"Saboteur" by Ha Jin

"'For the first time Fenjin thought of Mr. Chiu as an ugly man.'" 

 

This story has a very nice theme involving the loss of faith in government (and, through that, in people as a whole). At the start, Chiu is fairly trusting. He is willing to overlook the fact that the police officer dumped tea on his feet and lied about it, because he has faith that this officer is an outlier, and that the system as a whole will be fair and rational about the situation. Chiu himself has that innocent, logical mindset at the start. Instead of making assumptions based on the one officer, he chooses to hope for the good.

Chiu's quality of seeing the good in things is displayed through metaphor in the paragraph about bedbugs. Ha Jin writes that Chiu is afraid of ticks, mosquitoes, and cockroaches, but not bedbugs or fleas, and that he was never severely bitten by them the way his colleagues were. This seems to be symbolic of the fact that Chiu is not bothered by the realities of the corrupt government; he manages to maintain his faith and innocence where others might not have. 

 

Eventually, though, the officers manage to break him down. Their incredible unfairness toward Fenjin is what breaks Chiu down. It's interesting to note that the injustices directed at Chiu himself did not hurt him significantly; he did not lose faith in the system until he saw it harm a friend of his who he knew was trying to do good. This suggests that Chiu was unselfish.

 

When he finally did break down, though, Chiu turned around completely, going so far as to poison innocent civilians. This is where the quote above comes in: Chiu's change of faith made him an uglier person. 

 

As a whole, this story maps a man's loss of faith. He endures many significant injustices and still holds his faith, choosing to believe in the good and rationality of other people. But, when he sees his friend harmed, he is woken to the unfair truth, and becomes bitter. It's a very sad but commonly true storyline; Chiu's action of giving other people hepatitis is representative of the cold and unforgiving mindsets people will fall into when they are disenchanted by something in which they once strongly believed.

"Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." 

This was a very poignant story. All you really hear about Brokeback Mountain is the sex scenes, often in a very derogatory way. Personally, I had negative connotations associated with the story because of word of mouth before reading the story. They were pretty detailed, but nobody complains about the heterosexual one, which is arguably described in more depth. Just goes to show how people will let judgmental mindsets take away from a great story.

The story presents a solid conflict between love and duty. Ennis and Jack know they have something, but they don't acknowledge it until after they're both married with children. As such, they know they must stay where they are. It's a very sad but universally relevant plot point: the love that can't be, if you will. 

However, you have to question what the "thing" between Ennis and Jack really is. On Jack's end, it seems to be love. He wants to be with Ennis, to live their lives together. Ennis, on the other hand, is too afraid of what people will think (although he does have fair reason, which I will get to later). So, the love vs. duty theme can be broadened to love vs. fear. Jack is relatively fearless. His father said that he had been planning to live with a different man, before he died. It would seem that he ends up dying because of his determination to be himself, if Ennis' thought that the locals killed him is true. Even before then, he always wanted to go off elsewhere with Ennis; he wanted the freedom to be who he was.

Social judgment is another prominent theme. Almost everything Ennis did (and didn't) do was because of what everyone else wanted. He stayed with Alma because she expected him to, and because living with Jack would be frowned upon by others. Even after she left him, the child support payments kept him from freedom. His only actions that seemed to be motivated by what he wanted were his trips with Jack. Through the social judgment theme, Proulx makes a strong commentary on public view of homosexual people. It wasn't illegal or harmful for two men to live together, but at the time, it would mean literal social suicide. Today, we as a society take a less violent stance, but often the basic ideology of "different is bad" still remains. Gay people still have to formally "come out," and they are still judged for who they are. The aforementioned reaction to the gay sex scene says it all.

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

"He would have liked to teach her a lesson that would last her a while, but there seemed no way to continue the point. The Negro refused to come out from behind his paper"

 

Julian is a character of great pride, but not much spirit. His relationship with his mother has a fairly typical theme -- she has given him all he has and wants him to love her, while he just wants his own identity and freedom. At the start, it seems as though Julian is in the right here. He is described as intelligent and forward-thinking, embracing social change and bored with the frivolity of the world, which he primarily sees in his mother. And his mother is frivolous, and struggles more than we in retrospect feel she should with the concept of integration. She cares deeply about images

 

What Julian lacks is empathy. Racism is a terrible thing that should be done away with in all situations, and the mother is certainly racist. However, she grew up being told that this racism was right, and as such, she struggles to understand black people as a whole. And as for the obsession with looks, that's also a value system she was likely trained into. Society cares about looks, and she tries to work with society in order to achieve the best possible life for her and her son.

