The Persona in Margaret Oliphant’s Autobiography (Revised)

Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Professor Stapleton

Large Essay (Revision)

May 9th, 2014

The Persona in Margaret Oliphant’s Autobiography

Margaret Oliphant’s persona is like that of an archaeologist.  She tries to uncover her past and is discerning which memories to reminisce, and at times, she discovers that she doesn’t want to forego her piousness, but to instead face the same, futile hardships (regarding the death of her children) that would be hidden or obstructed from view.  Her persona’s unifying theme is her children, and her persona is not intended to say that the moral lesson is to not have children, but that one should come to a state of equilibrium when confronted with loss.  Her persona’s carefully chosen memories that seem happy are when she is not talking about her love life or them: “[the autobiography] was written for my boys, for Cecco in particular” (Oliphant, 1990 86).  Her persona had to deal with a lot of unfairness wherever she encountered it, losing her children and husband to diseases and not getting a few of her works published, less importantly.  The loss of her family gives her persona a distraught, edgy tone throughout the autobiography.  This causes the reader to empathize with her persona, strongly, as it often takes a lamenting tone for long periods of the narrative.  Also, some of the mishaps she encountered with publishers may have been due to her being a woman in a patriarchal society.  Oliphant wants her readers to take away her life, to immortalize it into the English canon, but more importantly, to remember her children. 

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeologist persona is paradoxically wrong and paranoid at times.  She is wrong about people believing that she is murderous—not because she is in reality responsible for her children’s and her husband’s deaths: “I did not know where to go in Paris, as I could not go back to the same hotel where we had been when my husband was with me; and in our innocence we went to the Bristol!—my sister-in-law having been advised to go there, at second or third hand, through Mr. Pentland” (Oliphant, 1990 88).  Without medication to save her loved ones, she tries to not appear in any way responsible for her loved ones’ deaths.  This however is not in reality how she is viewed, though one person she mentions calls her responsible: “One cruel man the other day told me I had ruined my family by my indulgence and extravagance” (Oliphant, 1990 79).  But, the events that unfolded seem to warp her mind into thinking she is responsible, as evidenced by her often times trying to forget the past and her persona takes a guilty tone often right after a death.  Margaret appeared capable of handling herself and her family, there were times that this was questionable to a psychologist, or anyone who saw her suffering. 

Also, society did not understand illnesses as we understand them today: for instance, antibiotics were not widely available, which could have prevented many of her loved ones’ deaths, and the theories surrounding the spreading of diseases would have been primitive.  Essentially, she was very lucky to be alive even though she thought of her having survived the diseases that befell her children and husband as a curse.  She was driven to the point where she could not handle her misfortunes, and temporarily denounced and renounced God even though He was central to her life; she regains her piousness when she finds a way to forgive herself. 

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeologist persona appears to self-reflect at the dig site of her past memories about her youth, gloomily, as though there were few positive things to remember.  Early on in the autobiography, when she is young, she chooses to remember her deceased sister, Isabella, with despair.  At the time, in the autobiography, of when Margaret Oliphant narrates her youthful years living with her parents, the persona sort of daydreams, melancholically about if one were not dead but alive: her “[mother] had lost three children one after another—one a girl about whom I used to make all sorts of dream-romances, to the purport that Isabella had never died at all…” (Oliphant, 2002 56).   And she reflects that she had few friends while growing up: “I grew up without any idea of the pleasures and companions of youth… I had nobody to praise me except my mother and Frank” (Oliphant, 2002 66).  At times she foreshadows the terrible troubles that awaited her: “But there is always a prophetic ache in the heart when such calamity is on the way” (Oliphant, 2002 68).  Margaret Oliphant lacked persistence at climbing up from a deep cataclysm; she regressed into the shadows of the mind. 

