978-1319035327 Part 11

Type

Quiz

Book Title

Arguing About Literature: A Guide and Reader 2nd Edition

ISBN 13

978-1319035327

July 26, 2020

hughes Open Letter to the South 185

informal American colloquialisms. The switch in genders also changes the

dynamic. At first reading, many readers will admit to sympathizing with Spera’s

wronged woman while being horrified by Browning’s reptilian nobleman. Very

few readers sympathize with the duke. Discussing our warrants for this first reac-

tion should prove fruitful. Why do we immediately identify the young duchess

as an innocent victim of a jealous man while we are certain that the ex- husband

has cheated? What does this say about our cultural assumptions about gender

and monogamy? By having us getall of our information from a narrator who

might be unreliable and who certainly sees the world from a different angle than

most of us do, the poets leave gaps into which we must inject what we imagine

to be the facts. Acting as surrogates for the reader, the audiences implied within

the dramatic scenes of these poems can be imagined to listen with as much hor-

ror or discomfort as we would experience in such circumstances. The listeners

may seem passive because they are trapped by the need to be courteous and

polite. Faced with such frightening or embarrassing self- disclosures by people

capable of strong — even dangerous — feeling, “normal” people tend to freeze.

a dreaM of justiCe: PoeMs by langston hughes (p.916)

LANGSTON HuGHES

Open Letter to the South (p.916)

Because Langston Hughes draws heavily from debates within and beyond the

African American community spurred by the Atlanta Exposition Address given

by BookerT.Washington in 1895, an essential first step toward understanding

“Open Letter to the South” is to access some of this historical background.

Washington’s speech and the direct response to it written byW.E.B.Du Bois,

“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington,” are reprinted in Arguing about Literature

(pp.1160, 1163). Encourage students to read this material.

When Hughes speaks of “lies of color” or “lines of color,” he uses words his

audience in the 1930s would clearly understand. Du Bois, an early leader of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and edi-

tor of the organization’s publication The Crisis from 1910 to 1932, predicted at

the turn of the twentieth century that the greatest problem of that century would

be the color line. Class issues were foremost in the minds of activists at that

time — a period of economic depression, strikes, picket lines, and violence

against miners, mill hands, and others attempting to organize as workers — and

“Negroes” faced not only those issues but even greater ones as they sought not so

much equality as the means merely to survive. Literacy tests and “grandfather

clauses” were devised to deprive the descendants of slaves of the opportunity to

have a voice in government and to gain education and employment. “Jim Crow”

laws produced a segregated society that bring to mind South Africa under apart-

heid. People of color could not avail themselves equally of education, public

transportation, or other means of improving their standard of living by gaining

better employment opportunities and working conditions. When Hughes refers

to “lies of color,” he may be expressing his frustration that class issues were

186 Crime and Justice

debated without sufficient attention to the fact that workers were categorized in

America by race, placing African American workers at a disadvantage. At this

point, Hughes’s philosophy seems to be that people need to “just getalong” and

strive together to their mutual benefit as members of the working class. He legiti-

mately sees categorization by race as resulting in an illogical distinction deliber-

ately promoted by the rich to impede united action — that pits members of the

working class against each other.

Washington, too, preached the “just get along” philosophy. Washington,

however, believed that Negroes would have to work within the existing system,

not making waves. In his speech to Southern white business and industrial lead-

ers in 1895 (p.1160), he stroked the egos of people in power, arguing that social

segregation should continue but economic opportunities should be given to

Negroes who were willing to work for white factory owners, landholders, and

businessmen. Rather than looking to white immigrants for a labor force, the rich

should hire the descendants of slaves. According to Washington’s famous meta-

phor, blacks and whites with common economic interests should be like a hand,

working as one, but socially the races should be as separate as the individual

fingers.

In practical terms, Washington’s compromise resulted in students at colleges

such as his own Tuskegee Institute learning such skills as brick making but never

gaining the rights that would give them any real power, economic or otherwise.

Hughes takes Washington’s metaphor and argues that the cooperative hand

should become a fist that “can united rise / [t]o smash the old dead dogmas of

the past.” Hughes wants his readers to “forget what Booker T. said,” because

workers need to unite rather than to remain separate if they are to achieve their

goals. As Du Bois cogently argues in “Of Mr.BookerT.Washington” (p.1163),

any plan that fails to achieve political power, civil rights, and the higher educa-

tion of Negroes plays along with the forces that seek to stay in power and have

no intention of sharing.

Washington and Du Bois speak to people in power, with a subtext speaking

to African Americans to accommodate (in Washington’s case) or to agitate for

equal rights (in Du Bois’s case). Hughes seeks to persuade a different audience.

Rather than seeing the white worker as competitor, Hughes speaks to white work-

ers as “brother” and “sister” and urges them to take his hand. Like Washington

and Du Bois, Hughes may also be addressing an African American audience,

because it is among African Americans that the debate about how to proceed

takes place. Although his rhetoric is stirring, it is not persuasive. We were igno-

rant before, he says, but now we know that we are brothers. Few poor whites,

however, agree. Jobs are scarce, and most workers, black and white, are looking

for ways to survive the Great Depression. Certainly, some white workers became

as excited with revolutionary fervor to organize unions as Hughes seems to be in

this poem. But most preferred to identify with the powerful white owners rather

than with the powerless black people who competed with them for employment,

and union membership was dangerous even when race was not an issue. Unions

were segregated; some shops and whole occupations became identified primarily

with one race. Pullman porters and stevedores in the 1930s and later were black.

Workers, lint heads, in the Southern textile mills in Hughes’s era were white.

Hughes hopes in 1932 that class solidarity can overcome the barriers of race. But

hughes Theme for English B 187

only after the midcentury civil rights movement, Supreme Court decisions, and

federal legislation began to produce results would it become the norm to see

black and white workers banding together, and many people still testify to the

continued presence of racial prejudice in the workplace. The reforms that Du

Bois called for proved more successful than Washington’s slow, shuffling accom-

modation or Hughes’s hoped- for solidarity that never quite gelled.

