Faulkner and Racism

Racism is a horrible thing, It is something in life that can probably never be changed. After reading "Dry September" i began to think about different things associated with racism or prejudice. My father was born and raised in Mississippi and he has had his share of incidents involving racism. But you know i have grown up hearing some of the awful things that happened to him or his family, but i just kinda pushed it off or disregarded it as if they were just stories and not true. But they were true. In "Dry September" the whole lynching thing was terrifying, i've heard about and seen it in movies but for some reason when the Professor showed us the website with all of the white men, standing around the men that they lynched, it made me feel not just bad but also a little scared. We don't have the active Ku Klux Klan anymore, i mean of course there are still people that are like Neo Nazis or Ku Klux Klan but they can't hurt anyone legally. I looked on a different website and saw a video of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross and then whipping a black man that they tied to a tree; unfortunately i can't remember the website exactly but I googled it first. When i sat there and watched what they were doing I felt like i was going to cry or something. I think it was Hawkshaw in the story that jumped out of the car, and to be quite honest I think i would've done the same thing. It was hard enough for me to sit there and watch it on a website, think about what it would be like to experience witnessing it first hand. To most white people back then in the south, it was probably normal to not care what happens to black people but obviously Hawkshaw did. I probably would've even felt worse if I had caused the punishment. Minnie Cooper in my opinion lied about the whole thing, but i don't think that she meant for it to escalate to something as big a lynching the man. But for Minnie to do all of that out of the need for attention is really pathetic. After reading this story, the thing that kept coming to mind was the book "To Kill a Mockingbird." Even though in that book the black man received a trial, much of the plot was similar. For some reason, i enjoyed this reading the most so far. The fact that Faulkner was pretty blunt with the use of the word Nigger it made it more believeable for what was going on and the time period that it took place in. I just really enjoyed reading it. Also the imagery and description that was used in the beginning, speaking about the heat and the atmosphere was terrific.
To sum things up, like i said before, racism is horrible and Faulkner showed the ways of racists men of the south in the early 20th centry very well.

Chopin

While I was reading "At the cadian Ball" and "The Storm." There was something that came to mind about the two of them, they both made me think of a romantic movie of our time. For instance, like Dirty Dancing Havana Nights, I mean without the dancing part of course. I really enjoyed reading the both of them and they were both sensual and just interesting to read. At first I thought that Chopin would have been a very boring writer, but she was completely different than hat I thought. Usually when I read something, i pick up on the hidden things or underlying meanings of certain lines or descriptions. But with these readings it was kinda hard to pick up on stuff. To be quite honest I didn't even know that the characters were creole or spanish. I would love to read some more of Chopin's writing. The themes of romance and the use of race and class status is what i believe makes the writings so fascinating. In class when we had to compare these readings to other things that we read in class, i couldn't think of a thing. And for some reason i still can't. These are so different, I mean i guess the use of class status could be compared to most of the readings. But it doesn't have humongous comparisons. This is completely off subject but i was also thinking, If you were Calixta, would you have married Bobinot even if you didn't love him. I probably would've just stayed single especially if i can't have Alcee. I would feel guilty to have an affair with Alcee, while married to Bobinot, so instead i would just stay single, so that way i wouldn't have to cheat. That sounds kind of Shallow or slutty, but whatever. That was just a thought that I had, you could feel completely different and I respect that.