Margaret’s archaeologist persona finds sharp objects that poke her and hurt her often as she digs around—not only are these symbolic of life’s events, but failed relationships.  “Now in this innermost chamber of the heart which no man except a husband can enter and he but a little, I am alone always, alone in the world for ever.” (Oliphant, 2002 46).  This also suggests her persona is heterosexual and that she guards her feelings from strangers. Earlier on in her autobiography, before she met her future husband, Frank, she had a failed relationship with a man whom she considered to be very unattractive.  After she gets published for the first time, she at times does not understand why publishers publish lower people on her idea of intellectual merit instead of her own works, too.  She feels betrayed by the publisher’s lack of confidence in her art.

Margaret Oliphant’s youthful quality talks about the past in a humble tone to others; she has this innocence quality of who is intelligent and inexperienced at the enjoyments of life  When she had some guests over to talk about “books and the finest subjects… [she] had not the least idea how to [amuse her guests]” they most likely were not good friends and she repeatedly said that she was friendless for long times, withdrawing from society essentially (Oliphant, 1990 39).  The fact that her parents were poor most likely contributed to this sense of inexperience: “[My mother] was a poor woman all her life, but her instinct was always to give” (Oliphant, 2002 62).  And when she finally came across death, she innocently expresses it: “I never had come within sight of death before” (Oliphant, 2002 75).  Even as a married woman she viewed herself as unworldly:  “I did not know where to go in Paris, my husband was with me; and in our innocence we went to the Bristol,” she writes (Oliphant, 1990 88). 

By contrast, the persona of Margaret Oliphant reminisces about her past with envy towards the end of her autobiography, since it took her thirty or so years to finish her autobiography.  Her older persona paints a landscape of a happy time when travelling abroad: “I think with pleasure of the pleasant tumult of that arrival, --the delight of rest, the happy sleepy children all got to bed, the little party of women, all of us about the same age, all with the sense of holiday, a little outburst of freedom, no man interfering, keeping us to rule or formality” (Oliphant, 1990 107).  Albeit, this is a memory of a time when she’s alone and everyone she loved is dead.  She also later portrays herself as a thoughtful, imaginative lady who is capable of imagining other points of view with immense skill. 

Margaret Oliphant’s persona places blame on herself and shows this by repeating her stories often for many of life’s injustices that were thrown her way.   Effectively, her persona highlights the events that have led up to the deaths of her children, or the death of her husband, through this literary style.  She repeats the story of Maggie’s death twice—once in the beginning and once towards the end.  At the beginning, she explains her death with a large sense of loss and what-if melancholy: “[Maggie] was just beginning to sympathize with me, to comfort me, and at this dear moment, her little heart expanding, her little mind growing, her sweet life blossoming day by day, God has taken her away out of arms and refuses to hear my cry and prayer” (Oliphant, 2002 37).  Towards the end, she remembers Maggie again in a more constrained and almost frank tone, but still melancholically and lamentably: “On the 27^th of January 1864, my dear little Maggie died of gastric fever” (Oliphant, 1990 108).  Happier moments in her life she avoids while she’s lamenting, because she’d rather cause a pang about these misgivings.  But this does not stop her from continuing her for-her-children theme.

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeological persona digs further into the earth to find alternative answers of if her children were still alive.  She pictures herself as being instead dead or her and her children are all happy together in the grave—she is nonetheless dead.  The most moving of her sub-plots was when she loses her husband, which happens basically in the climax of her story, which caused me to feel goose bumps when I read it.  She has lost her lover not by divorce or separation, but by the injustice of terminal illness—much worse than most of us can experience.  Death comes into her life unfair-like, which produced a sad sensation in me very profoundly, where she says: “when his father was dead,” speaking of her boy (Oliphant, 1990 78).  The hidden, moral message in her persona seems to be that the most important thing in life to cherish every moment and be strong. 