LANGSTON HuGHES

Theme for English B (p.919)

“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes raises issues about the writer of a

poem (the poet) as opposed to the persona of a poem (the speaker) who may or

may not represent the poet at the time of the writing. Students tend to see all

poetry as confessional, the outpouring of a soul in the throes of emotion. In fact,

those who write poetry often do so to express themselves. But Langston Hughes,

especially at the time this poem with its twenty- two- year- old narrator was pub-

lished in 1949, was deeply involved in experimentation with different voices in

both his poetry and his prose. Hughes was then in his late forties and was a well-

known and much- celebrated writer who had chosen to live in Harlem. His satiri-

cally comic figure JessB.Semple was articulating the issues within the Negro

community of the 1940s and 1950s in a balanced voice that ranged from pain to

hilarity but was never beaten or shrill. Hughes had long been trying out blues

voices and was experimenting with female narrators. Of African, Indian, and

French ancestry, Hughes grew up with various members of an extended and

mostly dysfunctional family in the American Midwest. Unlike his narrator in

“Theme for English B,” he was born in Joplin, Missouri, and went to high school

in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was a gifted student and the only “colored” person

188 Crime and Justice

in his class. He had traveled to Mexico, where his father lived, and to NewYork,

Africa, and France before he and writer Zora Neale Hurston joyfully toured the

American South in the summer of 1927. By the time he wrote this poem, he had

also been to Spain during the Spanish Civil War and to Russia during the social-

ist fervor of the early 1930s.

Having pointed out the differences between Hughes and his narrator, how-

ever, we may find many similarities between the narrator of “Theme for English

B” and the Langston Hughes who arrived by steamer in NewYork in 1921 to

study mining at Columbia University. Columbia is “on the hill above Harlem,”

as is the college of the poem. The talented, light- skinned Hughes was not the

only Negro on campus, but he lived in an otherwise all- white dormitory after

initially staying at the HarlemYMCA.He soon was spending all his time with

the writers and artists of Harlem, however, meetingW.E.B.Du Bois and other

stars of the Harlem Renaissance and becoming an important participant in this

heady intellectual and artistic community. To the fury of his father, who saw

education only as a way to make money and who had no respect for poets or for

his own African American roots, Hughes left school and became a writer who

celebrated his race.

From the distance of adulthood, Hughes has his narrator encounter a typical

assignment for a college freshman, the autobiographical narrative. When a simi-

lar assignment was given a few years ago in a graduate seminar, at least two stu-

dents rebelled and wrote essays that resisted the reductive nature of the

assignment. Yet their resistance created what may have been the most revealing

responses. One woman wrote a poetic piece that touched on the shifting nature

of identity, and another wrote an angry explanation of why she could not write

an autobiographical essay, in the process writing an essay defining who she was

not. The assignment as stated in Hughes’s poem recalls the “non sequitur” of

William Shakespeare’s character Polonius in Hamlet — that if one is true to

oneself, then it is not possible to be false to any man. But it doesn’t follow as the

night the day that writing something true is that simple. The narrator of the

poem critiques the assignment, sounding for a while like Walt Whitman’s Leaves

of Grass as he moves into the street for his self- definition and then pulls even the

instructor into the mix.

Even today, to be white in America is probably to be “more free,” especially

when the white person is the person in authority, as in a college classroom. In

mainstream American culture, white people are the default human beings:

everyone else is defined in contrast to this definition of “normal” humanity;

people of color are different, are other. Of mixed race, Hughes saw himself in the

“tragic mulatto” category, not quite accepted as black or white. When the young

Langston Hughes traveled to Africa, the black people who lived there would not

accept him as being like themselves. They looked at his golden skin and softly

curling hair and laughed, “You . . . white man.” America still struggles with the

artificial divisions that the history of slavery creates between human beings.

Students who are interested in exploring this topic further might begin with

Toni Morrison’s brief nonfiction study Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the

Literary Imagination (1992). According to Morrison, much of literature until

very recently was directed toward a white audience, even when written by

African American authors. This is often true of Langston Hughes, as we hear

hughes Theme for English B 189

him constantly speaking to the white person looming just outside the picture,

defining and explaining his race to the stranger. But this poem consciously defies

the white audience, admitting the impossibility of defining oneself as separate.

The rhyme scheme is interesting in this context. The poem imposes the struc-

ture of rhyming couplets at the beginning and the end, when the paper is

assigned and when it is presented to the professor. This frames the lively rhetoric

in the middle that sometimes addresses Harlem, sometimes moves into a jazzy

alliteration — as in the “Bessie, bop, or Bach” of line 24 — and even occasionally

rhymes as if by accident. Hughes often reworked material that was written in

earlier years, and he may indeed have turned in a response to an assignment

much like this one. We hope that the teacher likes the narrator’s impertinence;

good writers can get away with challenging the rules. But in 1921 or 1949, and

perhaps even today, for college students who are not Langston Hughes, drawing

outside the lines entails risk.

When Hughes uses the word American in line 33, readers who have read the

other poems in this cluster will realize that the term is loaded. Langston Hughes

insists throughout his poetry that America is for people of all races, and he seizes

this identity at every opportunity. It is American to be part white and part black,

as indeed Hughes is genetically, but speaking culturally, the poet demands that

we realize the contribution of both races to our national identity. After more than

sixty years, we may recognize this truth more keenly, as men and women of

several races fight wars or engage in political activities side by side, go out to eat

in the same restaurants, produce and nurture multiracial children, share one

another’s music and other aspects of culture, and interact in all sorts of ways

without thinking twice about it. This comfortable closeness was not the case in

Hughes’s day. We do not want to sugarcoat problems that still exist, but our world

is drastically different from that of the 1940s of the poem’s composition or the

1920s of the poet’s college days.

