Chmabers Final #2 – Flashcards

a small group of primarily male literary figures based in New York City’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco. They rejected nearly everything in mainstream culture—patriotism, consumerism, technology, conventional family life, discipline— the Beats celebrated spontaneity and absolute personal freedom, including drug consumption and freewheeling sex

Born June 3, 1926, Death April 5, 1997. Born Jewish later converted to Buddhism A leading figure in the beat movement, which expressed the social and literary non-conformity of artists, poets, and writers. Most famous poem is Howl, which captures of this era. Homosexual, lifelong partner was Peter Orlovsky.

Birth-March 4, 1919, still alive. Agreed to publish Howl, him and Allen Ginsberg were very close friends. He went to court because he published Howl, but he wasnt charged. Owned City Lights Bookstore and agreed to publish “Howl”. In the fall of 1956 City Lights/Pocket Poets released “Howl and Other Poems”

Themes were: Suicide, sex, drugs, hobos alcohol, communism. Uses vulgar language, slanderous towards american society (our values and founding principles). Moloch represents money, war, capitalism, the government.
Howl was seen as anti-american. People were arrested for selling the book. American Civil Liberties Union and Ferlinghetti went to court for Howl and testified that it was okay for society, and they won.

Redefine meaning of holiness. Wants to include writers, poets, everyone, and everything.

Author: Art Spiegelman
Summary: Memoir of Art Spiegelman listening to his father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, retelling his story. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek’s life in Poland and later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. The work is a graphic narrative in which Jews are depicted as mice, while Germans are depicted as cats. Talks about experiences and how his well-to-do family came to suffer penury, persecution, and loss of life, also how he was sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner.
Characters: Art Spiegelman, Vladek Spiegelman, first wife Anja, (Art’s mother, a concentration camp survivor who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala (also a concentration camp survivor). Americans (Dogs) chasing the Germans (Cats) who then chase the Jews (Mice or maus).

Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, French and the English while the non-Aryan race includes Croats, Czechs, Russians, Poles, Serbs and Ukrainians. They were called Slavs considered as corrupt people. Hierarchy continues with other remaining Aryan races. A set of course with particular policies were designed by them which were targeted on people with low position in the racial Hierarchy. These include Jews, Gypsies and handicapped mass.in order to eliminate the Jewish people were very brutal such as sterilization, persecution, incarceration, medical experimentation, and brutality.

>Eleven-year-old Art – or Artie, as his father calls him, even as an adult. He grows up in the shadow of the Holocaust, in the shadow of his parents’ survival of the Holocaust, in the shadow of his “ghost brother” (II.1.5), Richieu. Art cannot share their experience, or identify with them; he will never live through a Holocaust.
>This leads to a kind of guilt on Art’s part – guilt for being the fortunate son, the one who grows up in security and comfort, the one who grows up at all. At the same time, Art fantasizes about being in the Holocaust with his parents, there’s resentment as well. At the same time Art can acknowledge and understand his parents’ scars, on some level he resents having to deal with them.
>Witness “Prisoner on Hell Planet,” a comic Spiegelman includes in Maus. In the comic, produced shortly after his mother’s suicide, Art can hardly stand his father’s overwhelming grief. In the last panel, he accuses his mother of murder and of letting him take the blame. She timed her suicide so that he would find her and save her, but he arrived too late. Even though she killed herself, he feels responsible for not saving her.
>Art seems most present in the novel as a painfully self-conscious artist, rather than a character.
>And certainly not as the kind of heroic character that emerges in Vladek’s self-portrayal. Indeed, Art admits that he partly became an artist because it was an area where he wouldn’t have to compete with his father.

portrayed as mice because nazis viewed them as diseased and filthy, like mice

Burned by Arts father, shows that you cannot truly experience what the holocaust was unless you were there and experienced it.

a style that shows the audience the action of the play through the mind of one character. instead of seeing photographic reality, the audience sees the character’s own emotions and point of view

(Arthur Miller, 1949). This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff’s moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave his family with insurance money. MAIN THEMES: ABANDONMENT AMERICAN DREAM AND BETRAYAL

Insecure. Believes in the American Dream but never achieves it. Abides by what society thinks is important. Becomes ritualistic and doesn’t think about goals. Falls into a time where he wants to provide money for his sons, but he cant so he tries to do it by using unconventional means.

34 years old. Seems to lack energy. High school football star. Didn’t go to college, is currently failing at life. Cannot fulfill Willys expectations. Biff = Strong, Charismatic, athletic, popular/well liked, extrovert

Next door neighbor. Wealthy. Loans Willy money. Willys only friend. Willy is jealous of him

Willys wealthy brother. Explored Africa and found a diamond mine and became rich. Died a couple years before the story, Willy sees him as a symbol of success.

32 years old. Plays life through societies rules, Happy is a younger version of Willy. Hard worker

Willys Wife. Nurtured family though all of Willys mistakes. Emotional strength support Willie.

Regarded Biff as hero. Willy is Jealous because his sons arent as good. Loves Willys sons, very close friends. Charleys only son, very successful. Bernard = small, smart, “nerdy”, not social, represents American Dream in a way that only smart people will achieve success.