Margaret Oliphant’s archaeologist persona places the urn of religion closer to her body, accepting that God can decide who dies when, but she doesn’t think any of her children will go to hell and that they are at some kind of happier place.  Also, her persona blames a lot of her unhappiness on God, who wants to take her children away from her, basically.  At times though, she uses her belief in God to get through the tough moments in her life, to essentially set aside the grief.  This can be seen by her mentioning the chapel where she walked every morning at one point, in England.  She probably was a church goer, though she does not explicitly state this. 

She blames God often destroying the religious pots, finally accepting her children’s death to be the will of God, though she thinks him unjust.  She doesn’t trust him: “She is with God, she is in his hands… Can I trust her with him?  Can I trust Him that He has done what was best for her, that He has her safe, that there has been no mistake?”  I don’t think her persona portrays herself as thanking God for anything she has been given, because they are all taken away… In one of her most despairing moments, she says, “It seems as if God had broken his word to me, leaving me here helpless with my hands stretched out, refusing me with an unreasonable silence” (Oliphant, 1990 80).  She is indeed a fatalist, a victim to God’s plan, like a damned Calvinist.   

Whereas earlier in her story, where she was more submissive to the will of God, she in her older age becomes more thoughtful with viewing her life’s struggles.  She begins to see herself from a bird’s eye perspective, thus, more clearly.  “I feel myself like the sufferers in Dante, those of whom we have been reading, who are bent under the weight of stones…” (Oliphant, 1990 99).  Her piousness has not waned, however, since she quotes the bible still rarely and only when doing so closely summarizes her past and foreseeable future (when she has begun to picture herself dead): “I was still young, and all was well with the children.  My heart had come up with a great bound from all the strain of previous trouble and hard labor and the valley of the shadow of death” (Oliphant, 1990 104).  Though she has will power to overcome her suffering, she ends the sentence on a sad note: a synechdoche of her life and an allusion from the bible. 

Often, her archaeologist persona befriends other non-archaeologists from a vain perspective of similar experiences and characteristics, giving herself a warm, friendly tone.  She, at one point, mentions that she became friends with a woman who had similarly lost her children due to disease early on.  Later, she makes friends with a woman that reminds her of her mother, and they became close.  Her brother, Willie, who she is friends with throughout the narrative is always there to take of his sister.  She also takes note of female infantilization in Mr. Blackett’s behavior towards his wife, which she finds irritable: “Mrs. Blackett was about my age, and a fine creature, very much more clever than her husband, though treated by him in any serious matter as if she had been a little girl.—a thing quite new to me, and which I could not understand” (Oliphant, 1990 100).

At times in the autobiography, she becomes politically concerned about events like for instance the procession in Rome while she’s with her husband.  And she uses Marxist terminology, who evidently influenced her, such as the motif of “Bourgeois,” twice throughout the novel—once while commenting on female infantilization as I mentioned above, and the second time, while talking about her father’s spend-thrift habits: “[My mother] would have borne anything and everything for her children’s sake, to keep their home intact, and her youth had been troubled and partially dependent one—dependent upon bourgeois relations on the other side” (Oliphant, 2002 57).  According to the annotation, she was referring to a middle-class family, however, I think she was making a larger argument that there was some kind of economic injustice in her family. 

Towards the latter half of her autobiography, her persona begins to recognize that focusing on the sorrows of the past will not get her very far and is not in her own interests, perhaps health-wise.  She finds an age-old remedy—laughter—to brighten her day, laughing again after a long time of seriousness, at a time after she lost her last child.  She even makes a self-reflection about how she keeps over lamenting, “But I must not begin to write of my boy, or I will not be able to think of anything else—not five months yet since he has been taken from me” (Oliphant, 1990 74).  Her persona also begins to focus on day-to-day activities, though at times, the narrative returns right back to despair of loss concerning another child who’s dead.