The emphasis on “freedom” in this poem is less directly the subject than in

the previous two poems in this cluster. Nevertheless, the speaker of the poem feels

compelled to remind the white teacher that he or she is “somewhat more

free” — in 1949, undoubtedly an understatement. Gaps still exist in the early

twenty- first century, as statistics show, but few people would argue that the degree

of freedom has not improved in the past sixty years. The reasons for the disparities,

however, are perhaps less clear than they were in the years of institutionalized

racism and therefore may be more difficult to analyze and to overcome.

190 Crime and Justice

LANGSTON HuGHES

Harlem (p.921)

When Lorraine Hansberry wrote a play about an African American family in 1950s

Chicago seeking the American Dream, she took the inspiration for her title from

the first line of Langston Hughes’s short poem “Harlem” — often called by a phrase

from its first line, “a dream deferred.” In the first of a series of questions in the

poem, Hughes’s speaker asks about a dream constantly blocked by forces outside

one’s control, “Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?” By asking questions rather

than preaching or complaining, Hughes invites his audience to askthe questions

along with him and to speculate about answers. His strategy is effective, because

the reader must become an active participant in the issues raised. By tantalizingly

offering then deferring the American Dream for a whole group of people, society

may be setting itself up for an explosion. The reader is challenged to ask what

might be done to prevent such a consequence. The rhetorical strategy is more

effective than the attempts at persuasion in “Open Letter to the South” and “Let

America Be America Again” or the slightly cheeky challenge to the teacher in

“Theme for EnglishB.” In “Harlem,” the speaker invites his audience to share in

the dialogue of problem solving.

We might ask students to define the American Dream. For most people, it

involves at least enough economic security to take care of the basic needs of

oneself and one’s family. For some, it means having an expensive car or living in

a gated community. We have been taught a philosophy of rugged individualism,

with each person expecting to achieve some degree of success and at least to “live

up to his or her potential.” The cliché is that any child in America can grow up

to be president. And we all expect to live in towns where, to echo Garrison

Keillor, “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the

children are above average.” The irony of this statement, and its humor, derives

from the fact that, of course, for an average to exist, someone has to fall below

the mean. The same capitalistic philosophy that turns everything into a com-

modity, judging each person by the quantity and value of the products he or she

consumes, implies that any person who simply works hard enough can have all

that he or she desires. Competition in such a society can become brutal. When

barriers are set up but society denies their existence, the self- esteem of groups

kept outside of the dream plunges and their frustration grows. These people are

then condemned as whiners, as troublemakers, and eventually as criminals. The

“dream deferred” describes such a dilemma. We might recall Booker T.

Washington’s advice that African Americans patiently work and try to gain

respect rather than fight for equal rights. Washington urged his people to defer

their dreams, to wait. Hughes warns of the consequences.

Hughes’s metaphors imply different reactions to such frustrations. Some

people lose their spirit, becoming dried- up shells rather than vibrant human

beings. Others become part of the sickness in society, their misery infecting the

sopholes Antigone 191

whole body of the nation. Others might frantically try to “run” — escaping into

drugs or other ways of numbing the pain. Perhaps those who find alternative

ways of succeeding — the ones who actually become criminals, beggars, or oth-

ers offensive to respectable people — “stink like rotten meat” in the nostrils of

America. People who protect themselves by submitting to their inferior status,

playing “Stepin Fetchit” to those in power or following Washington’s advice to

accommodate and assimilate, may be compared to “a syrupy sweet.” Others give

up under the burdens. But the question at the end perhaps struck the most fear

in white readers. Those who are kept down are a constant threat because some

inevitably must rise up. Hughes is writing before the explosive urban riots of the

1960s, though racial conflict had certainly occurred before this. Historically

minded readers may recall the slave uprisings that panicked plantation owners

throughout earlier centuries. Hughes’s final line reminds readers that one con-

sequence of oppression is revolution.

hoW Can injustiCe be resisted?: Plays (p.923)

SOPHOCLES

Antigone (p.923)

In other places in our anthology, students have been exposed to the concept of

persona in poetry, used to describe the speaker of a poem who is obviously not

the poet. The term originally referred to the masks worn by the exclusively male

actors in Greek drama to indicate to the audience who they were supposed to be.

When a man acted the part of Antigone, Ismene, or Eurydice, therefore, gesture

and voice were all that were available to him as he sought to suspend the disbe-

lief of his audience. The audience was called on to imagine it, to be an active

participant in reading the human emotion portrayed. The more we allow

192 Crime and Justice

ourselves to become involved emotionally in the drama, the more likely we are

to experience catharsis, the “cleansing” that comes as we work out feelings of pity

and fear as we share in the conflicts of the characters in the play. Catharsis may

also involve the intellectual satisfaction we derive from thinking critically about

the issues raised as the plot comes to its climax and resolution. Issues of cause

and effect arise as the characters are thrown into conflicts by the decisions they

make in the face of destiny. In Antigone, the moral family obligation to bury the

dead and to cry out in mourning is one of the few public roles allowed to

women, one the Athenian establishment in Sophocles’ home city historically

sought to control and limit. The tension of the play exists between the human

laws of government, an arena of exclusive male dominance, and the emotional

imperative of honoring the death of a loved family member, thus preserving

traditions of family and religion — activities important to women. This reality of

Greek life underlies the conflict between Antigone and her uncle, Creon, who

has become king of Thebes on the death of her brothers.

Instructors will want to provide more background about Antigone’s father,

Oedipus, and the reasons behind the situation that Oedipus’s children experi-

ence. Some students will have heard Oedipus referred to in psychology classes as

the archetype for the desire that every little boy presumably feels to get rid of his

father and be united with his mother. Instructors who are unfamiliar with the

story of Oedipus can find it in any number of reference books about classical

Greek mythology. The actuality of Oedipus inadvertently committing this primal

sin brings a curse upon his family; in addition, during his old age and blindness,

Oedipus has cursed his sons explicitly for their perceived failure to help and

honor him properly. One tragedy leads to another in this family. Reading Oedipus

the King along with Antigone enriches both stories. We might also suggest that

students find a copy of Oedipus at Colonus on the Internet and read this as well.

