"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. I don’t know if he would have been justified if this had killed the vendor. This again gets at the discussion we had a bit in class today. If you look at any situation in a certain way, you can justify actions that might otherwise be viewed as terrible, evil, or violent. This is his way of getting revenge, and paying back the pain he felt. Maybe The Silent One feels justified because the vendor’s actions hurt him in an intense emotional way. However, in the eyes of an outsider, his reaction to the vendor seems like overkill.
ReplyDelete2. I think that this statement makes perfect sense coming from our narrator. First of all, he literally has not been able to fully communicate with everybody around him for most of his life. Second, in all his travels, few people ever cared what he had to say (if he could manage to communicate). They all imposed their own beliefs on him. Third, nobody has been a constant in his life. There is no person who has been with him through all of his troubles except himself. I think he may have learned not to rely on anyone because that was the only way he could survive. His statement also explains what we have been discussing in class. He goes on to say, “His [a man’s] emotions, memory, and senses divided him from others as effectively as thick reeds screen the mainstream from the muddy bank”. In his view, no person can understand fully how another person sees the world. This is how we as a group end up justifying and committing all these terrible acts. We all experience the same event differently and feel that we have compelling reasons to react in the way we do. Based on our unique emotions, memory, and senses we can justify almost anything in some way.
I’m not exactly sure what compels the boy to speak. However, he does say, “somewhere at the other end of the wire there was someone who wanted to talk with me”. This implies that he is realizing that someone cares what he has to say. Maybe he feels some trace of love. Not familial love, but just that someone wants to hear what he to say.
3. I really appreciate Alice going out on a limb almost every class. She always made thought provoking comments even when they were hard to articulate or expressed an unpopular opinion. Those comments consistently continued and improved our class conversations. And they usually were funny too (an added bonus).
1. Good question. I hadn't thought of this connection, but it makes sense, but in a way that complicates our view of the boy. He "recalls the trains carrying people to the gas chambers and crematories. The men who had ordered and organized all that probably enjoyed a similar feeling of power over their uncomprehending victims...To be capable of deciding the fate of many people whom one did not even know was a magnificent sensation" (220). The boy here associates himself with the Germans—he seems to feel little to nothing, or if something, perhaps contempt, for the Jewish passengers on their way to the gas chambers. To be alive and powerful beats being alive but, in his eyes, doomed and pathetic. There is no justification here; it is a repeat of Mitka and his murdering five villagers. It is the boy taking to heart and putting into play Mitka's philosophy of life: "a person should take revenge for every wrong or humiliation" (214). This section ends with an image, a moment, that has always stayed with me from the first time I taught this book. "I looked at the Silent One in anguish" (223). "Anguish"—an emotion we have never heard from our boy. Anguish that he and the Silent One did not kill the tormentor. Not for the many innocent dead. Is our boy a Stalin in training?
ReplyDelete2. I like what Mira says about this. The boy reaches a totally logical conclusion, having spent the last six years being terrorized, abused, and abandoned. "He was alone in the world" (233). The story bears him out; man is a solitary creature who cannot connect in a tender, loving, sharing way. And when they do—it doesn't last. The book could easily end here. But he does regain his voice. And I agree with Mira about this: someone gives his voice value (to go back to today: as several of you said, Jaliwa in particular, what good did his voice do him? He could not stop his anguish and abuse with his voice, any more than a boy in Auschwitz could talk a Germam out of killing him). This would be another great place to end. But it goes on: he was "convincing [himself] again and again and again that speech was now mine and that it did not intend to escape through the door which opened onto the balcony" (234). This reminds me of Esther going into the panel that will judge her ready to go out into the world. She may be all right then—but the bell jar hasn't gone away. For the boy now, I wonder what his voice will do for him. Give him the voice to tell this story. A story that changes nothing arguably.
I don't like the question of whether or not the Silent One is justified in switching the fork. On one side, all of our hoity-toity upbringings scream: “No! How could anybody cause so much harm to so many people who didn't deserve it?” Yet we know that this world does not work by justifications, it works by consequences. He could do it, and he got away with it, although not in the way he wanted to. Morality, while not really irrelevant, seems pasé. And as for the parallel between the train the Silent One derails and those that carry the Jews, the book does a good enough explanation: “To be capable of deciding the fate of many people whom one did not even know was a magnificent sensation. I was not sure whether the pleasure depended only on the knowledge of the power one had, or on its use.” The Silent One, like Germany, feels humiliated and defeated, so he turns to what power he has to try to exact revenge on both the real perpetrator and those he associates with the perpetrator, which for Germany would be the Entente and the Jews, respectively.