In her autobiography, Margaret Oliphant’s persona is pious to a large extent and is critical of herself in her way of responding to life’s misfortunes.  She tries to portray herself in as realistic light as possible, being self-critical of her faults and asking large questions regarding her misfortunes in life.  Why did He (God) take away her children?  By these sorts of rhetorical questions, her persona asks for forgiveness and empathy from the reader, though she expects nothing in return.   Her despairing persona, which at times appears to be tamed by time, can sometimes revert back to remembering someone who is dead 30 years later, however, since the memory is of her son.  She presents herself as a hard worker and as a deep thinker as a writer should be.   

Works Cited:

Oliphant, Margaret.  Jay, Elisabeth ed. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant.  Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990.  Print.

Oliphant, Margaret.  Jay, Elizabeth ed. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant.  Mississauga, Broadview Press Ltd., 2002.  Print.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in terms of Chivalric Rituals

Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in terms of Chivalric Rituals

The green knight was in opposition to British, chivalric values and rituals, which Sir Gawain symbolized.  The characters had differing views in terms of the purpose of chivalric rituals, specifically with respect to homage. The green knight, who was unknown to King Arthur’s audience, viewed his visit to King Arthur’s court as a challenge to an acclaimed group, since he viewed everyone else as being arrogant compared to himself (Greenblatt 143.258).  According to Knighting, homage and the meaning of ritual: The kings of England and their neighbors in the thirteenth century, the chivalric purpose that homage would have had, which was to maintain peace between rulers, was irrelevant to the green knight (294).  King Arthur’s court of lowly and exalted people was engaged in observing the chivalrous ritual of homage, even though the homage ritual was unofficial in the initial setting of the epic poem.  In my essay, I will be using the connotation of “chivalry” to mean the customs and practices of knightsaccording to the Oxford English dictionary, of which is a word that has been used since the 1300's.   More denotatively, chivalry means simply: men in arms and men and "fully armed men" (OED).  However, in my essay I mean the word “chivalry” to refer to the third connotation: "the position and character of a knight, knighthood” (OED).  

Chivalric rituals such as homage and knighting only had symbolic power because they were done before large audiences.  Rituals by knights were done in public settings and occasions, being typically planned beforehand.  They were done to prepare an heir to the throne for rule, for instance.  “A noble could only fully exercise his functions after he had been dubbed a knight”(Weiler 280).  And also, “dubbing” (in knighthood) “cemented concord and peace” between kingdoms (Weiler 292).  Not only that, but knighting “[denoted] both submission and honor” for the knighter and the knightee (Weiler 277).  Knighting was seen by many as an entrance into a kind of adulthood in which one could take up arms.   Young princes who weren’t knighted were largely seen as unable to rule unless they were knighted, except in the case of Alexander III of Scotland, who was 8 years old when he became king without being knighted (Weiler 281-2).   But there was a difference in hierarchy between the knighter and knightee that would have been stressed, for instance, in King Arthur’s court.  The knighter was always considered the superior in the hierarchy of knights (Weiler 276).  

By 1375-1400 a.d., the epic poem aforementioned was written and the importance of chivalric rituals would have been waning (Weiler 277).  This ridiculous ritual, because no one was expected to come out of it alive, of giving one blow of the axe for another at a later said dateset by the green knight would have been satirical in a world where written communication was becoming the dominant messaging mode in an increasingly complex social network—not official chivalric ceremonies such as the ritual of knighting or paying homage.  Nonetheless, in determining social position and maintaining relationships with other kingdoms, homage would have still been paramount during the medieval period the epic poem is set.  Cutting off the green knight’s head would have been parallel to other chivalric rituals such as knighting and paying homage, but most likely, it was intended in this fictional plot to have been satirical, making fun of chivalric rituals. The evidence for the satire latent in the aforementioned epic poem can be seen by the green knight possessing immortality (he was still alive after his head was chopped off), the fairy and the magical girdle could also be construed as being satirical about ancient medieval relationships.  

