Matthew Martin

2 October 2012

Midterm/Research Plan

I.  Web Review

Cindy Goodson – “Chains, Songs and Bible Motifs: A Dialogue on the American Dream Deferred”

What drew me to Cindy Goodson’s essay, “Chains, Songs and Bible Motifs…” was the title, most notably the “songs” portion. As we’ve learned through our weeks of reading the slave narratives, poetry, and Song of Solomon, songs play a crucial role, and it is one that has been of particular interest to me in this class. It is only a part of her focus, though. Goodson also focuses on the construct of slavery (the “chains”) and Bible evidence that is present in Song of Solomon and the slave narratives.

            The construct of slavery falls under several different areas when applied to our course’s objectives. Goodson points out that in Song of Solomon, Morrison “provides us with a functional hodgepodge of valuable lessons that register within the minority dilemma of assimilation and resistance as seen in our class objective 4” (1). This assimilation/resistance dilemma is present in the slave narratives also, of which the biggest factor is literacy. On this gaining of literacy, Goodson states that “it was a very important though life threatening first step for slaves in the U.S…[but] the dominant culture was relentlessly unwilling to give up their positions as the superior race and had constructed a multitude of schemes in order to keep slaves ignorant” (1). I agree with Goodson, because literacy was a step in the right direction for slaves, but with it came great danger and consequence – even severe beatings. This would put resistance into practice, but if they are learning how to read secretly then it could also be an act of assimilation because they are wishing to become like their masters. So it can easily be a combination of the two.

She brings up the bondage of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs in their respective texts. Of Douglass she points out that the slaves “were not even considered as humans.  Mr. Auld leads the dialogue as he proposed that as long as the slaves remained uneducated and ignorant the White Dream would continue to prevail.  As a result, he forbade Mrs. Auld from continuing to teach Douglass to spell” (2). Of Jacobs, she “concurs with Mr. Auld on behalf of her master Dr. Flint who aptly symbolizes the defining qualities of slavery: lust for moral power, moral corruption and brutality.  He was monstrously cruel, hypocritical, and conniving, and will accept nothing less than total submission from his slaves…both the Auld’s and the Flint’s actively do their part in keeping it alive and at the highest degree of degradation and despondency thwarted upon their slaves.  It is evident here that the American Dream for the dominant culture equals the American Nightmare for blacks” (2).

This brings our 3^rd class objective, the dominant American Dream into question. Goodson puts it in such an elegant way and I very much agree with her. Our notion of a dream could be someone else’s nightmare, especially with the slave narratives because they were there against their will. Both narratives Goodson uses were examples of that disillusioned Dream. What the masters wanted was not what the slaves wanted. This notion of the unshared dream can also be an example of the “voiceless and choiceless” objective 1B. As long as they were under the rule of the master, their opinions and desires meant nothing. Even with the Morrison passage, could it still be considered voiceless and choiceless? Voiceless, yes, but not choiceless. He could have learned to read, but he chose not to have a voice. I agree with Goodson – Macon (Jake) had a “fear of trying” (3).

While she made some interesting points about the Biblical motifs, I was not as interested in those as I was with the accounts of music, which she portrayed beautifully. After she stated that she was a professional R&B/soul singer, I knew that she had a love for the stories that songs tell. She points out all of the important moments because, as she states, “the songs were rather evidence, on an almost subconscious emotional level, of the slaves’ deep unhappiness.” She also points out about Song of Solomon that “in a community where most of the past generations were illiterate, songs rather than history books tell the story of the past.”

While she did a great job focusing on the Hughes poem “A Dream Deferred”, I would have expected her to use the “I, Too, Sing America” poem because it had the song motif going for it with its title, and could have been tied to the Song of Solomon themes. Despite this, I feel like I found a kindred spirit with musical knowledge in this particular essay. Goodson did a fantastic job tying her points together.