ReplyDelete“Somewhere on the other end of the wire was someone, perhaps a man like myself, who wanted to talk with me.” The boy realizes here that he is not alone; even though people are separated like mountain peaks or by a long piece of wire, they still make attempts to reach out and talk to one another. Yes, people are expendable, but they are also interconnected, just as the muddy water separated from the main waterway slowly seeps through the reads, desperate to join the flood.
I would first like to thank the entire class for the quality of the discussions and the interest in the material. It helps tremendously to have classmates that care deeply about what we are reading, and I have found that not only do I think I have come out of most of my classes with a better understanding of the book, but also a better understanding of life, as corny as it sounds. Specifically, I would like to thank Nell for playing the angel's advocate. I tend to view what happens in these books in a much more realist and pragmatic manner, and often this alienates me from what some characters might be feeling or how the work fits in with modern sensibilities. Nell often has the most empathetic view of the entire class, allowing me a perspective that I might otherwise overlook. Secondly, I would like to thank Moey for having such strong opinions, even when I might disagree with them. It certainly helps to have a debate partner in class, but hearing you passionately, but not overbearingly assert his position brings life to the class.
And the few, feeling injured, persecute the many, killing innocents and not improving the situation whatsoever; yes, that sounds familiar. Really, the most significant part of this comparison for me was the continuation of a common theme: people are capable of good things AND bad things. The Silent One was the boy’s friend - he protected him and played with him. When push came to shove, he was there to fight for the boy - something not seen throughout most of this book - but he takes this way too far. Exacting vengeance by crashing an entire train full of people, no matter whether or not he killed the intended target, is beyond overkill. I’d be hard pressed to consider even the murder of the specific shopkeeper, had the child taken a more “direct” approach to revenge, justified - but an entire train? Out of the question. On a side note, the whole scene felt very surreal - the image of getting up before dawn and climbing up on a roof in the morning dew to watch the train crash you orchestrated… it makes death an exciting spectacle, rather than a tragedy.
ReplyDeleteHis insistance that no one understands each other followed by his own enthusiastic phone call is an important part of human nature: sometimes things are terrible, and confusing, and maybe ultimately fruitless, but we keep trying anyway. It reminds me of the quote from Candide, where the woman remarks that despite how awful life is, very few give up on it completely. His mind was changed because the voice he heard was someone he desperately wanted to communicate with, and when using a telephone, no amount of gestures or expressions will do. “At the other end of the wire there was someone who wanted to talk to me…” 234. When was the last time someone wanted to talk with him? Can he even remember? For years he’s been given orders, or had people try to scare him into making noise, but when was the last time someone wanted to speak WITH him rather than AT him? He speaks because he really DOES want to communicate, despite his own skepticism - he wants to understand, and he wants others to understand him, no matter how difficult or unlikely it seems. That simultaneous cynicism and hope is deeply human.
Really, I want to thank the whole class - I’ve never been part of such an intense, passionate, and thoughtful discussion, and I have to say that this has to be my favorite lit class I’ve ever been in. I LOVE how engaged everyone is with the texts, to the point of being so excited they start shouting (last year I was in Martin’s math class, and every day I wondered why people were always screaming next door…) and that we’re all willing to tackle some pretty intense subjects head on. I appreciate everyone’s willingness to reconsider their opinions (even from second to second) and how opinions may be disagreed with and questioned, but never derided. I especially want to thank Stewart, for challenging my ideas and really making me consider WHY I believe them (as well as for the occasional history fact), and Nell, for approaching the books from such a genuine moral standpoint - I think that it’s good, among all the discussions of atrocity and subjective morality, to be reminded of things like genuine compassion.
1. I like this connection, though I didn’t think of it when I was reading this passage the first time through. I think comparing the train the Silent One derails to those carrying the Jews does compare the boy to the Germans; it lends him some power he delights in and also highlights the changes he’s undergone over the course of the novel. I, personally, think the boy has become obsessed with the notion of power, and understandably so. I think I’ve talked about this before, but he completely understands the benefits of being powerful in the world that he lives in. It makes everything so much easier, and although the boy knows he can withstand hardships, I think he wants a life that he can direct himself and have power over others. And I suppose, ultimately, I don’t think the boys would be justified in killing this vendor, even knowing the backstory. However, I completely understand that my saying this is due to my own upbringing in the society I’ve spent my entire life in – a complete opposite to the society these boys have grown up in. Even so, this does bring up my general waning empathy for the boy as the novel has progressed. I’m not sure why exactly, but I’ve definitely liked the boy less and less as the novel finishes.