The green knight, magical like a headless horseman because he could survive his head being chopped off, was part of another non-vassal, dominion outside of King Arthur’s kingdomand would have been in opposition to King Arthur’s court.  King Arthur’s court, whichrepresented British values, was also the setting for the chivalric ritual of homage for other lords and kings to visit.  According to the perspectives of King Arthur and Sir Gawain, the green knight was engaged in a chivalric ritual of homage to their court.  This, however, was not the case according to the perspective of the green knight.  From the perspective of Arthur and his court, homage was done to maintain ties between rulers, and they were bound, by honor, to maintain the tie they had with whatever ruler the green knight was subject under (Weiler 294). The green knight’s presence reminded them of their status in the hierarchy of knights (Weiler276).  The difference would have been unimportant to the green knight, who was not a member of the round table, where the knights of the round table were famously attributed with equalityby their King.  Sir Gawain, being knighted by him, would have had to be submissive towards his King even if he weren’t his King (Weiler 280).  This important fact, however, was elided.  

The green knight departed from the traditions of medieval chivalry multiple times: he did not plan his meeting with King Arthur, which would have been traditional when paying homage; and he did not fully explain what was required of sir Gawain before he took up the challenge of striking a blow with the green knight’s axe.    The green knight says to Sir Gawain right after he has taken up the wager (that he could not do it), “…except for one thing: you must solemnly swear that you’ll seek me yourself; that you’ll search me out to the ends of the earth to earn the same blow…” (Greenblatt 145.394-6).  Of course, sir Gawain feels obliged to accept the challenge, but this is a large request to make.  During this time, the identity of the green knight has not been mentioned though it is at the end of the aforementioned epic poem.  The question asto who knighted the green knight has also been omitted, though it probably would have been on the minds of the low and high people of King Arthur’s court.  

The green knight’s idea of honor was less than that of the knight from King Arthur’s round table, or sir Gawain, because his honor depended on a lowly bet that sir Gawain would not find the green knight but would instead run away because he was a coward.  The green knight didn’t have a higher cause in his ritual of self-sacrifice, except to see who was manlier or morehonorable in his lowly knowledge of honor. Futhermore, the green knight underhandedly, secretively withheld the knowledge that his wife was playing a role with a grander purpose beyond just looking pretty.  Bertilak de Hautdesert (aka the green knight) mentions to sir Gawainabout how he had set him up with his wife to test his chivalry: “And I know of your courtesies, and conduct, and kisses, and the wooing of my wife—for it was all my work!  I sent her to test you—and in truth it turns out you’re by the far the most faultless fellow on earth…” (Greenblatt 185.2360-3).  The green knight here takes a higher position in terms of honor than sir Gawain, but overall, the green knight thinks that honor can be played with as though it’s a game.

Throughout the aforementioned epic poem, Sir Gawain, unlike the green knight, consistently showed great honor to King Arthur.  For instance, when Gawain takes the place of King Arthur because he thinks it’s unbefitting of a king, during the challenge, sir Gawain’s honor becomes more evident: “For I find it unfitting, as my fellow knights would, when a deed of such daring is dangled before us that you take on this trial—tempted as you are—when brave, bold men are seated on these benches, men never matched in the mettle of their minds…” (Greenblatt 145.348-52).  Essentially, Sir Gawain would have preferred to take the bet to save his knighter (person who knights someone, which would have been King Arthur most likely), as a good knight should feel towards his superior.  For Gawain says, “I stake my claim, may this melee be mine” (Greenblatt 144.341-2). He followed through with the challenge that the green knight hadset before him, facing the green knight one year afterwards, which prevented any dishonor from shaming Gawain and King Arthur’s court.

Sir Gawain honored the challenge set up by the green knight exactly one year after Sir Gawain cut off his head, thus maintaining his notion of integrity as a knight.   When Sir Gawain meets with the green knight, the green knight says to him, “you have timed your arrival like a true traveler, honoring the terms that entwine us together…” (Greenblatt 183.2241-2).  Sir Gawain considered his obligation to the green knight fulfilled, taking the blow to the head yet surviving because of the green knight’s wife, who had given sir Gawain a magical girdle.  

