Literature Chapter 12 Homework Simpson Viewing The Culture From The Outside

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The “company” of wolves of the title is called a “congregation” in an early passage

of the story. The presence of this group of soul mates surrounding the wedding bed

represents nightmare in the early episodes of the story, which are told from the

grandmother’s point of view, but the wild couple finds them a source of strength. The

story may be telling us more about wolves than about Little Red Riding Hood. The

wolves are indeed more important than the girl, but she becomes one of them when she

accepts her nature. Carter’s long descriptions, poetic in effect, emphasize the nature of

wolves, and students will find many from which to choose details that show the wolves as

more than simply evil predators. Some readers find the ending unsettling and conclude

that the girl has become heartless, especially because she does not seek revenge for her

Perrault’s tale of Little Red Riding Hood presents a wolf who is male, predatory,

and irredeemably evil. In Perrault’s telling of the story, men are out to get you if you

stray from the path, and if they get you, you are a goner. If the wolf’s attack symbolizes

rape or seduction, we conclude, then a woman thus ruined is destroyed in society’s

eyes forever. The wolf is a coward who is cautious of woodcutters and forced to be sly

to avoid being controlled. His eating of the grandmother is explained by his not having

eaten in three days, but this fact seems to be offered to explain why he is able to

dispatch her so quickly, not to cause us to empathize with his hunger. The wolf wins,

and we are meant not to applaud him but to fear him as we should fear those like him

who would cause us to stray from the path of obedience and morality. Perrault’s

version also hints that women who have been doted on by their mothers and

grandmothers may be especially vulnerable to such predators.

it refuses to accept the stereotypes of the female victim and the male predator.

Furthermore, Carter rejects the premise that women must be protected from sexuality.

Many feminists strongly agree with the point of view taken in “The Company of

Wolves” and call for a full acceptance of female power, often with the addition of pre-

Christian religious imagery that draws on a similar iconography from Europe or

Africa. To be human is to live fully in one’s body, these women would say, whether

male or female. Other feminists might feel more comfortable with the strong political

action of the epilogue to the Grimm version of the story. Rather than buying into the

“happy ending” with the marriage ceremony—even a “savage” one—they approve of

the solidarity of women who exact justice for the wrongs done in the past, working

together to see that hard-won knowledge about the world is passed on and that

predators are eliminated.

These feminist thinkers might define feminism as a community working together

rather than as one in which individual women care more about seizing their own

pleasure with men than righting wrongs done to their grandmothers. Issues may be

raised about the place of the grandmother in feminist thought. Older women often

paved the way for equality for women, but some perpetuate the “old wives’ tales” and

traditions that hold women back. We might think of other stories, like “Cinderella”

and “Snow White,” in which women persecute each other. Feminists like Clarissa

they may find the characters too simple to be real—either all good or all bad.

Little Red Riding Hood, perhaps, has captured the interests of readers and

listeners for so many generations because she goes astray, if only because she is naive.

But her innocence may pose barriers to readers who see her actions as simply too

stupid to apply to them. A good case can be made, however, for the irrelevance of

reality when applied to fairy tales. Carter has sometimes been categorized as a writer of

“magical realism” and has claimed to be influenced by South American writers such

KEEP THIS BOY RUNNING:

CULTURAL CONTEXTS FOR A STORY (p. 1214)

RALPH ELLISON

Battle Royal (p. 1215)

The journey of African Americans as an ethnic group within the United States has

lasted generations, beginning with the abduction of individuals from their homes in

Africa and continuing through the horrors of slavery and into the disappointment of

the postemancipation years. After the American Civil War, the anticipated opportuni-

ties failed to develop, and the journey toward economic, political, and social equality

continued to be a difficult one through the Jim Crow era of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. Despite the civil rights movement of the mid- to late-

twentieth century, the goal of full equality has not been achieved.

In the early 1950s, before the civil rights movement had some success in

challenging legal discrimination, Ralph Ellison wrote his novel Invisible Man, from

which the short story “Battle Royal” is taken. In the novel, Ellison’s main character

takes his own journey, both literal and symbolic, anticipating freedom and

opportunity, only to find his hopes crushed again and again.