ReplyDelete2. I strongly agree with Mira on her point about this. I understand why the boy would be feeling this way, after all that he has gone through. He has never been valued, never really been listened to. Going in a different-ish direction, I think it’s very touching how this statement comes so soon after the boy has reunited with his parents. Perhaps parts of this statement are even directed at them. When the boy was younger, he dreamed of this reunification of his family, he longed for his parents. He wanted (and probably thought he needed, although he did survive without them) their presence in his life, and now that he has them back, he has no desire to even attempt to communicate with them all that he has been through (while they, in the meantime, adopted another child). And while I understand why the boy feels this way, there’s something about this that saddens me. His parents love him so much and they did have the best intentions with sending him away, and then finding him again. But they will never understand what their son went through unless he makes some effort to communicate his experience to them, but he has no desire to do this so they will always be in the dark, which is probably not what they wanted for him. As for the phone conversation that prompts the boy to speak again, I’m not sure who was on the other end, or what exactly made the boy speak again. But I, again, agree with Mira when she makes the point that this is the first time someone has actively sought this boy out and wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice. Even by the time his parents found him, the boy didn’t need them anymore and had, although perhaps this is a little strong, been let down by them so he may have felt he had no need for them anymore. He didn’t want them to come back by the time that they did.
3. I really appreciate almost everything Alice has said this year. She speaks with such confidence (which I really admire) but I also think she consistently makes excellent points and is unafraid to just follow her thought process without always knowing where it will lead (in a good way). Very thought-provoking and generally a great mind to have in a lit class.
1. Running a train full of innocent people off the cliff, even if there is one whose guilty of something, is wrong. It is unjustifiable as was the Holocaust. We can try to understand what could drive a person to do such horrible things, but knowing where this boy is coming from doesn’t make his smile after all those people plummet to their deaths okay. To understand is not to deem acceptable behavior. This boy has had horrible, terrible things happen to him, and maybe that gives his actions (or inactions) some reason, but that doesn’t make them reasonable—if that makes sense. This book is just as much about the “horror” and all of our hearts of “darkness” as other works we’ve read, but here we have the ultimate evil, the Nazis, and the ultimate innocent, a child, who have become the same. We can no longer strip the Nazis of their humanity for to do so is to simplify their actions as the work of some great evil far beyond the realm of man as we like to think of it, but man if capable of horrible things.
ReplyDelete2. I really agree with Erin on this point. “Somewhere at the other end of the wire was someone who wanted to talk with me.” (234). This, to me, feels like an overwhelmingly hopeful ending considering all that’s happened. Like Erin said, even if our lives don’t have much meaning in the long run, and even if we all die eventually, the important part is to just keep trying—trying to live, trying to connect, trying to be happy. This reminds me a lot of Vivian in “Wit” because she tries to make a friend in that nurse at the very end. She’s going to die, and nothing is going to save her, but she tries anyway. Throughout this entire book, I’ve been wondering why it is he keeps on pushing himself to survive when so many of the things he goes through seem like reason enough to give up. He has seen the worst of man, he has become the worst of man, yet he still tries, and that right there is his humanity.
3. In reflecting on this class and my experience in it as a whole, I think I’ve probably learned the most from Stuart because, in short, he was really scary in the beginning of the year. His opinions often differed from my own, and he was always more prepared than me in class discussions with random and compelling insight from authors, poets, and historical events unknown to me. He pushed me to think harder on whatever idealistic preconceptions I had about human nature as well, and I learned a lot from him.
3. Others have said this already, but I really appreciated having a class full of people who genuinely cared about the texts and had very distinct and often conflicting opinions. This forced all of us to really think about what the author is saying and why and what we are saying and why. In particular I would like to thank Moey for both his strong opinions and his research. Many people have done additional thinking and research on parts of the books, but I remember Moey in particular always seeming organized and ready to discuss in class.
ReplyDelete1. I mean, all of it is both unjustified and justified at the same time. It just depends what societal ethics you have -- kind of the point we've been making the whole time. The ultimate point of the book is that all ethics are falsehoods and there is really just the "heart of darkness" beneath. I also thought the voice was Mitka.
ReplyDelete2. I mean I think what changed the narrator's opinions about expendability is everything that happened to him during the book; look at all the horrific events he had to endure. At some point, your logical conclusion will be that everything is false except one man dominating another -- again, falsehoods. I thought the boy spoke because it was Mitka on the phone, and he was the only person besides Gavrila that the boy ever trusted. The boy bought into the Soviet falsehood, so when Mitka calls its like if an angel called when he was doing indulgences.