These plays, though each can stand alone as a complete action, provide a

rich context for understanding the characters of Antigone. When Antigone is

described hanging in the tomb in which Creon has buried her alive, with her

beloved, Creon’s son Haemon, clinging to her after stabbing himself, readers

cannot help but recall descriptions of the dead Jocasta, who hanged herself after

sopholes Antigone 193

learning of her incest with her son Oedipus, and of Oedipus blinding himself by

stabbing his eyes with Jocasta’s brooches. Readers of the earlier plays will recall

throughout Antigone the primal sin that Oedipus has inadvertently committed,

bringing additional curses to his progeny, who are both his children and his

siblings. We will remember that Oedipus has cursed his sons explicitly for their

perceived failure to help and honor him. While at Colonus, he has emphasized

that his daughters have thus been forced to care for him as sons should have

done, going out into the world while the young men have stayed at home. This

sets the stage for Antigone’s actions in the play named for her.

Although the plays can be read in the order of their events, we should men-

tion that they were not written in this order. Antigone’s story came first, Oedipus

the King was written later when Sophocles was in his fifties, and the tale of the

elderly Oedipus came last, first presented soon after Sophocles’ death in his seven-

ties. Audiences would have known about the tragic happenings in the family of

Oedipus, however, and would have enjoyed the dramatic irony as characters

learned of them for the first time.

To Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus and of Oedipus’s mother, Jocasta,

another monstrous event seems about to take place. Her brothers have killed each

other contending for control over their dead father’s city, Thebes. Their uncle

Creon, in his role as the new king, will not allow proper burial of Polynices, the

brother who had allied with a competing city in his attack. Both Antigone and

Creon have seemingly valid reasons for their actions. The king feels that it is

proper to deny glory to Polynices by leaving his body unburied because this

nephew has committed treason against the city, even though such handling of a

body is not the tradition in their city. Antigone, however, operates under an ethic

that sees lack of burial as a horror, going against religion and tradition.

There may be personal grounds for Antigone’s obsession as well. It is a

woman’s duty to care for family members in death as in infancy. Creon’s action

further denies to her the only public voice and participation in ritual a woman

is allowed in ancient Greece. Women are not citizens, but Creon devalues

women even beyond this, telling his son Haemon that “there are other fields for

him to plow.” Women are interchangeable, he implies, and Antigone, Haemon’s

betrothed, is less than nothing, even though she is a king’s daughter. Creon

accuses her of hubris, the overreaching pride that brings the anger of the gods,

because she challenges male authority. He sees her as irrational and insane. But

he, too, is arrogant and habitually acts in rash anger rather than taking the time

to reason out his actions.

Scholars debate how Antigone fits the traditional elements of tragedy. How

can Antigone be a tragic hero, since she is a woman? Would the audience have

been moved to pity by her desire to bury her brother, or would they have seen

her as a hateful feminist dangerously out of control? Interested students can look

up descriptions of Greek tragedy and debate the issue of tragic flaws and other

qualities of the hero to determine if Creon fits the role. Some argue for Haemon,

who plays a small but important role, dying for the love of a woman and the

shame of his father’s actions. Students will be reminded of Romeo and Juliet on

a grander, more intense scale.

Haemon’s conflict with his father is warranted by his belief in reason as

opposed to rigidity and unbridled emotion, his respect for the gods, and the

194 Crime and Justice

importance of considering the will of the people. He therefore stands between

the obsessions of Antigone and Creon. Like Antigone, he disobeys the ruling

authority. Like Oedipus, he comes close to committing patricide. If Haemon is

the hero of the drama, perhaps this willingness to overturn the order of society

and family is his fatal flaw in the eyes of Sophocles and his immediate audience.

He commits suicide after failing to stab his father, Creon, and his death leads to

catharsis as his mother (Eurydice) commits suicide and his father cries out in

mourning and guilt. The chorus drives home the point that suffering can lead to

wisdom.

Modern readers tend to see Antigone as tragically heroic and as an early

feminist who stands up for what she believes is right. Students may see her as

determined, idealistic, passionate, and loyal. Others may feel that she is obsessed,

shrill, and hysterical (a word with pejorative connotations toward women). We

sympathize with her and see her as morally superior to Creon, though cultural

differences may stand in the way of our understanding of her intensity about the

subject of her brother’s body. Some readers may feel that at some point she loses

moral authority as the issue becomes more a matter of defying Creon than of

burying her brother. We have more difficulty sympathizing with Creon. He

seems especially irritating when he is accusing people of being money hungry.

He constantly shifts blame. He flies off the handle easily and allows matters to

escalate as he rigidly holds his ground. Perhaps, at the end, when he has lost his

whole family, we feel pity for him and hope he will gain the wisdom the chorus

speaks about.

Antigone’s sister, Ismene, comes across to modern audiences as lacking in

courage, though she tries to stand with Antigone by sharing the blame for some-

thing she didn’t do. She comes in for some harsh judgment from her sister, but

she is following the rules and traditions set out for women to follow. She is also

aware of the tragedies the family has already endured, and she shies away from

yet another public shame. Ismene is a good girl. The first audience for this play

might have seen her as more normal than the manic Antigone.

