have to say: Hemingway is the kind of author I think of as another “man’s” writer. 12387819Like Steinbeck, it’s all externals, action, physical details. This is another book I’m going to be suffering through. I hope everyone else enjoys it enough to make my pain worthwhile.

    Last summer, I read a book by Edith Wharton, a nineteenth century American writer, called The Reef. Towards the end of this novel, the female protagonist, Anna Leath, begins to realize that she has highly ambivalent feelings about the man she’s engaged to, whom, she’s just discovered, has had an affair with the family’s governess. Of Anna, Wharton writes:

    “She recalled having read somewhere that in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed to wear a distinctive dress lest they should recognize each other and learn their numbers and their power. So, in herself, she discerned for the first time instincts and desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry of mutiny.”

    I remember, when I read this passage, being so moved and impressed by it because it’s a perfect example of exactly the kind of thing I look for and love in a fiction writer – the ability to capture and express those psychological moments that are central to human life and relationships.

    This may sound like a roundabout way of why I don’t like Hemingway and Steinbeck, but in fact I’m working very hard as I read to understand why this kind of writing does so little for me, and why I find it so empty.

    In our discussion last week, Josh said, “men are visual creatures.” It’s certainly true that, in general, men respond to visual stimulation more readily than do women. The men in the group may enjoy this book because it’s so visual, and the characters so elemental, the story so simple and mythic: man and boy versus the elements. I’m not a visual person, however. What I look for is psychological insight and unexpected language, and this book has neither. Nor did the last one. Again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the book – it just doesn’t have what it takes to get me going. There’s an old man, and there’s a big fish. But it’s not enough. Moby Dick, another story of an old man and a big fish, is much more interesting to me because there’s a lot of psychology involved (and some interesting secondary characters). But here, there’s just a man and a fish. And I’m not hooked.

  • advanced literature nov 10

    advanced literature nov 10

    I’m writing this paper while lying in a hospital bed in the Emergency Room at MedStar MemOfMiceAndMenorial Hospital, where I was sent this morning after consulting the doctor about my knee. It’s not an injury, she said, but an infection, which makes sense now I think about it. Let’s hope they don’t have to amputate. The guy in the next room has gangrene in his foot.

    Anyway, back to Of Mice and Men. I don’t know if I believe, as Mr. Gross does, that a book can be reduced to a single moral or message, but I know that’s what he wants from me. If I had to sum up a moral or message for the sake of argument, it would be “True loyalty means protecting your man at any cost, even the cost of his life.” By shooting Lennie in the back of the head, George is committing the supreme act of loyalty, because there’s no question that if he were found, Lenny would be shot on the spot by Curley in an act that would easily be defended after the murder of Lenny’s wife (and maybe this is the reason why Steinbeck never lets us get to know her well—if we knew her and sympathized with her, we might not have such sympathy with Lenny). I wonder if George will get away with his act with impunity, however. Slim understands and isn’t going to tell on him, but if anyone else found out what he’s done, wouldn’t he be arrested for murder? (George, after all, doesn’t have Curley’s privileges.) Lenny’s body may disappear into the swamp and never be found, but still, George may have to go on the run for a while.

    Reading the book for the second time with the men made me see things I hadn’t seen before, including how carefully structured it is. I didn’t make the connection, the first time I read it, between the shooting of the old dog and George’s execution of Lenny. I think there’s no doubt that George does the right thing. He’s a good shot and Lenny doesn’t know what’s coming to him. He goes to his death thinking about his rabbit farm, and his death was no doubt instant. It’s difficult to imagine how George will get along without him. In some ways, I think an enormous burden will be lifted from his life. But he’ll probably miss having Lenny around, not least for the money Lenny could bring in. It’s difficult to imagine George being able to develop another friendship with a “normal” man. Whatever else you could say about him, Lenny was special.

    In closing, I wouldn’t say I really enjoyed reading Of Mice and Men, or that I came to a new appreciation of Steinbeck, but I did get more out of it than I expected, and I can see there’s more going on beneath the surface, and within the structure, than I initially believed.

    By the way, the doctor just came in and said I have a superficial infection under the skin and it’s probably nothing—all I need is a course of antibiotics and a bandage. I feel completely disappointed. I’m always hoping for something dramatic and morbid, even if it’s my own expense. Would I have preferred it if he’d come into the room with a shotgun and told me he had to put a bullet in the back of the head? Perhaps I would.

  • advanced literature #5

    advanced literature #5

    Ch2.Donald

    This semester, we’re trying something different in Advanced Literature. After putting the men through Conrad, Melville, Poe, Shakespeare, Nabokov, etc., I’ve decided to turn the tables and let them select the books for a change. The book we’ve started with is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, chosen by Mr. Gross. The book is really not a favorite of mine. I don’t like Steinbeck’s sentimental idealization of the poor, nor do I lie his action-oriented plots. I find his work very macho, and I complained about it in class.

