final thoughts on Things Fall Apart

Seeing colonialism from the opposing perspective in the book gave a different outlook on it. being able to know about the culture of the tribes that were colonized and seeing it from their side gives a more negative feeling to colonies. one question i have is, how can the tribes seem so civilized from one view and completely savage from another?

Christianity in Things Fall Apart

Christianity was a very significant part of the Umuofia tribe in the later parts of the book. Under the leadership of Mr. Brown the missionaries were more tolerant and did not force people to convert, but once james smith took over the mission was strict and very forceful. it takes a while for a significant amount of people in the tribe to convert. Fights brake out between the tribe and the missionaries and the church gets burned down. Christianity was a good influence under Mr. bown but after it turned into a very bad thing.

TFA part 2

the Abame tribe was wiped out by a group of white men with guns, because the Abame killed a white man. i think because the Abame tribe could not understand the intentions of the man and they killed him because their oracle said . what happened to them was at least partly justified. the group of white men only knew that they killed their friend most likely without reason. knowing the tribe was dangerous they made a decision to get rid of the tribe.

11/21

How is "The Black Man's Burden" responding to "The White Man's Burden"?

the "The White Man's Burden" was written in responce to america taking over the Phillipines. It the white man's burden in the poem is that they have a responsibility to go help people by colonizing them.  "The Black Man's Burden" argues that colonizing dose not help the people living there and it is not fair to go in and enslave people.

i think that the attitude towards africans in both "The White Man's Burden" and "The heart of darkness" are very similar. in both there is an opinion that the africans are savages that need to be civilized by whites. in the book there is constant reference to africans as savage.

end of HoD

Reflect upon Heart of Darkness as a whole. Who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist? What is actually the Heart of Darkness? (hint: Europeans and colonialism? Africa? Africans? Some other thing?)

i think that the protagonist/antagonist lines are not entirely clear. i think that marlow is the protagonist  because he is who we follow. i believe that the antagonist in the book is the Congo/Africa. i believe the heart of darkness is referring to Africa, because marlow went deep into the "heart" of Africa. 

What do you think of Achebe's response to Heart of Darkness? Write three questions to discuss regarding his response for a seminar on Tuesday.

i think that achebe's response is agreeable to a point. he wasnt just writing  the response to call Conrad a racist and be condescending to the kid from yonkers. even though it is more of a educated rant than an actual paper he had some good points. the lack of knowledge about african history and literature is surprising. seeing Africa as a polar opposite to Europe is a rather narrow minded view.

questions

1. why did achebe chose to study something that some people don't think is a real thing?

2. dose achebe look at the book subjectively?

3. if a book like heart of darkness was published today how long would it take to be banned? 

colonialism

three things from class

the European colonies were justified by saying that the natives couldn't follow natural law. natural laws are laws that are implied and beyond government one example is eating people. because the natives couldn't follow what the Europeans thought was natural law, the natives were thought to need someone to control them.
the difference between imperialism and colonialism is that an empire controls land but in colonies people go in a settle there.
at the time some people thought that morals come from culture and colonizing and taking culture away destroyed the native peoples morals.


three things from intro

Joseph Conrad was always interested in being an explorer
Joseph Conrad was actually a seaman for a very long time
the natives in the british colonies were definitely NOT treated well

oral history refection

I enjoyed the oral history project. the idea of having the history of the people of Houston saved for anyone to read was a cool idea to me. the stories the people we interviewed could of been lost if we did not do this. the best part was the actual interview, being able to hear someone's life story was a rare experience. the worst part was the transcribing, even though it gave details of the story, it was not as interesting listening to it for the 8th time because there it is hard to go back just 5 seconds in the recording. one thing i would change is about how we transcribed, if we had an app that was made to play audio so moving to different places in the recordings would be easier.

i thought the transcribing would be very tedious, but lessening to the details of the interview over and over gave me a new view of the interview. the transcribing is important and without someone doing it the interview has lost most of its meaning. we did this project to get people's stories saved so they are not lost, these stories need to be transcribed so they can be read by people who want to learn about the history of the people of Houston.

interview reflection

I think that the interview went well. the person we interviewed had very interesting stories and was fairly detailed in his responses. one problem was that we were assigned an interview the day before, so we did not have much time to prepare. one thing i would change was the order the questions were asked, it caused the interview to not flow properly with a lot of backtracking. the order of the questions were attempting to follow his life chronologically instead of changing dynamically to be relevant. our interviewee already knew what he was going to talk about and had long interesting responses. after the interview the interviewee, ted weisgal, kindly gave us tips on how to better conduct an interview. over all i think the interview went well but could of been better if we had more time to prepare.

what motivates me?

a "spine" is something that motivates a someone. some examples of spine in writing are to help others, or to find beauty. for a character to be properly developed his/her motivation must mostly remain consistent. i find that my spine is to try to make a difference in the world. even small actions can have a major effect.

three things i learned

three things i learned during the Houston history presentation:

integration went smoothly in some parts Houston - when schools were forced to desegregate in the south most places started rioting, but in Houston the media agreed to not make a big deal of it and not talk about it for a few weeks. in most places schools started accepting students of all races and there were few protest.

a lot of neighborhoods in Houston were started by streetcar routes- a lot of streetcars in Houston went from populated areas to underdeveloped areas. the easy transportation into the city allowed people to spread out. one example of a "streetcar suburb" is the heights.

houston shipped 3 million bales of cotton a year around 1830 - after Galveston was distorted by a storm for the 100th time, business men moved all there shipping over to Houston because it was safer.