The chorus is the unified voice of the elder statesmen of the city, and its

wisdom varies. When Creon announces that he will not allow Polynices to be

buried, the chorus agrees, going against its better judgment in the face of his

power and determination. This shows the chorus’s imperfection, as does its han-

dling of Eurydice at the play’s end. The chorus hopes that she will retire to her

quarters to work out her feelings in private, and it watches her go, even though

it partially suspects that she will harm herself. Often, however, it interprets events

for the audience, mixing its reading of the current situation with philosophy. It

tells us about the nature of mankind, the gods, and fate. It recalls historical

events and genealogy. Students who have read William Faulkner’s “A Rose for

Emily” (p. 497) may see in the first- person- plural perspective echoes of the

Greek chorus, interpreting events surrounding Miss Emily as normal citizens

would have explained those surrounding the royal personages of Greek tragedy.

We might also remember that Faulkner’s story involved an unburied body, with

the heroine taking a stand quite different from Antigone’s.

Most viewers of Sophocles’ tragedy prefer the Greek tradition of keeping the

actual violence offstage. Creon entering with his son in his arms is a moving

scene, evoking our pity more strongly because we only hear the telling of the

sopholes Antigone 195

events that lead up to it. We do not need to see the struggle between father and

son to feel the agony of a man whose father has killed the woman he loves, nor

do we need to see Eurydice slashing herself in grief to recognize the suffering of

a mother who has lost a son. Students may disagree, having observed realistic

violence in films, on television, and in video games. The Greek audience had

probably seen more death than most modern Westerners do. But we have

become emotionally hardened through experiencing violence and death vicari-

ously, and catharsis becomes more elusive. Although students will think of many

examples of violence in slasher movies and films in similar genres, a vivid evoca-

tion of realistic violence may be seen in movies such as Saving Private Ryan and

The Hurt Locker. Students could argue for the importance of showing such vio-

lence in historical reenactments so that we understand the enormity of war.

Others say that the opposite will happen, and we will yawn at seeing yet another

televised image of an actual war, perhaps even complaining that the angle is not

quite right, undercutting the realism.

The responses of modern audiences to Antigone will also differ, depending

on their personal contexts. A mayor of a city, such as Creon, would have to weigh

the consequences of backing down once a stand has been taken. Creon does not

want to appear to be a weak leader, so he stays firm. While the reaction of the

populace to his treatment of Antigone indicates that he may have been

applauded if he had given his nephew Polynices a proper burial, their reaction

had they not been struck by her pathos might have been critical. The crowd is

often fickle. For Creon to admit that he has been wrong to leave the body of his

nephew on the battlefield would be to expose himself as fallible and would allow

people to question his authority. When he is finally convinced by Tiresias to do

the right thing, it is too late, an experience many analytical people know well. A

mayor might relate to Creon’s dilemma, realizing that it is important to show

leadership and stand by decisions. But a martyr would also realize that he should

listen to the people. Haemon makes an excellent point when he reminds his

father that people will say things in private that they might keep from authority

figures, and elected officials might be reminded to choose advisers who hear the

true feelings of the voters.

Creon also says at one point that he would die before he’d be governed by a

woman, a statement that sets off alarms for feminists. A feminist reading would

closely analyze the interactions among the men and women of the play to deter-

mine warrants for the characters’ actions. Because she has been thrust into the

world through the tragedies of her family, Antigone has learned to make her own

decisions, standing up for higher laws and challenging the decisions of a tyrant.

Although this leads to her death and precludes any chance she has of marrying

Haemon and having children, she does effect change, since the people of the

city see her actions to be right and Creon’s treatment of her to be unjust.

By allowing her this victory, Sophocles shows Antigone to be a rebel fighting

against injustice. No middle ground seems available to her because of Creon’s

rigidity. Yet her sister Ismene contends that Antigone is a firebrand even before

she goes head to head with Creon, and she seems to seek a confrontation with

her uncle even as Ismene counsels moderation.

Although Ismene is willing to die with her sister when her crime is revealed,

Antigone will not allow her to share responsibility for her actions in giving their

196 Crime and Justice

brother a proper burial. Ismene wishes to share blame, but Antigone interprets

the situation as one of triumph and will not share it. Feminists often disagree on

how militant their actions should be and on how much moderation can be used

before falling into submission and settling for second- class citizenship. Rebels

might applaud Antigone’s actions, while conformists might join Ismene and

plead that the dictates of the city be followed or that matters be taken care of

quietly, avoiding open defiance. Had Antigone been willing to concede on this

point, she could have become the wife and mother of kings, since she is engaged

to marry Creon’s son Haemon.

IDA FINK

The Table (p.963)

Because Ida Fink’s play The Table is fairly short, you might assign its roles to

particular students and have them read the script aloud in class. Subsequently,

you can ask everyone in class to freewrite about what this oral performance made

them especially aware of. Another way to launch discussion of the play is to list

on the board the various images and words that students associate with the

Holocaust. Often, students who have learned something about the subject in

other classes or from viewing certain films tend to think primarily of death camps

such as Auschwitz. But the play brings up another element of the genocide: the

terrifying selection process and mass shootings that took place in Nazi- occupied

cities. Similarly, most of your students may not know that decades went by before

several of the Holocaust’s perpetrators (most notably Adolf Eichmann) were tried

in court and that many others escaped prosecution. Students also may not know

something else that Fink alludes to: that the Nazis were aided by local collabora-

tors, including a Jewish police force known as the Ordnungsdienst. Furthermore,

given that the witnesses are recalling an event that apparently took place in

Poland (as is Wladyslaw Szpilman in the memoir by him also included in this

poe The Tell- Tale Heart 197

cluster), you might call students’ attention to the fact that the Holocaust was in

particular a decimation of Polish Jewry. Approximately three million of the six

million Jews killed were from Poland — roughly 90 percent of its Jewish

population.

The tension in this play derives from the witnesses’ efforts to satisfy the pros-

ecutor, who is badgering them to remember in detail a scene that occurred

twenty- five years before. Fink herself points out that this play “is a protest against

the law which tries genocide according to the code intended for trivial crimes.”