3. I really want to thank Emma for basically always being involved in the conversation and making extremely good points over and over again. Whenever you make a point, its always incredibly well-thought out and topical. I also really appreciate the way you draw on personal experiences to help class discussion. I also want to thank Jay; I feel he spoke even when he knew he would get backlash. Someone who voices their opinion no matter what others think is really valuable in a lit class.
1. It's unjustifiable, and I agree with Alice’s point that we can understand a person's actions but we don't have to accept them. Considering all the circumstances and seeing something from a person's point of view is good in the sense that we don't dismiss them and their actions without giving them a chance, but making that understanding an excuse for the action is wrong. Even. If the farmer/vendor was on the train, he still would've killed innocent people in his efforts to get vengeance. Though the discussion we had in class yesterday is very valid and makes a lot of sense, I don't think it applies here.
ReplyDelete2. It totally makes sense that this is his outlook. He's gone through life having no on are about him and not only that, he's seen people treat each other like they were expendable. I think what made him finally talk was the fact that he realized he wasn't really alone and that there is always someone out there even if it seems like there isn't and the phone ringing is just a symbol of that.
3. This whole class has been great and I think everyone contributed a lot to it. I am glad that I was in this class because of the diverse opinions and the incredible amount of respect everyone had. I would say that I loved Alice's contributions because they were not only insightful, but very passionate. I admire the fact that you stuck with your statements when you believed in them and the fact that you were also open to seeing something from another perspective.
1. I definitely see the parallel between the train carrying Jews and the train that the Silent One derails because of what the boy says to compare them. The boy says that he felt like the Nazis because both he and the Nazis had complete control over the lives of the people in the train. Sending the train off the tracks did not seem like a justifiable act of revenge to me because according to what the boy learns, the act of revenge should be as powerful as the pain caused by the initial incident. I can’t possibly know the exact amount of pain the boy was feeling when the man beat him up but it probably wasn’t worthy of a trainload of people falling to their deaths. I think the boy and the Silent One did this more as a way to feel powerful because power is definitely what they know matters in this world.
ReplyDelete2. This makes me think that (at least in the world of this boy) it is impossible for people to form connections with other people that matter more to them than their own survival. With this mentality, it makes sense that everyone is expendable because if it comes down to it, you will value your own survival over theirs. Because the boy is often so close to death, he sees the expendability in people everywhere he goes, and he doesn’t want to connect with people. Even though he feels like he connected with Mitka and Gavrila, the connections ultimately mean nothing. I really can’t think of why the boy feels the pull to talk again. I hope we talk about this in class.
3. Ok let me start by saying this was my favorite lit class I’ve ever taken at Paideia (or any place else I guess). I know I was quiet most of the time and didn’t add much to our conversations but I really got a lot out of them and enjoyed listening. I really liked how we were for the most part always thinking about the bigger picture with how what we were reading or watching was relevant to our own lives and society, and I loved how people felt the need to look up tiny details or bring in relevant examples.
1. I agree that there is a clear parallel between the trains taking the Jews to concentration camps and the train that The Silent One causes to plummet off a cliff. They are both examples of senseless death on a mass scale, of a small grudge and disproportionate response. Both in the Holocaust and in this instance, anger was misdirected and focused on a group of people who were not responsible for the actual problem. Just as Hitler blamed the Jews for all of Germany’s economic problems and promised that their eradication would make things better, The Silent One convinced himself that murdering the vendor and all his people would avenge the assault of his friend. I think that this scene was included to show us that everyone has a capacity to do evil. The Silent One was just a child, a boy who had been repeatedly traumatized and made to feel so powerless that he stopped speaking altogether. I don’t think he is evil, yet he clearly is capable of murder on a massive scale.
ReplyDelete2. I think that our narrator has given up. He hasn’t lost his will to live, but he has become totally disillusioned and disheartened. This quote reflects his growing nihilism. However, I see this as a positive step. So far, no belief system has worked very well for him. Superstition, Catholicism, Evil-worshipping, and Communism all have failed him, failing to fully explain all that the boy has witnessed. Maybe the best thing for the boy was to accept that people and their actions are meaningless and that we are all isolated from one another. In a way, this belief seems liberating. No longer does he have to worry about morality or mortality. He can just exist. It’s as though total apathy has enabled him to go on, to speak once again.
3. This class has consistently pushed me to engage, both in conversation and in reading the texts. I was pretty disillusioned with literature at the beginning of this year, but now I am much more willing to take literature courses in college and beyond. This group has really good chemistry, I’d say, which is incredibly important for a discussion based course. Ok, now for individual appreciation. I’d like to thank Mira for moving our conversations forward when we would get stuck going in circles. I’d like to thank Moey for voicing his opinions, Jaliwa for always being open and active in discussions, and Alice for her top-notch comments and questions.