In the prologue of the novel, Ellison’s unnamed protagonist begins: “I am an

Our first step in preparing our students for “Battle Royal” might be to read excerpts

from the prologue and to lead them to see that the text is both serious and satirical. It is

appropriate for readers to be overwhelmed with empathy for the young boy and to be

horrified by the actions of the white bigots. But they can also be led to see the author’s

Although some who lived during the early twentieth century in the American

South will maintain that the horrors of racial hatred and its perverse manifestations

cannot be overestimated, Ellison’s story is best seen as symbolic rather than directly

representational. The narrator thinks that he will be seen and heard as an individual

and as a credit to his race, but he instead must go through trials that debase his

humanity and both ignore and misuse his voice. He and his peers are set against each

other in the battle royal. Students may see the economic ramifications of this

hegemony, when workers must agree to compete for limited jobs and incentives rather

than being able to unite. The hegemonic nature of the competition becomes

especially evident in the electrified rug trial, in which young men must scramble for

money that turns out to be counterfeit. Not only do they compete rather than unite,

but the promised reward turns out to be a lie, just as the African American community

found itself divided and full equality deferred in the century between emancipation in

the 1860s and the gains of the 1960s.

The presence of the white stripper aptly symbolizes the mixture of fear and

pornography implied in miscegenation laws intended to keep supposedly lustful and

bestial black men from presumably overwhelmingly desirable white women. The

woman is a temptress, but she is also being used. Students might consider further the

Lynchings were characterized by just such behavior, with castration, burning, and

flaying accompanying the hanging. Historical research will provide students with

examples even more horrifying than those in Ellison’s narrative. Photographs show not

only civic leaders but also women and children, all dressed in their Sunday best,

viewing the torture. Picture postcards from this era provide a macabre record of

lynching, showing victims and their killers, the latter proudly posing beside the

hanging bodies.

The narrator’s dream in which his grandfather laughs at him is puzzling unless we

consider the irony of his situation. He does not yet realize that he is one of the clowns

CULTURAL CONTEXTS

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Atlanta Exposition Address (p. 1226)

W. E. B. DU BOIS, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington (p. 1229)

GUNNAR MYRDAL, Social Equality (p. 1234)

Booker T. Washington’s speech at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposi-

tion in 1895 met with great approval in both the black and the white communities.

This so-called Atlanta Compromise established Washington’s considerable reputation

as the leader of his race. Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” loses much of its irony for

readers who do not catch his allusions to Washington’s famous metaphors. Ellison’s

protagonist is steeped in the rhetoric and philosophy of Washington, and the white

men at the smoker can be expected to approve his borrowed words. “Cast down your

bucket where you are” was a way of telling African Americans to accept the menial

sonal power and influence, while retarding the progress of equal rights for the great

majority of African Americans. Although he may have acted as he did for pragmatic

reasons, he also harbored doubts about the ability of most black people to ever achieve

as the equals of whites. Whether Washington was a pioneer on the road to freedom

and equal opportunity for African Americans or whether he placed roadblocks to turn

people aside from the journey remains an issue for debate.

W. E. B. Du Bois, by contrast, had no doubts about the potential of African

Americans to complete their journey. As editor of the newspaper published by the

Ralph Ellison’s narrator is still under the influence of Washington, but readers

can recognize that he is learning the folly of his subservience to the white

establishment. Though he spends most of the story just wanting to give his speech, to

show what a good little Negro boy he is, the mask is beginning to slip. At the

beginning of the novel, we hear the voice of experience as he describes his invisibility.

But, mostly, doubts surface in his memory of his grandfather’s words on his deathbed

and later in the protagonist’s dream. The grandfather has lived out the letter of Booker

T. Washington’s law of compromise, but the spirit of his submission is the ironic

treachery of the trickster. He implies that only a clown would take seriously the

precepts of Washington. “I did what I had to do,” he seems to say, “but I kept my sense

of self. I was faking it all the time.” Perhaps he would feel that the open declaration of

human rights espoused by Du Bois would make him vulnerable to attack. For people

with dark skins, the South is more dangerous than Du Bois’s native Massachusetts,

though Du Bois certainly experienced prejudice. As the protagonist eventually does in

Harlem in the novel Invisible Man, the grandfather uses his invisibility as a weapon,

pessimistically rejecting attempts to be seen and heard as a man. Rather than feeling

emasculated, he feels empowered by his ability to fool the white man. What many of

Ellison’s readers would say about this, however, is that his protagonist therefore

As a result, support was found for the armed overthrow of an elected city government

that had many black members, reversing the course of racial equality for many years

and—to use a term far in the future—ethnically cleansing the city of its most

successful citizens of African descent. These events occurred the same year as Atlanta’s

applause for Booker T. Washington’s optimistic speech and Harvard’s acceptance of

Du Bois’s doctoral dissertation on the slave trade. Students may recall examples from

early- and mid-twentieth-century history, like the cases of Emmett Till or the

Scottsboro Boys, when black men lost their lives as a result of trivial accusations by

FROM CITY TO COUNTRY: CRITICAL COMMENTARIES

ON A PLAY (p. 1238)