The amount of detail required seems at odds with the level of horror these wit-

nesses have experienced. Specific moments like the second woman’s reference

to the dog or the second man’s loss of his wife make that difference especially

apparent. Nevertheless, make sure that students realize that this prosecutor is

actually on the witnesses’ side. Presumably, he is preparing them to face the

defense team representing one or more of the Nazi officers they mention. You

might even have your students write their own brief scripts dramatizing a court-

room exchange between one of the witnesses and a defense lawyer. In any event,

a logical issue for the class to discuss is whether the prosecutor is so intent on

checking the witnesses’ testimonies that he winds up persecuting them. Is he

being reasonable in his efforts to nail down the truth, or does he become a

victimizer himself? How responsible is he being when he repeatedly asks about

the table? You may also want your class to construct a chronology of the events

that the witnesses recall, even as you call attention to the vulnerability of their

memories and to the nonlinear way these recollections emerge. Does it matter

the order in which the witnesses are interviewed? Ending with the second

woman’s interview, for example, offers a compelling conclusion that mentions

“a small, broken table.”

Try to ensure that the class grasps differences among the witnesses’ experi-

ences on that fateful day in their city. Each person had his or her own vantage

point as the horrible selections went on. Just in case students do not realize the

fact on their own, probably you should explain that this English- language version

of the play is translated from the Polish. So, too, is the Szpilman memoir. The

majority of literary works about the Holocaust — and certainly almost all eyewit-

ness testimonies by survivors — were not first written in English. Indeed, English

was not by any means a prime language of the Holocaust when it occurred. The

Shoah, you might point out, was very much a catastrophe imposed by and suf-

fered by continental Europeans.

literature and Current issues: should neurosCienCe

redefine CriMinal laW? (p.979)

EDGAR ALLEN POE

The Tell- Tale Heart (p.980)

“The Tell- Tale Heart,” one of Edgar Allen Poe’s most well- known short stories,

describes the narrator’s decision to kill the old man for whom he is caretaker.

The narrator describes himself as potentially mad but then proceeds to show how

198 Crime and Justice

the decisions he makes are far too careful to be made by a madman. His disease,

he explains, has actually made him sharper, more careful, more alert. He seems

invested in communicating to the reader his own well- developed sense of reason.

What the narrator finds most disturbing is the old man’s blind eye, which he is

sure watches him like a “vulture.” Indeed, readers will likely ascribe this desire

to kill a man for whom he otherwise has affection to a symptom of whichever

disease the narrator suffers from. Poe spends a great deal of time on the narrator’s

observations about the old man, as well as the painstaking detail with which he

spies upon the man each night at midnight. This marked attention to the narra-

tor’s plans offers insight into the depth of the narrator’s pathological obsession

and makes readers feel somewhat complicit in his deadly machinations.

While the narrator feels the most threat emanating from the old man’s eye,

Poe’s tale also emphasizes other senses, such as hearing. For example, the narra-

tor is careful not to be seen or heard by his victim when he checks on him at

night, and it is the sound of the lantern shutter opening that gives away his pres-

ence on that fateful last night. In addition, both before and after the old man’s

death, his beating heart torments the narrator. He achieves some measure of

relief only when the man’s heart is silenced, but, of course, his agitation grows

immeasurably when he hears it beating again from beneath the floorboards.

Some have called “The Tell- Tale Heart” a supernatural story, so readers might

more fully consider the ways in which the old man — both alive and dead — could

be said to haunt the narrator.

arguMents on the issue

david eagleman, From Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (p.984)

raymond tallis, Why Blame Me? It Was All My Brain’s Fault (p.989)

In this excerpt from Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (2011), David

Eagleman argues that advances in neuroscience that seem to demonstrate the

relationship between brain abnormalities and criminal behavior necessitate a

reworking of our legal system. Unlike Raymond Tallis, who claims neuroscience

is not yet (and may never be) appropriate for use in court, Eagleman asserts that

our legal system may not be appropriate for advances in brain science. Our legal

system is predicated on the idea of “practical reasoning,” or free will. Evidence

that people’s brains can cause them to lose control over their behavior could

mean that a legal system attentive to such scientific advances would offer greater

opportunities for rehabilitation.

Eagleman complicates fundamental assumptions about free will. He main-

tains that if free will even exists, it is only a small part of a much larger network

of genes and environment (nature and nurture) that influence our behavior.

While he relies mostly on evidence from the nature side of things (e.g., brain

tumors, diseases, genetic dispositions, and so on), it is not difficult to identify

environmental factors that might influence individuals’ behavior. Economic and

social factors — such as poverty, unemployment, abuse or neglect, even bullying

and social ostracism — come to mind as potential harbingers of poor decision-

making. Eagleman explains that advances in brain science research show that we

do not necessarily have the freedom of choice; and if we are not operating on a

poe The Tell- Tale Heart 199

level playing field, whether genetically or environmentally, we cannot assume

that all who commit crimes are “blameworthy” (nor are we in a position to make

the distinction).

Rather than stating his main claim up front, Eagleman generates readers’

interest early on through the detailed example of Charles Whitman, an other-

wise productive member of society who one day went on a shooting spree. While

seemingly a unique case, the Whitman example serves as Eagleman’s point of

entry into the controversial topic of blame and free will. Readers may at first be

shocked by Whitman’s callous brutality, but biological factors soon muddy the

waters of whether he could be deemed responsible. By starting with an extended

example, Eagleman is able to effectively demonstrate the implications of not

attending to the role of these biological factors. Whitman, after all, believed

something was different in his brain and had actively sought help. While we may

be tempted to read this as an isolated and extreme case, the author links this and

future examples with the claim that this phenomenon is more widespread than

we might think. His examples of Alex and the 68- year- old gambler suggest that

linking technology with rehabilitation will open up possibilities beyond our tra-

ditional sentencing practices. People who seem unfit for society may actually be

redeemable. In paragraph 6, Eagleman explicitly asks readers to consider how

these examples affect our thinking about sentencing and blame. He then uses

these questions, which are just the sort a jury might have to consider, to set up

his main argument: a critique of our current legal system and the assumption of

free will. He ultimately argues that the question of blame, so prized by our cur-

rent system, is the wrong one.

