Blog 5- Human Geography in Kerouac's On The Road and Mexican Fellhaven

 In Jack Kerouac's novel, "On The Road," mobility plays a massive part in the main characters' behavior. It seems as if they use mobility as a way to escape responsibility and normality, because if they keep moving, then they will never be grounded to a single task.

  Tim Cresswell, a human geographer, argues that “Kerouac used mobility, alongside other themes, to express resistance to established norms in the culture of the United States during the nineteen fifties.”(Cresswell 1) This is absolutely clear in Jack Kerouac's novel, as the main character continues to explore the United States with no goal in mind.

  Examples of this mobility are present in Jack Kerouac's novel constantly, because it is the main theme of the entire story. The characters never stop moving, and it is plausible that they do this to escape the social norms and responsibilities of American life. This is seen in the quote,

“I spun around till I was dizzy; I thought I'd fall down as in a dream, clear off the precipice. Oh
where is the girl I love? I thought, and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little
world below. And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent;
somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam.
There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and
emptyheaded-at least that's what I thought then.“ (Kerouac 51)

  It is blatant that Kerouac is trying to picture that the character is escaping something. This is why Tim Cresswell, the human geographer from earlier, theorizes that the mobility in Kerouac's story is a way to run from the human responsibilities of nineteen fifties America.

  There are more interesting passages in the story, which suggest that the characters are tiring of running. For example,

“It was time for us to move on. We took a bus to Detroit, Our money was now running quite low. We
lugged our wretched baggage through the station. By now Dean's thumb bandage was almost as
black as coal and all unrolled. We were both as miserable-looking as anybody could be after all the
things we'd done. Exhausted, Dean fell asleep in the bus that roared across the state of Michigan.” (Kerouac 152-153)

  This quote shows that the characters are being exhausted and bankrupted by the immense burden of their traveling. Yet, they continue to do so, because they want to run from their responsibilities.

Blog Entry #4- More Modernist Poets

  In complete honesty, I struggle to find a definition for modernism by reading the given poems. To aid myself, I have looked up the definition, in order to understand what I am looking for. According to “Dictionary.com”, modernism is “a deliberate philosophical and practical estrangement or divergence from the past in the arts and literature occurring especially in the course of the 20th century and taking form in any of various innovative movements and styles.” After I read this, I could understand where my confusion was originating from.

  I do not usually read poetry. Because of this lack of history, I don't really know what a regular poem is supposed to look like, especially from the timeframe which these were written in. Reading over the poem, I can now see that there are many, abstract lines that don't have a visible correspondence with something that is “real”. For example,

“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.”

  This passage makes nearly no sense to me. Because of an immense lack of context, I can only assume that the author is trying to say that they were never meant to be successful, nor will they ever be.

  To conclude, with this analysis into the poetry, I can come to the inference that modernism is anything that challenges the traditional history of a medium. This could be anything, including, but not limited to art, music, poetry, architecture, speech, and design.  

Blog Entry #3- Harlem Renaissance Provocation and Connections

  From my experience during the Harlem Renaissance provocation, I have noticed many, major themes throughout the time period. These include poverty, crime, disparity in social situations, but also hope, community, and feminism. I will now discuss these major themes in this blog post.

  In my opinion, community was the most present, major theme from the provocation. As the power point presentation explained, “Community was the glue that held everything together” (Slide 9). This is why, in the example of Luke Cage (An African American superhero from the Marvel series Luke Cage), he reflects this idea of people helping each other. The police in the series are often trying to stop Luke Cage, most likely because they don't trust him. This may be a symbolic feature of the series, to show that African Americans are often misrepresented and unlawfully arrested by the police.

  This analysis brings me onto my next point, which is the Harlem Riot of 1935. In this event, an African American teen was caught shoplifting. The shop owner then threatened the teen, and soon, police, along with a crowd of “10,000 people” (Slide 11) arrived. The cops released the teen, without informing the crowd, so they assumed that they had beaten the teen. What ensued was a violent riot, in which “3 people died, (and) 125 (were) arrested.” (Slide 12)

  The Mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, told a commission to investigate why the riot happened. What they discovered, and published in “The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social and Economical Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935,” was that African Americans were struggling to educate their children, unable to find work due to racial discrimination, and that they were unable to trust police. This follows the major theme of racism, which I believe is very present in the time period of the Harlem Renaissance.

  One could make comparisons between this provocation and the poem “Smoke, Lilies and Jade.” For example, Alex, the main character of the poem, is obviously in poverty. This can be inferred from the line “why wasn't he worried that he had no money ... he had had five cents . . . but he had been hungry . . . he was hungry and still(...)”(1) Arguments could be made that his poverty is a result of racism, but that cannot be known for sure, as the story is fictional.