OSCAR WILDE

The Importance of Being Earnest (p. 1239)

Oscar Wilde’s popular play The Importance of Being Earnest takes place in both Lon-

don and Hertfordshire, the city and the country. Interestingly, however, these two set-

tings are nearly indistinguishable. The play begins in the Morning Room of Al-

gernon’s luxurious London flat and concludes in the Morning Room at the Manor

House, in Woolton. Both are equally elegant and ornate. Even the garden setting for

Wilde’s Act II lacks special distinction aside from there being cultivated flowers.

try and town manners, interests, or aspirations. Jack, who is supposedly countrified, is

figuratively and literally a brother to Algernon (the city gentleman), in that both invent

other people to excuse their behavior, both fall in love at a moment’s notice, and both

react similarly to problems (e.g., claiming to be “Ernest”). Gwendolen and Cecily are

not biologically sisters, but after learning of their fiancés’ deceit, Gwendolen says to

Cecily, “You will call me sister, will you not?” Cecily and Gwendolen are, as the play

progresses, nearly indistinguishable from one another.

Much of the play’s humor stems from the characters’ take on social convention, as

well as the speed at which they make major decisions. For example, Algernon and

Jack decide to be rechristened “Ernest,” because that is the name they’d claimed to

have and the one their fiancée’s ultimately prefer. Rather than recognizing that as an

absurd solution—surely the real problem is that they lied about their names—Cecily

SOS ELTIS

From Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of

Oscar Wilde (p. 1285)

In an excerpt from her 1996 book Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the

Plays of Oscar Wilde, Sos Eltis reads The Importance of Being Earnest in the context of

Oscar Wilde’s personal life and his 1891 political essay, “The Soul of Man Under

Socialism.” Eltis argues that the play is not only a farce but also an anarchic one. In a

reading similar to Patricia Flanagan Behrendt’s, Eltis finds that the play “reduces all

authority to absurdity,” such that characters are free to fulfill their desires without

restriction. She highlights “self-creation” as key to this wish-fulfillment, noting, for

example, that Jack claims to be Ernest and subsequently becomes so. Algernon

TIRTHANKAR BOSE

From “Oscar Wilde’s Game of Being Earnest” (p. 1287)

Published in a 1978 issue of the journal Modern Drama, Tirthankar Bose’s “Oscar

Wilde’s Game of Being Earnest” argues that the play’s characters are essentially play-

ing games with one another. Bose reads The Importance of Being Earnest as contend-

ing with the age-old ritual of courtship, in which a man must prove his love, “and

more important, his manhood,” by performing some special and symbolic feat. The

play “plays” on these ritual archetypes and exchanges within the framework of nine-

teenth-century society, which, Bose argues, accounts for much of the play’s humor.

PATRICIA FLANAGAN BEHRENDT

From Oscar Wilde: Eros and Aesthetics (p. 1289)

Sos Eltis touches on a potential connection between Oscar Wilde’s sexuality and the

anarchy of The Importance of Being Earnest, whereas Patricia Flanagan Behrendt

reads the play as dealing more centrally with the “complex problems of homosexual

identity.” In this excerpt from her 1991 book Oscar Wilde: Eros and Aesthetics, Beh-

rendt attends to “encoded verbal allusions,” such as the similarities between “earnest”

and “uraniste” and the musical references throughout, to argue that the play com-

ments on the “chilling—if not morbid—nature of heterosexual relations.” She reads

the women, Gwendolen, in particular, as uninterested in sexual relations, suggesting

CROSSING BOUNDARIES: ESSAYS (p. 1295)

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ

Aria (p. 1295)

Although his essay “Aria” and the commentary that accompanies it in this cluster were

written in the 1980s, the issues they raise are still very much alive, and so is Richard

Rodriguez—alive and, as usual, kicking against all sorts of conventional definitions. He

is a contributing commentator on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, a contributing edi-

tor at Harper’s magazine, and a much-published features writer for newspapers and

magazines. His second book of essays is titled Days of Obligation: An Argument with

My Mexican Father (1992); his third, published in 2002, is entitled Brown: The Last

Discovery of America. He continues to be a burr under the saddle of many Mexican

Americans, and students often stage protests when he is invited to campuses to speak.

He still objects to bilingual education and affirmative action, even turning down uni-

versity teaching positions because he felt that they were offered to him because of his

Rodriguez feels that he has been empowered by his command of the English

language but claims that he is not an Anglophile. If Spanish suddenly became the

language of public life in the United States, he says that he would support the

dominance of Spanish in the schools. What he objects to is an education that isolates

children from the whole of tradition. He claims that the point of education is not to

build self-esteem but to teach children what they need to know, to connect them with

people who are unrelated to them but are a part of who they can be. This can and

should be uncomfortable for learners. He insists that assimilation is inevitable, that the

was “my objection to the popular ideology of that time: my insistence that I am this

man, contrary to what you want to make me: my declaration of myself, of my

profession—political and personal.”