9/26/17 - The Painted Bird:
ReplyDelete1. I do see this parallel. It is to me, as the philosophy nerd, in a way just a remodeled, dressed-up trolley problem. The Silent One has the power to flip a switch and can either kill many people or save many lives. He chooses to kill. Now, this is of course backed up by his need for revenge, his anger at the milkman for beating up our boy, but he is killing nonetheless. I think that this example, which is the most death, the widest scale of death, we see in the book (except perhaps with the Kalmuks and the Soviets in the village), is a culmination of everything Kosinski has been trying to show. The actions of the Silent One, a naive young boy, are more horrible than we can imagine in our sheltered world—he kills probably hundreds of people. One boy. Hundreds of deaths. Yet it is so impersonal, so removed. He is not killing them with his bare hands but dong it in one clean fell swoop. Not unlike the gas chambers. When I said in class today that I felt like the boy was turning into a Nazi, this was to me the epitome of that parallel. These boys are so young yet they have the capability to cause so much death without really giving it a second thought. They are victims of society, they feel oppression and pressure and anger, and so did the Nazis. I think that Kosinski is telling us that anyone can become a Nazi, that we are all Nazis somewhere deep inside. Hopefully, that aspect of our personalities will never surface, but it will always lurk in the background.
2. We are all alone. Every man for himself. We are 90% chimp and 10% bee. Mostly, we live only for ourselves. Only a small part of us cares for the broader community, has empathy. This has been something that I have struggled to grapple with in reading this book. I want so badly for us humans to be good, to have morals, to love one another, but this book has taught me that is not the case. We are at heart selfish beasts and our communities only serve the purpose of protection of our own lives. I think that the boy changes in his time in the hospital (months in the hospital, it seems like). We don’t get a detailed picture of it, but it seems like this is the closest he has ever been to death because he has been sick for so long with proper medical care while before in the villages he was sick but for shorter periods of time without proper care. He is, in a sense, reborn. He becomes a civilized human being again. He wants to speak because he wants to communicate with others as an equal, to learn form others. When he lost his voice there was no need to speak. The communication was mostly to let someone else know whether or not you were going to kill them, and that was fairly straightforward to understand. It is only once he makes the choice to really want to hear others and to engage in discourse with them, to be intellectual, that he can speak.
3. I have loved each and every member of this class. I can honestly say that I looked forward to lit every day because the discussions were always so exciting and intellectually stimulating. I have leaned so much from you guys this year. I have learned how to be a better reader, how to articulate my thoughts more effectively, how to ask good questions, how to challenge beliefs I disagree with, and how to be a part of a group that starts with many different opinions but works towards some semblance of a consensus—an answer—or perhaps another, bigger, question. I think that each member of the class has contributed something vital and because I know none of you are going to read this I am not going to write out something about everyone. Maybe in class we will have a chance to talk about this, because I would love to thank all of you (including John) in person.
1. I definitely see a parallel between the two trains. I especially see a similarity in the mindsets of the Silent One and that of the Nazi's, the Kalmuks, and the villagers. They all act so violently towards one and other, sometimes even lacking a reason for their violence. They're simply acting this way for their own amusement, causing harm to innocents and not reacting at all. They're completely indifferent and display no compassion or any emotion at all towards those they harm. It's interesting how they hate being treated badly, yet they only perpetuate these same actions.
ReplyDelete2. I think the narrator is pushed to speak because of the shock of almost losing his life in conjunction with being isolated from the violent examples being set for him back in the city. I think being away from the influence of the communists, the Silent One, and all other factors in his life enabled him to find his own values and to realize how abnormal the violence he was facing was. I don't think he fully comes to terms with normality per say, but I think he recognizes that what he was going through wasn't something he should in turn perpetuate. He sees that something is wrong I think and isn't so focused on revenge or fighting or violence. I think after being under the care of the ski guy he simply yearned for his praise and nothing else. The instructor wasn't forcing any kind of lifestyle or value on to him, he was just being taught how to ski.
3. I think I really appreciate Moey. He brings a new perspective to the table and forced me to think about things more broadly. He's really conscious about what's going on in the world and his intelligence is almost intimidating. On top of all his work he still manages to contribute quality responses in our discussions and even print out sources he finds at home he feels are necessary to talk about the next day. Moey backs up what he says with strong evidence and explains concepts in a way that enables everyone to understand the direction he wants to take the conversations. Overall, I think Moey made great contributions to the class and I really appreciate his presence in our talks.