Critical of recent interest in wedding neuroscience to law, Raymond Tallis

argues in his 2007 essay “Why Blame Me? . . .” that there is a difference between

actions caused by a “ stand- alone brain” (e.g., an epileptic fit) and those that are

not, a difference that makes neuroscience potentially inappropriate for proving

innocence in court. He maintains that by too closely associating neuroscience

and law, the increasingly popular discipline of “neurolaw” ignores the wealth of

other aspects of human nature that brain science cannot explain. He further

identifies a contradiction in the claim “my brain made me do it,” questioning

whether we can assume that our brains are not “us.” Readers of David Eagleman’s

later article, however, might recognize that neurolaw need not rely on such

a distinction. We are our brains, and if our brains affect or determine our behav-

ior, a richer understanding of how that happens is not necessarily a bad thing.

The problem would be in assuming that free choice is the sole force at work.

Critical readers might further observe that by asking, “Why should this imper-

sonal bit of matter single me out?” Tallis is ignoring the complex relationship of

nature to nurture as well as problematically attributing a separate consciousness

to the brain.

Tallis is relatively dismissive of those with opposing views, attributing much

of society’s burgeoning interest in neurolaw to opportunistic defense attorneys

and overeager universities. “ Brain- blamers,” as he calls them in paragraph 8,

walk a messy line between blaming the brain and assigning responsibility. Tallis

argues that this lack of a clear distinction means we should be suspicious of blam-

ing the brain for anything beyond extreme instances with “unambiguous evi-

dence.” He ultimately claims that our “conceptual confusion” makes appealing

200 Crime and Justice

to neuroscience in the courtroom “premature and usually inappropriate.” David

Eagleman might respond that, if it is “premature,” that itself justifies investing in

further research. Eagleman might also suggest that the problem lies not with

neuroscience but with our court system. Neglecting to take into account new

evidence because it complicates (or contradicts) revered notions of blame,

responsibility, and free will is to do a disservice to the people the courts serve.

literature and Current issues: hoW just is

CaPitalPunishMent? (p.993)

SHERMAN ALEXIE

Capital Punishment (p.993)

Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, likes to challenge stereotypes

and genres: he is first a poet, but his poetry edges into narrative and prose poetry,

whereas his short stories — some of the “sudden fiction,” short- short- story

genre — have the feel of poetry. He has been called “a storyteller with a poetic

streak.” Alexie says that his poems are essentially stories, and he acknowledges a

“strong, narrative drive” in all of his work. In the introduction to his screenplay

for the movie Smoke Signals, published in paperback by Hyperion in 1998,

Alexie talks about genre:

When people ask me, and they do ask me, how I feel about making the

difficult transition from writing novels to writing screenplays, I am not

always sure what to say.

I mean, screenplays are more like poetry than like fiction. Screenplays

rely on imagery to carry the narrative, rather than the other way around.

And screenplays have form. Like sonnets, actually. Just as there are expecta-

tions of form, meter, and rhyme in a sonnet, there are the same kinds of

expectations for screenplays.

Of course, free verse poetry subverts all expectations of formalist poetry.

So, I wonder aloud, who is writing free verse screenplays? (x)

Though his movie is not free verse, it begins and ends with poetry and

includes songs, some of them written by Alexie and cowriter Jim Boyd. For Alexie,

songs are people’s poetry. One of the songs in Smoke Signals bears the memorable

title “John Wayne’s Teeth.” Smoke Signals, loosely based on Alexie’s 1993 book of

interconnected short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,

breaks new ground as a movie written, directed, coproduced, and performed by

Native Americans.

Like his poetry, Alexie’s movie challenges stereotypes of American Indians

as necessarily shamans or warriors, and his texts exist in the present rather than

a romantic Dances with Wolves past. His characters are not magical holy men

and women who turn into deer or possess supernatural spirituality. Alcohol and

poverty play a part in their lives because these are realities of reservation life, but

his characters are not pathetic victims who say, as Dustin Hoffman’s character

does in Little Big Man, “Today is a good day to die.” Alexie says that there is no

alexie Capital Punishment 201

such thing as a good day to die, and he parodies the line: “Today is a good day to

play basketball” or “Today is a good day to have breakfast,” his characters quip.

Humor and irony energize all of Alexie’s work.

His work also takes an argumentative rhetorical stance. This is an angry

poet, and he has a right to be. The first peoples of the Americas have endured a

Holocaust, and Alexie and other Native American writers represented in this

anthology do not intend to let anyone forget this fact. Consider the texts, bio-

202 Crime and Justice

being used in social and written contexts rather than on prescriptions for proper

speech. In line 82, the poet repeats the word kill, refusing to gloss over the reality

of what is taking place. We may try to sugarcoat it, but killing is killing.

Alexie refers to the divisiveness of the issues surrounding victimization and

punishment with the observation that “we throw the killers in one grave / and

victims in another. We form sides / and have two separate feasts.” In most tradi-

tions, funerals are accompanied by eating. Readers may recall Hamlet’s ironic

observation that it was thrifty of his uncle to make the funeral feast do double

duty as a wedding reception. Alexie is equally ironic in making his speaker a cook

who prepares the last meal for the execution victim. He imagines a vestige of his

own being reaching the body of the man as he is dying, a sort of communion.

Just as he demands an honest definition of the word kill, the speaker ques-

tions the meaning of the word witness. We recall that Carolyn Forché calls hers

a “poetry of witness.” Alexie has a political agenda as surely as she does; he may

in fact have more legitimacy because he is a person of color who realizes the part

prejudice plays in deciding who goes to the electric chair. The speaker’s first

claim that he is not a witness simply seems to differentiate the role of official

witness to an execution from the role of cook. But he moves soon after this first

denial into an assertion about the racial inequality of execution and tells us that

this can be proven by the facts — hard rhetorical evidence that we can verify. We

remember that a witness may be someone called on to testify, to offer proof. In

line 22, the denial that he is a witness becomes a refrain, a line that will echo

throughout the poem. This time, the context indicates that he will not stand as

a witness against a man who loves another man, that he does not pass judgment.