Because he writes beautifully and with confidence, Rodriguez may so skillfully

persuade readers with pathos and ethos that they do not hold his logic to the usual

standards. Though his title “Aria” may seem at first to refer to the sounds of his early,

been shaped by the attempt to recover what he lost rather than by the voice he gained,

because he continues to write about his identity first as Mexican American and lately

as Indian. We might also ask if students who would grow up to be math majors would

have been as well served by the author’s educational experiences, or would this type of

schooling have worked only for children who would become English majors? Do

students feel comfortable with letting Rodriguez constantly equivocate, making up his

own vague definitions? His tone is sad, nostalgic, and filled with paradox as he tries to

convince us that his “awkward childhood does not prove the necessity of bilingual

education.” But why doesn’t it? Does it prove anything? Many readers understand the

sense of loss he conveys when he talks about his parents. No one would contend that

children should be denied the language skills that will help them achieve, but many

readers take issue with his conclusions that separating them from their home culture is

the way to do this.

Although Rodriguez faults “middle-class ethnics” as romantic, some students

might assert that Rodriguez uses sentimentality to get us on his side. Many of our

students at regional or community colleges are first-generation college students, who

pressure sometimes squelches. They have learned to keep their opinions to

themselves. The vague generalities and platitudes that we read in student papers may

reflect an attempt at consensus, a communal voice. Rodriguez may have a point. To

think critically and to speak in one’s own voice can be isolating, but profoundly

rewarding.

JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant (p. 1305)

In light of recent political fervor on the topic, as well as television shows like Border

Wars that go behind the scenes of the U.S. border patrol, students are likely to have an

opinion on the issue of illegal immigration. In “My Life as an Undocumented Immi-

grant,” Jose Antonio Vargas adds his compelling voice to debates about immigration,

citizenship, and how to treat immigrants who were illegally brought to the United

States as children. Here he chronicles the significant challenges he’s faced as an up-

and-coming journalist living and working without legal documentation. Because it

Vargas’s strong drive to succeed comes through at various points in the piece,

reinforcing (even for skeptical readers) the notion that he belongs here in the United

States. Rather than seeking menial work below the radar, Vargas has risked

deportation by actively developing a professional identity in the national sphere. At

times, his ambitions have been at odds with his desire to be open about his

immigration status, but, as the essay describes, the people he chose to confide in

typically helped him negotiate some new challenge or obstacle. The principal at his

TRAUMATIC JOURNEYS: ACROSS GENRES (p. 1315)

WILFRED OWEN

Dulce et Decorum Est (p. 1315)

Widely regarded as one of the best war poets of the first World War, Wilfred Owen

focused his literary efforts on portraying the grim realities of war and eschewed the

celebrated heroism common to other poetic depictions. “Dulce et Decorum Est,”

translated from the Latin into “it is sweet and right,” was penned in 1920 and is

generally read as an antiwar poem. The line both inaugurates the poem, as its title,

and concludes it, with the addition of “pro patria mori” (“to die for your country”).

The use of Latin invokes national ideals, on some level, or even higher truths. Latin

MICHAEL HERR

Scream A Lot (p. 1317)

Michael Herr, a correspondent for Esquire during the Vietnam War, writes “Scream

Like Hell” as an insider. He doesn’t contend with the politics of the conflicts in Vi-

etnam, but instead focuses on how soldiers get through the everyday. In this excerpt

from his award-winning memoir Dispatches, Herr talks through the role of faith, ritu-

al, and fear in getting through war. But despite everything, the “Inscrutable Immuta-

who they perceived to have some mystical power to survive. If you managed to survive

some manner of dangerous situation, you were “magic enough.” Everyone participat-

ed in some way, he explains. “You couldn’t blame anybody for believing anything.”

From Batman regalia to playing cards to crosses and photographs from home, it

THOMAS LUX

The People of the Other Village (p. 1320)

Thomas Lux’s “The People of the Other Village” both laments and revels in the “tit

for tat” or back-and-forth exchange between different human factions. The poem im-

plies that central to human interaction is this exchange of insults and harm that unite

people against a common enemy. Lux hints at primarily ethnic and religious differ-

ences, with his references to “the way they dance” and “our God,” but readers will

undoubtedly recognize that a range of disagreements—political, economic, racial, and

so on—have sustained hundreds of years of warfare and deprivation.

Lux relies on multiple grotesque details, including “would nail our hats / to our