First of all, I see a clear parallel in the trains of Jews during the holocaust and the train that The Silent One sends off the edge of a cliff. Do you agree? What is the significance of this comparison? Would he be justified to do this if he did kill the vendor he meant to?
"Every one of us stood alone, and the sooner a man realized that all the Gavrilas, Mitkas, and Silent Ones were expendable, the better for him. It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway" (233). What do you think of this statement? What changes our narrator’s mind and pushes him to speak? Also, if you want, who is the man on the other end of the phone? Last but not least, here's John's last blog question of the year: Finally, something from Thrower's class playbook. I would like you to acknowledge one or two (but no more) of your classmates for something she/he/they did this semester or this year that you appreciated, or learned from, or enjoyed, or helped make the class better. Something you would feel comfortable in acknowledging and thanking a classmate for.
1, Our boy goes from someone who incessantly prays with the hope of amassing the greatest number of Days of Indulgence possible, to someone who wants to harness the powers of evil, to someone who does not believe in a God or the supernatural. Gavrila teaches him that he has the power to dictate the events in his life, and this is a powerful and at first foreign idea for the boy. So what do you make of the way the communist system is depicted here? Do you see it as an improvement of the religious system, more of the same, something worse, or something entirely different that cannot be compared?
2. Why do you think Mitka is able to shoot the villagers but not the dog? Is this Kosinski drawing a line between humans and animals?
1. "Now I understood everything. I realized why God would not listen to my prayers, why I was hung from hooks, why Garbos beat me, why I lost my speech. I was black. Why hair and eyes were as black as these Kalmuks'. Evidently I belonged with them in another world. There would be no mercy for such as me. A dreadful fate had sentenced me to have black hair and eyes in common with this horde of savages." This reading included many a horror. We saw a five year old girl raped. We saw countless women abused in the most deprived ways, and we saw an eleven year old boy lose hope. What I want to hear, though, is what you think he's trying to say hear. Is it better to be a Kalmuk or a village person? He seems to consider the Kalmuks far worse than Garbos and the townspeople who raped and murdered Ludmilla. Is there a difference other than their coloring? Who do you think is more evil? Can evil be quantified? Where's the line between forgivable and unforgivable?
2. "So that's what love was: savage as a bull prodded with a spike; brutal, smelly, sweaty. This love was like the brawl in which man and woman wrested pleasure from each other, fighting, incapable of thought, half stunned, wheezing, less than human." That last question was a bit of a doozy so for this one I just want to ask if you think love exists in this world. Or in general.
This isn't exactly the position our boy hung in, but it's pretty close. Imagine how ripped he must've gotten. It's a shame really. Our boy obviously has talent; he probably could've gotten Hitler a medal in gymnastics at some point. If only he wasn't racist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm only going to ask once broad, multi-faceted question.
1: A quote that stood out to me this chapter: "God had no reason to inflict such terrible punishment on me. I had probably incurred the wrath of some other forces, which spread their tentacles over those God had abandoned for some reason or other."
Reading this quote, and the entire chapter for that matter, I feel so bad for our boy as he seeks savior in a God that either doesn't exist or really doesn't like him. It becomes obvious to us that there will be no divine intervention to save him. Yet, even as he's hanging in the air, 10 feet away from his death, he prays and prays and prays. It's not as if he is the only one that seeks assistance from a religious force even after he's been ignored. It's also not as if this is only a problem in these poor villages. Millions of struggling christians around the world do the same thing, and millions of other well-off Christians struggle to justify or simply turn a blind eye to the evil done on people of seemingly good faith. So my question: What makes our boy and the peasants so attracted to religion? What makes them keep going back to the church, even as their prayers are ignored? Connect this to the superstitions of all the villages our boy has traveled through as well. What makes village poeople continually use grinded horse bones and lice as a medicine when they can see it is literally making them sicker? Finally, is Kosinski trying to make a point about religion and superstitions by having our boy so easily believe in all of them? Is this a comment on humanity in general, like so much of this story is?
Violence in this book is undoubtably prevalent and although terrible, becomes sort of expected as the novel progresses. One thing however still surprises me in its prevalence and affect on the world around the boy. That thing being superstition which is cultural, yes, but to me it seems to fit into the story almost too well.
1.So are the superstitions just there to add to the culture of the setting or do they add to the overall narrative? If so, how? And what themes (if any) do they play into? Give an example or two.
Continuing with the discussion in class about how the boy is being affected and changed by his experiences, I think chapter 10 highlights a clear indication of this very change. One moment specifically stood out to me and that was when the boy describes an officer: “his face was in the sunshine now, and it had a sheer and compelling beauty, the skin almost wax like, with flaxen hair as smooth as a baby’s. Once before in a church, I had seen such a delicate face. It was painted on a wall, bathed in organ music, and touched only by light from the stained-glass Windows”.
2.What do you make of this description? Is it significant to the boy’s development and how he sees people as well as himself? Is it surprising that this would be his outlook on race especially pertaining to his own given what he's gone through?
On page xiii in the front of the book, Kosinski details how he chose the title of his book:
"Aristophane's symbolic use of birds, which allowed him to deal with actual events and characters without the restrictions which the writing of history imposes, seemed particularly appropriate, as I associated it with a peasant custom I had witnessed during my childhood. One of the villagers' favorite entertainments was trapping birds, painting their feathers, then releasing them to rejoin their flock. As these brightly colored creatures sought the safety of their fellows, the other birds, seeing them as threatening aliens, attacked and tore at the outcasts until they killed them. I decided I too would set my work in a mythic domain, in the timeless fictive present, unrestrained by geography or history. My novel would be called The Painted Bird."
"and only God,
omnipotent indeed,
knew they were mammals
of a different breed."
MAYAKOVSKI
1) Animal imagery plays a big part in the book thus far. Pick an instance of animal imagery and discuss its significance, or just how it impacted you.
2) There's a lot of horrific stuff in this story - instances of absurd and terrible violence, like the villagers whipping our protagonist (who, remember, is around 6 or 7 years old), or the miller gouging out the boy's eyes, and the cats batting the severed organs about the floor. What is your reaction to these? What do you think these scenes add to the narrative?
These are Agasha's questions, but I am going to modify them just a little. Everyone please do number 4: and pick two from 1-3 to answer. Look too at the information post that I posted on Thursday night. Nothing to answer, just some info and clips.
1. William's mother's parenting was slightly extreme and freaked some characters out after interactions with her over the phone. Do you think her behavior is justified? Too mellow? Too extreme? And where does this behavior stem from? Losing her daughter? Losing her husband?
2. We hear multiple characters declare: "It's all happening." But what's all happening? In the midst of the lives of rock stars where lots of things are happening, this sentence is pretty vague. So what all is happening and what does this mean for their futures?
3. What is this realness that Russell yearns for so badly? What's so "real" about William that Russell notices?
4. This was obviously a movie with a happy resolution. But it doesn't give much insight as to what happens in the future for William. Is he still uncool? Having written for an extremely popular publication, his life doesn't seem to have changed much afterword when we see him eating at the table with his sister and mother. And while the relationship is better between the two of them, how they finally came to this conclusion doesn't apply the same way to the other problems within the film. Is the resolution of this movie having to do with becoming more mature and realizing what really matters? Is it realizing that it doesn't mater whether or not your cool? What was it that the movie was trying to get us to see?
Here's Cameron Crowe accepting his Best Screenplay Oscar for Almost Famous.
And finally Russell Hammond proclaiming he is a golden god.
See you all on Monday. If you want to get a head start on the reading, you can read Chapters 1 and 2 of The Painted Bird that will be due on Tuesday.