The next negation of his witness status comes after he has told “a story” about a

failure of the electric chair and the subsequent double execution of a man. This

is hearsay evidence and is anecdotal, so we would not be expected to give it as

much rhetorical weight. He does not have the authority of a true witness. The

irony, of course, is that such evidence tends to be extremely persuasive, though

we like to think we are more swayed by logic and facts. The next repetition

comes when the speaker is desperately trying to block out the reality of what is

happening by sitting in the dark and chanting to himself “not to look at the

clock.” At this point, the claim that he is not a witness has the panicky tone of a

prayer or a mantra: Please God don’t make me be a witness, he seems to say under-

neath the words. After powerful imagery describing the body’s reaction to the jolt

of electricity, he again claims not to be a witness, though he sounds like someone

who knows what he is talking about, and we now trust the ethos he projects.

Finally, in line 102, he admits to being a witness to the culture’s denials, curiosi-

ties, and divisions, if not to the execution itself. He witnesses with his anger and

imagination from the pit of the stomach of the executed man.

Race is undeniably a factor in the dealing out of punishments in the United

States. Some readers will find that Alexie’s ethnicity lends authority to his argu-

ment, whereas others may feel that he has an ax (a tomahawk?) to grind and that

alexie Capital Punishment 203

speaker imagines himself as present through the sharing of food. This is a story

not about the victim or the crime but about the execution and the nature of wit-

nessing. The victim in Alexie’s poem is mentioned matter- of- factly, in spite of the

violence of the image describing his death, and the speaker follows quickly with

a joke about the stereotype of Indians gambling. The humor works on multiple

levels, since casinos are one of the few sources of economic power that tribal

governments have, but gambling can be a seductive addiction, like alcohol.

Games and sports took the place of war in the history of several tribes, and

the “Indian killer” in the poem stands ironically in a tradition, even as we laugh

at Alexie’s subversion of the stereotype. This particular use of humor is typical of

Alexie’s style, deflecting pathos, bitterness, and prejudice with irony. In the notes

to his screenplay for Smoke Signals, Alexie praises actor Irene Bedard for ad-

libbing a “very Indian moment” as Suzy Song. As she hands over the can of ashes

containing the cremated remains of Victor Joseph’s father, she jokes, deadpan,

“This is Arnold. He ain’t looking so good.” Alexie’s conclusion is that filmmakers

should learn from this: “Cast Indians as Indians, because they’ll give better perfor-

mances.” At the end of the poem “Capital Punishment,” Alexie offers another

image that readers could interpret as ironic. Electricity is electricity, whether in a

chair or in lightning, just as killing is killing whether it is done by an Indian or by

a government. We — the speaker, the poet, and the reader — are not qualitatively

different in our humanity from the man who is brought by just one of his sins

through a system as arbitrary as lightning to “headlines and ash.” Although readers

may vary in their guesses about their possible epitaphs after standing on a hill in

a thunderstorm, an appropriate one might be, “We knew she didn’t have enough

common sense to come in out of the rain.”

Both Alexie in “Capital Punishment” and Forché in “The Colonel” assume

readers who critically question what they are told. We want convincing evidence,

so they offer it. But they also trust their readers to think for themselves as they

consider the images the poets project, to come to as reasonable conclusions from

the implicit messages as we would from more overt polemics. Like the word wit-

ness, the word tribal has divergent connotations. For the first peoples of the

American continent, identification with a tribe is both legally and culturally

important. Different tribes require different degrees of genetic inheritance for

full tribal membership and the benefits that now accrue from belonging to a

204 Crime and Justice

arguMents on the issue

george will, Capital Punishment’s Slow Death (p.998)

bill otis, George Will’s Limp Case against the Death Penalty (p.1000)

harles j. ogletree jr., Condemned to Die Because He’s Black (p.1003)

In “Capital Punishment’s Slow Death,” political commentator George Will

offers a conservative case against capital punishment. While he refrains from

offering a personal perspective on the issue, except to note that few will believe

an injustice has been done if the Boston Marathon bomber is put to death some-

day, Will does demonstrate that the idea of “moral proportionality” comes with

“disproportionate social costs.” By “moral proportionality,” he refers to the belief

that taking the life of someone who has murdered another balances the scale.

And yet, as Will notes, parents of an eight- year- old victim of the Boston Marathon

bombing have echoed other victims’ families in claiming that these extended

legal processes only “prolong their suffering.”

Will further explains that one of the difficulties in providing effective execu-

tions is the availability of the appropriate drugs. The Supreme Court has been

concerned about the role of social movements that seek to abolish the death

penalty, especially as some groups have successfully lobbied pharmaceutical

companies to stop providing the most effective and painless drugs. But Will is

unconvinced that judicial reasoning should take those agitators into account.

Instead, he offers three clear points in the conservative case against capital pun-

ishment: First, we are not infallible. Second, because there is no way to undo

capital punishment, it must be administered with “extraordinary competence.”

But Will doesn’t see the government as capable of such competence. Third,

capital punishment cannot be used as a deterrent because it is applied too spo-

radically and occurs out of the public eye.

Will doesn’t feel that pure revulsion is a strong enough argument against

thedeath penalty, but he does reference Camus on society’s changing standards

of decency as a potential reason. While some might argue that evolving stan-

dardsof decency should really mean fewer crimes or that some people’s revulsion

should not stop us from punishing the guilty, others might point out that revulsion

is one of those uncontrollable feelings that makes us human — and so perhaps it is

an instinct we should honor and allow to influence our decision making.