 

Early on, Julian appears to be in the right; he takes on the position of supporter to the oppressed. But all of his supposed attempts at openmindedness are really just thinly-veiled attempts to make his mother angry. He tries to use black people as a means to the end of upsetting his mother. As seen in the quote above, he takes a disconnected and unsympathetic stance on the black man's role in his mission. He assumes that all nearby black people should be ready and willing to play into his petty game with his mother. Sure, Julian has progressive ideas in that he doesn't think blacks and whites should be separated, but that doesn't mean he is any more genuinely welcoming than his mother is. He patronizes the black people; he tries to use them as pawns.

 

When it comes down to it, the main action here is the psychological battle between Julian and his mother. The black people, who Julian claims to be the focus of the dispute, are marginalized. Through that marginalization, we see the theme of the story: the mistreatment and judgmental perception of black people. In the end, Julian's mother collapses and suddenly he is affectionate toward her and afraid of losing her, which serves to illuminate the uselessness of his attempted rebellion and how disrespectful his perspective on black people really is.

"The Voorman Problem"

"We're going to change positions. You can juggle time, gravity, waves and particles. You can sift through the trash cans for tiny specks of originality. You can watch glaciers form and continents pillaged in your name..."

I don't know what I was expecting coming into this film, but this wasn't it. I knew it was about an inmate who thought he was a god, and that Martin Freeman's character was investigating him. I might have expected a Silence of the Lambs sort of deal, where it's a look into the psychology of the criminally insane. I did not expect Voorman to actually be a god.

This film presents a very interesting take on the concept of gods. The typical monotheist God figure is some type of benevolent judge, who determines right from wrong and watches over us from a separate plane of existence. But religions such as those have always left room to question why it is that this god created mankind and the universe -- it seems a fairly pointless endeavor. The Voorman perception of God is that of a being who created the universe as his plaything, as a means of entertainment for himself. This is a really interesting portrayal; the all-powerful but slightly mad god. He's driven himself crazy by living in a world that he controls and therefore can never truly be a part of. It's kind of funny when juxtaposed against the Christian god; one has a plan for all humans and is organizing things for the best, while the other is just messing around in whatever way pleases him. In a sad sort of way, the Voorman god seems a bit more likely to me.

What I wonder, though, is what happens next. In the quote above, it sounds as though Voorman, by switching places with the doctor, is giving him all of his godly powers. Will the doctor become the new Voorman? Does he now have the power to wipe out countries on a whim? And if so, what will he do with that? We know he's not about to get out of the prison, and will probably get shipped off to the asylum if he doesn't stop shouting about being a doctor. It also brings up the question of whether Voorman was always a god. Was he in a similar position to the doctor, with his power transferred to him?

All in all, I love the concept of the omnipotent, omniscient god being a madman. Not so in love with the filmmaking -- the story feels rushed and far too simple for such a creative subject -- but it makes you think.

"It Pours" by Tim Parrish

"Y'all know. When it rains it pour. Can't argue that, can we?"

This is basically a story about sadness and awareness of the horrors of the world. The ending is absolutely my favorite part, when the narrator's father goes to help his neighbor, and, upon returning home, finds that the rainwater got into their house too. He seems to lose himself and become almost giddy, saying that when it rains it pours. I find this to be a very realistic image of a person in his situation. Faced with a son suffering at war, a friend lost in grief, and a terrible rainstorm, his cold, hard demeanor breaks away into delusional happiness. I've experienced this -- when you reach a point of sadness and misfortune and stress, you can kind of break, and start laughing or, in the father's case, pirouetting across your waterlogged living room. It feels like a survival mechanism, like a runner's second wind. It's this wave of energy you get when you hit rock bottom, and it's kind of beautiful in a way. The way the father is acting is a bit scary but so believable and real that I can't help but love it. It shows people's innate ability to power through things; even at the very rock bottom of sadness, when he is relying on basic tasks around the house to keep him productive and moving, we break into this almost carelessness, this moment of "everything has gone to shit so why not literally dance in the rain?" that, despite its terrible causes, is beautiful in its own way.

I also really like the multiple mentions by the narrator of mildew growing in his room -- it serves not only as foreshadowing to the massive storm approaching but also as a metaphor for the troubles he's beginning to see in the world. Before he heard Bob's tape, he didn't even think his brother was being shot at, let alone disposing of the dead and seeing people killed. It's a loss of innocence.

There's an interesting comparison to be drawn between Mr. Ramos and his car and the narrator's father bleaching the house. They need these mundane, somewhat unnecessary tasks to keep them grounded and distract them from the terrible places where their sons are. It's the physical, aesthetic tasks that keep them in the world and grounded, and it's sad to see Mr. Ramos lose that, because it seems to have been the only thing keeping him grounded like that.