    Later, I regretted my complaints, especially knowing how much the book means to Mr. Gross. Now that I know how important it is to a man whose opinions I respect, I’m going to work a little harder to go beneath the surface and lay aside my knee-jerk reactions. After all, I believe (or I like to believe) that’s what a lot of the men did with some of the books I chose, like the Edgar Allan Poe stories that drove Mr. Fitzgerald so crazy, or Lolita, which so many of the men found so difficult to read because of their distaste for Humbert Humbert. But they knew the book meant a lot to me, so they struggled and went ahead despite their distaste, and many of them ended up finding something memorable in these books. Or, at least, they said you did. I hope they did. I like to think they did.

    So when reading Of Mice and Men, I thought to myself, what does Mr. Gross see in this book? What does Mr. Peters see? And when I tried to see it through the men’s eyes, I found there was more going on in the story than I previously wanted to acknowledge—even, as Mr. Arey pointed out, psychologically.

    In the scene we read this week, Lennie lets Candy in on his and George’s plan to retire on their own farm and breed rabbits, and it turns out Candy’s actually got savings of his own and asks to join them. The plan that had always been a fantasy suddenly, for a short while, comes to life and becomes real. Curley’s wife always seems to be hanging around Slim, and Curley loses it. Slim stands his ground, so Curley turns on the guy who seems to be the underdog—the big dumb semi-mute Lennie. This is when we see Lennie in action. He may not be smart, but he’s as strong as an ox and as stubborn as a bulldog. Once he starts, it’s almost impossible to get him to stop. He’s almost like an animal in that sense–dangerously unpredictable.

    This section shows us how tough these men have it. Like Candy’s old dog, they go on until they die, with no one to put them out of their misery. We sense the misery and physical pain of the workingman’s life, the male competition and camaraderie, with no entertainment but drinking and fighting, playing cards and tossing horseshoes. In this sense, the bond between George and Lennie seems to be vital and unusual. They protect each other, rather than competing. George could use Lennie like a tool, but instead he tries to look after him, to stop him from getting into trouble. They both need each other, and have come to rely on each other. But George has something that Lennie doesn’t have, and that’s someone to look after and care for. Looking after Lennie gives meaning to George’s life. Lennie copies George in every way, which is why he’s always looking for his own creature to care for – whether it be puppy, mouse, or rabbit. It seems ironic that in his own mind, Lennie sees himself as a gentle, vulnerable creature, easily hurt. In this section, we see how to others, he can suddenly become terrifying.

  • Advanced Literature 4/16/2014

    JG2Guest post from a MICA student, Jess Bither, who joined our class on April 16:

    After everyone introduced themselves, Mikita passed out copies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Previously, they had been reading Macbeth. I was surprised to hear that they would be allowed to read such a bloody play. I took a step back to analyze my feelings of surprise. High school students are often required to read Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, so why shouldn’t these grown men be able to read texts that have death, suicide, and murder in them? I must have thought that the mere act of reading would rile them up and perhaps reawaken something…? I don’t think I actually believe that, but for a moment apparently I did. I am still trying to understand my initial reaction. Now, I am asking myself if this means I ultimately believe in the power of art and literature. I have never aligned myself with the camp of thinkers who suggest that consuming depictions of violence makes one more violent, so that is why I am taken aback by my own thoughts.
    The more I consider it, the more I find myself thinking that texts that present violence and ethical questions seem especially appropriate in a prison setting where the inmates are told to think about what they did.
    Yet thinking about it every hour of every day seems excessive (perverse even). Never thinking about it is frowned upon as well (at least from the POV of those on the outside). So how much is enough, and how much is taboo?

  • Advanced Literature (8/15/14)

    Mikita Brottman writes:

     Today we read the murder scene in “Macbeth,” and I was surprised how focused the men were. Each of them was following the text closely; some of them were even running their fingers along the lines and mouthing the words to themselves silently as the readers spoke their parts. The room was unusually quiet and tense as the scene unfolded, the silence outside the room disturbed only by the occasional raised voices and laughter coming from the classroom next door. During the murder itself, the men were alarmed by Macbeth’s jittery behavior, and annoyed with him for forgetting to leave the bloody daggers in Duncan’s chamber with the grooms. As we read, I realized that, although I’d read Macbeth many times in many places with lots of different kinds of students, I’d never read it with people who might very well have experienced such a crime first hand. From this point of view, Macbeth really was making a hash of things.

  • Advanced Literature (4/8/14)

    Mikita Brottman writes:

    In Advanced Literature (Tuesday 2-4pm) we watched Acts IV and V of Polanski’s adaptation of “Macbeth”. When watching the first three acts a week earlier, I’d been surprised the men had found the movie rather dull and slow. This may have been due to the fact that we were watching on a very small screen with the lights on, the door open and noises in the hallway outside, but it may also have been, as one of the men explained, they’re accustomed to watching action movies with fast editing and not much dialogue. Plus, since we’ve been reading the play for the last five weeks, everyone was familiar with the plot and knew what was going to happen. However, this week the men seemed far more engaged and involved, and after the movie was over we had a long discussion about the ethics of fighting a losing battle, as Macbeth does at the end, and about whether Macduff does the right thing in leaving his wife and children to go and defend his country.