Antiscientific beliefs
Postmodern beliefs:
There is no such thing as an external reality, rather we construct our own personal reality
Logical contradictions between interpretations pose no problem, because knowledge is valid only to the extent that we choose to believe it is valid. No actual truths, wants to destroy structures and social structures. Architecture is crazy and weird. No Good vs. Evil, Male vs. Female argument. It rejects itself

Very random. No structure. Wants the observer to just interpret what it is, its whatever you want it to be.

In literature:
fragmented, circular, repetitious plots are common
frequent sense of loss and alienation from society (if we can’t define the world, how can we define ourselves?)
irony, parody
Metafiction=text refers to itself, Hypperreality=our world isn’t reality Paranoia=Ordering behind chaos, Maximalism=Disorganized society, Minimalism=Basic story line only

(1962) is an English-language collection of short stories and essays by Jorge Luis Borges.
It includes “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, “The Garden of Forking Paths”, and “The Library of Babel”, three of Borges’ most famous stories. Fiction, Rewritten text described as “infinitely richer” (how it be better if its the same as the original?)

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
I see Mike’s painting, called Sardines. Written by Frank O’Hara

the title of a war novel written in the 1960’s by Joseph Heller. It is also figuratively speaking it means any obserd arrangment tha puts a person into a double bind. Examples “to get a job you need experience but you can’t get experience without a job” “An army regulation that a soldiers request to be relieved of active duty can be accepted on on the grounds that he is mentally unfit to fight But any soldier that has any sense to be spared from war is obviously mentally sound and has to stay”

Ch. 9 of Catch-22. Father gave his son this name as a cruel joke, now this poor kid has to deal with a lot of problems when he joins the army

Atwood, Post Modern. Theme: no happy endings, all ends in death, beginning & end not important. Life life. Characters: varations of John, Mary, Madge, Fred. Destination is always the same, the Journey, however, is always different.
Beginnings>Endings

kingston’s aunt whose husband went to america to make money. she cheated on him and had a baby. neighbors found out and ransacked her house. gave birth in a pigsty, then drowned herself and the baby in the family well

the conditions of a young girl’s living in an interment camp for Japanese-Americans in WWII- cooperation/privacy. Written by Jeanne Wakatsuki. She didn’t know a lot about her heritage so people made fun of her for that. Manzanar is located in southern California, they were only aloud to bring with them as much as they could fit in their car, and that was not a lot

Born in the US with Mexican decent. Often used to acknowlege indigenous heritage. Is a female
The word comes from the Civil Rights movement.

Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Juan Diego in Mexico in 1521; she told him that she wanted a church built on a certain spot; when the bishop asked for a sign, Juan Diego collected roses that he brought to the bishop in his cloak; Mary’s image was imprinted on the cloak. Feast day is December 12, symbol for the Virgin Mary. Women pray to her and take pride in their chastity because she was a virgin

was an indigenous woman from the Coast of Mexico, who played an active and in the conquest of Mexico. Acting as interpreter (multiple languages), advisor and intermediary for Hernán Cortés. She is also his mistress, and is associated as a traitor to her people. Her importance is that she shows how strong women can be and they pray to her for strength. She did not want to help cortes and be a traitor

Latina female author. Seeking identification and self acceptance for the individual and the community. Differences are acceptable and should be more prominent in canonized literature. Pure vs mixed binary of race. B: Sept. 26, 1942

Helena Maria Viramontes. Short story, uses 3 different narrators. The first is young Hispanic girl named Sonya who forgets house key and runs away from cops with younger brother for fear that they will send her back home. Second is owner of the Cariboo Cafe, who seems to be pissed off at the world, except for when a young boy who reminds him of his son JoJo comes into his cafe with his sister. The cafe owner doesn’t like the sister though. Third is a washer woman who loses her son Geraldo and is scared that the cops caught him. Legend of La Llorona is weaved into the story, third narrator (the washer woman) represents La Llorana

Indigenous woman who marries out of her class to a Spanish man. He ends up leaving her for another woman and she kills all of her kids. It is said that her ghost appears crying for her children. She is significant because of the context of comparison of the fall of the Aztec empire, ..Aztec pride drove La Malinche to acts of vengeance. In this context, the tale compares the Spanish invasion of Mexico and the demise of indigenous culture after the conquest with La Llorona’s loss.

wrote freeway 280, born in San Francisco, grew up in San Jose

main ideas: Esperanza doesn’t have a permenant home; she has new family member every time they move: spanish culture (large families); pride in the fact that the house on mango street is totally and completely theirs; the way she describes her dream house indicates that she lives a cramped lifestyle; the personification of the house gives visual imagery; her family’s and her’s desire represents that which many immigrants feel when coming to America: optimism.

-Parents were Chinese: his mother was the granddaughter of China’s first president.
-His father was personal physician to Mao Tse-Tung.
-Family had fled to Indonesia where Lee was born in 1957.
-Father taught medicine at Gamaliel University, was advisor to Sukarno, but was imprisoned in 1959.
-Escaped and settled in Hong Kong, eventually coming to the U.S.
-Family settled finally in Pittsburgh; father became a Presbyterian minister., -Lee attended University of Pittsburgh.
-Has worked in a warehouse for more than 20 years while he has published three books of poetry and a memoir.
-He has also taught, from time to time, at several universities.
-Poems have won numerous awards

United States novelist whose best known work was a dark comedy inspired by his experiences in the Air Force during World War II, Catch-22