Julie Garza – “The African American Fight for Freedom”

Julie Garza’s essay set out three different focuses and objectives: assimilation, the Dream, and the Color Code. This assimilation emphasis was shown in her essay by focusing on Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Equiano and Jacobs narratives. Garza believes that  “Dr. King obtained the process of assimilation, by becoming literate and voicing his concern for the equality of African Americans in his “Dream Speech”…Dr. King uses assimilation by honoring the American right to freedom of speech.  Many African Americans before him were punished severely if they spoke out of context, but Dr. King challenged his predecessors by public speaking in more than twenty-five hundred places” (5). She then shows how Equiano has the power of assimilation which, as she states, “comes from his purchase of freedom” (6). Jacobs’ power of assimilation came from Linda, her mistress, who taught “her about God and literacy, enabling her process of assimilation” (6).

Garza made great points with her focus on those three particular passages, all of which had an underlying fact about them that stood out to me – all three authors were an example of going against the societal and racial misconceptions that someone black could “be successful.” Dr. King became a PhD in a culture that was vehemently racist and segregated. Equiano and Jacobs learned to read and write better than their masters and were able to tell their stories so well that people could not believe that a former slave could have possibly written them.

She switches to the novel next, focusing on Milkman and his flight to Pennsylvania, and at the same time focusing on our class’ 3^rd objective, the dream and the sub-category of flight as well as his own assimilation. According to Garza and to our class discussions, the “African American culture held a myth that people could fly in order to obtain freedom” (7). This occurs with Solomon and Milkman, both whose flights, to Garza, appear “selfish” and as abandonment but still part of a magical realism genre. “Milkman believes that ‘flight’ is beyond human capability, and due to his suspicious nature, Milkman is alienated by his community. Milkman is accepted by his community when he starts to believe that ‘flight’ is real” (7). She then describes Milkman’s own journey from infancy into manhood. Garza states that “Morrison describes Milkman’s deviate personality as a result of slavery. Milkman’s selfish ways come in part from slavery and abuse, causing what little maturity he has to fall” (8). Then as he learns more of Guitar and his situation with the Seven Days and of Pilate, he morphs into a feeling adult. “Milkman overcomes his pre-destined faults when he travels to Shalimar, where Solomon took his “flight” into freedom.  Milkman changes in positive and negative ways as he ages from an adolescent to an adult.  Milkman’s ability to change from an inconsiderate child into a sympathetic man demonstrates the process of assimilation” (8).

I found Garza’s treatment of Milkman interesting, especially about his own assimilation. His transformation was an assimilation of sorts, as it was a growth process. Dr. King, Equiano and Jacobs all had their own assimilation, but their assimilation was different from Milkman’s. His was unique in the sense of it did not end up to be about self gain or ever betterment (he gave up the search for the gold once he realized it was futile), but of personal discovery and learning of his past, and interestingly enough, his own future.

Jennie Huebenthal – “Twice the Minority and Twice the Struggle”

Jennie Huebenthal’s essay caught my attention because of the subject she focused on: being a minority woman, hence the title: “Twice the Minority and Twice the Struggle.” We have touched on this particular minority situation in some of our discussions, but my curiosity and interest in the subject is still high (hence why I chose Sandra Cisneros to do my reading discussions over). Huebenthal focuses on three works: Jacobs’ narrative, Song of Solomon, and Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.”

She describes Jacob’s situation very well, stating that “[w]ith a verbally abusive master and a resentful mistress, she took matters into her own hands. Instead of becoming the sexual desire of her master’s dirty fantasies (whom she feared and hated), she decided she would choose who she lay in bed with” (2). This seems to be referring to our first objective, because Jacobs was voiceless against her master, but not entirely choiceless. She ended up escaping and hiding, which also shows objective four – mainly of resistance to the man who was enslaving her. Does her choice to escape fall under the category of assimilation also because she wishes to be a part of the free, dominant culture? It could be, but I see it as more of a resistance to her master, and I think Huebenthal thinks so, also.

Next comes Pilate Dead. “Pilate began her life fighting to be birthed from her dying mother. She then had to discover how to survive alone as a very young black girl in a country that, only a generation before, had freed their slaves. She spent her life gaining the respect needed to succeed; the same respect a white man wouldn’t have trouble receiving” (3). Again, this is not only an assimilation on Pilate’s part, but a resistance as well (trying to fit in because of her lack of a navel, but also resisting a culture and being who she believes to be, even if it means living outside of modern conveniences like running water). This may also be an indication of our third objective – the American Dream – but she does not have what we would think of as a “normal” type of dream, though.  She keeps the past and her roots close to her (the earring), so she could still fulfill the “Dream” in some way.

With Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, Huebenthal believes that “Angelou speaks of the great degradation and oppression a colored woman must face every day by society. Yet as she is stepped on, ignored, and battered she will rise. She will be strong and will rise from these atrocities regardless of what people may think of her. She will not be held down. She will not be trampled, ignored, or abused into submission.  She will rise” (3). I agree that everything she says is an indication of the oppressed and degraded rising to claim its own greatness. With the double minority of women, her title is the truth: it is twice the struggle just because of an anatomical difference and skin color. Obviously the entire essay is a focus on objective two, the double minority, but this particular section really drives it home. Women are oppressed anyway, but to have been a minority woman multiplied the struggle significantly. My only objection with Huebenthal is that it seemed to fall short overall. There wasn’t much quoted textual evidence in her original essay. She had a great start with each paragraph, but the lack of direct quotations made the essay somewhat weak.

II. Essay

“Sing, Sing: Music and Minority Literature”

It has long been known that music has held emotional, religious, and sometimes even mystical power. Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys once said that music was the voice of God. Across the ages, music has been used to express the seemingly inexpressible and speak the truth in our hearts. As we’ve seen in the texts that we have studied thus far, music is present in almost all of them. To be specific, Song of Solomon, Douglass’ narrative and Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America” all have elements of music or song in them. The music serves a different purpose in each text and thus fulfills a separate objective in accordance with our course’s study.

Morrison’s Song of Solomon lets the reader know immediately that music plays a crucial role in the story (namely the title). Within the first few pages, we are introduced to a song that will repeat throughout:

                              “O Sugarman done fly

                                O Sugarman done gone…” (9)

These lines were sung by Pilate and Reba, who have their own unique stories. What it necessary to point out is that much of music’s function in Song of Solomon is to portray the African Flight myth. This is the belief that slaves could “take flight” when times became unbearable and return to their native Africa. This is a subject that is sung about again and again in spiritual and gospel hymns, with lyrics such as “Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly/I’ll fly away” and “Oh, bear me away on your snow white wings/To my immortal home.” This notion is obvious immediately in Song of Solomon because the first scene shows a man attempting to fly, but dying in the process. When Pilate and Reba sing, it makes the connection between song and flight. The song is repeated when Milkman, the novel’s protagonist grows to an adolescent and meets Pilate for the first time. Having lived under the strict rule of his father, Macon Dead, who forbade Milkman to ever see Pilate (Macon’s sister and Milkman’s aunt), this scene could be a representation of Milkman taking flight for the first time against his father’s iron fist.

Milkman grows older and learns the truth behind Macon and Pilate, which culminated with their father getting killed and them running away from their foster home and sleeping in a cave. Macon killed a thief that was sleeping in the cave while Pilate watched. After the two kids left the cave, Pilate heard her father say “Sing, sing’…‘you just can’t fly on off and leave a body” (147). This is referring to her own journey of flight across the “pink states” in her geography book. It can be said that, while she did not return to Africa, she did return to her own people on the island off the coast of Virginia. After a marriage-less life of wandering and raising a daughter, she made her way back to Michigan to be near her brother.

Milkman’s experience with the songs start out with him hearing the “Sugarman” song that Pilate and Reba sing when he is in her house for the first time, but music becomes a genuine force in his life once he reaches adulthood and goes on his journey through Virginia and Pennsylvania to find his true heritage, as well as his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s stories. Originally it started as a quest of greed to find gold, but once Milkman realized the gold was long gone, he used the trip to find his own identity. As a former student in this class, Julie Garza, said in her own essay, he “is accepted by his community when he starts to believe that ‘flight’ is real.” He comes to realize that flight does, in fact, exist when he hears the children’s song in Shalimar, telling the story of how Solomon left his twenty-one kids behind and flew from Solomon’s Leap back to Africa. Milkman hears the song so many times that he believes its words to be true. The song ended changing his whole perception of his heritage. He revels in the fact that Solomon “left everybody on the ground and he sailed on off like a black eagle” (328). The song he heard Pilate sing in the very beginning even foretells his own fate in the final scene where on the cliff he jumps at Guitar as though taking flight--though instead of “Sugarman” it would have been “Milkman.” The songs portray that notion of flying home or returning to where one came from. Even when he holds the dying Pilate in his arms, Milkman sings to her, sending her on her final flight. The final line also leads us to believe that Milkman flew also: “For he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it” (337).

Douglass’ narrative is not as meticulously crafted with music as Morrison’s novel was (the wonders of fiction), but there is a particular scene (chapter 2, paragraphs 7-11) worth noting. This is where he describes the joy of the slaves going to the Great House Farm. He said that the slaves “would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone.” As we’ve seen with Song of Solomon, the act of singing can cause the spirit to become free and express its inner joy or its inner anguish. Douglass says later that the songs “told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them…Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy.” Through this music we can grasp a sense of choicelessness (objective 1B), but certainly not voicelessness. Even though the songs are not liberating the slaves’ bodies from the shackles, they are liberating their spirits. Their voices are heard, and these still caused Douglass to become emotional when he was in his later years. These songs can also be heard as a resistance to the masters (objective 4) because through songs they are not slaves, but rather free. As the character Andy Dufresne said in the film The Shawshank Redemption, “music is the one thing they can’t get to…that they can’t touch” (1994). Through their music, the slaves resist the bondage they are in.

Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America” is a powerful poem by one of this country’s great Harlem Renaissance writers. Obviously the title conveys a message of music, but interestingly enough, it does not return to that line again, nor does it give any obvious references to music. Viewing it critically, I noticed that this poem (as well as many of his others) read like a song. I can imagine this poem being accompanied by music – maybe in a blues or soul song (ones that do not necessarily have typical verse/chorus structures). With the very first line, which is also the poem’s title, it portrays the image of America being a chorus of singers and that we all have our own voices to create the music. Being “the darker brother” (line 2), his voice can be heard too, and he also sings to create the music that is the country’s voice. Just as Douglass said about the “pathetic sentiment in rapturous tone” (2.7), this poem could be sung to a joyful tune, even though they are rather melancholy. The poem, much like music, gives a hopeful vision for the future. Tying this to our course objectives, this poem is a true example of assimilation (objective 4). Hughes wants his people to be accepted and to be a part of the culture that is still oppressing him at the time this poem was written. His final line, “I, too, am America” not only expresses that desire, but it almost finalizes it. He is part of the country and its voice, and he will show the strength of his spirit.

The music expressed in each of these works had a different role, but it still expressed a message of hope – be it hope to return home and learn a true identity, hope to be free, or hope to be accepted as part of a culture. The songs said what the writers did not need to express in regular words. Music certainly has a magical quality to it, and it can do things for the spirit that mankind may never fully understand. Ironically, the characters in each of these texts did understand.

III. Research Plan

“The Black Page”

            For my research project, I have decided to take the creative path (something I haven’t been able to do on an academic final paper in quite a long time). As you have seen with my essay, I love the power that music has on the soul and how liberating it can be. What I have in mind is an African American boy’s relationship with his father and the connection they share through a shared instrument: the piano. It is not an ideal relationship – the father is abusive and a very low skilled amateur musician. He can play, but not very well. The boy, however, is a true prodigy: he can play things by ear, but as he gets older he wishes to be able to read music, but his father forbids him to because he is jealous of the boy’s talent. I would like this to culminate with the boy attempting to play something off a true “black page” – a piece of music with so many notes printed on it that the page appears black.

I came up with this idea after reading the slave narratives and their idea that literacy would lead to uprising from the slaves. I want to combine that sentiment with the force of music between what could be described as a slave/master type of relationship, just set in a different time period. I would make this work in the context of our course’s objectives; though have the character be a minority when placed against the relationship with his father and his own struggles of being an African American in a racially charged time.