Sir Gawain doesn’t recognize the wife of Bertilak de Hautdesert (the green knight), nor his wife’s girdle that saves sir Gawain’s life.  The green knight, though, had sent her to “to test [him]” (Greenblatt 185.2362).  The fact that Sir Gawain kissed her does not hurt the green knight’s feelings, as he merely brushes it off because he knows his wife would not commit adultery.   Sir Gawain feels as though he has somehow become less of a knight because he does not follow “the freedom and fidelity every knight knows to follow,” which somehow was at the expense of another fellow knight.  Nonetheless, Sir Gawain is forgiven by the green knight, who considers the situation with his wife “healed.”  Sir Gawain had cheated the outcome of the betjust as much as the green knight had cheated death with his magic, and so Sir Gawain is in thewrong to assume he did anything dishonorable. 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a satirical piece about the abandonment of reason for the purposes of homage and chivalric rites that were common in the period of King Arthur reign.Sir Gawain embodied those idealized chivalric values, but the green knight satirized them and was a force of fear amongst King Arthur and his knights.  Because chivalric rituals had fallen outof favor by the time written communication became the preferred mode, the author of this epic poem was able to make to poke fun at them without fear of reprisal (Weiler 277).  King Arthur, who may have been merely a legend, would have been long dead by the time this epic poem was written.   

Works Cited

Weiler, B. (2006). Knighting, homage and the meaning of ritual: The kings of england and their neighbors

in the thirteenth century. Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 37, 275-299.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed.  Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors vol. 1.  New York:

Norton and Company, 2013. Print.

Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford U Press, 28 April 2014.  Web. 28 April 2014

 

Imitation and Analysis of an excerpt from View from a Headlock, by Jonathan Lethem

Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Professor Eckstein

English 2150

24 April 2014

Original:

“Get up, son, you’re on the ground!” Mingus at his happiest called Dylan “son” in a booming voice, another quotation, half Redd Foxx, half Foghorn Leghorn.

He offered his hand, yanked Dylan to his feet. Dylan wanted to clear the leaf from Mingus’s hair but left it alone.

They trudged down a grade to a hidden patch of land, a tilted triangle of desolate ailanthus and weeds, choked in exhaust at the edge of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, cars whirring indifferent below. The patch was littered with cigarette butts, forty-ounce bottles, shreds of tire—an oasis of neglect. Mingus leaned against the wall, and thumbed the blue lighter, held it sideways to the tip of a small, faucetlike chrome pipe, another surprise product of the green jacket’s lining. Head tilted, eyes squeezed in concentration, Mingus sipped at smoke, held it in with thin-pressed lips. Fumes leaked from his nose. He nodded his chin at Dylan, finally exhaled.

Imitation:

            “Stop lazing about, wake up!”  Jake despairingly gasped.  He called Robert a “friend” in a soft tone, and quoted his father’s diction, which was heavily influenced by the mix of Pink Floyd and the Beatles.

            He handed him the money, brought him to a sitting position.  Jake patted Robert on the back.

            They walked side by side towards the curving road by the river, a winding river that was brown and had dolphins in it, polluted to the n’th degree by heartless corporate pawns who couldn’t give a damn about nature.  The curving road was dirty as a speckle, no trash to be seen for miles, in the despairing town of Dystopia.  Jake leaned against a lamp post, and held up his passport, beholding it to the light that emanated from the alien sun, the former of which was another work of the aliens who controlled Earth.  His head was trying to discern the writing and so it waned, which was memorized into hieroglyphics.  He breathed in the dirty air with his nonexistent lips.  Sulfide leaked from his alien nostrils.  He erected his head at Robert, finally inhaling from a filter.   

Imitation and Analysis of an excerpt from View from a Headlock, by Jonathan Lethem

My imitation closely resembles the excerpt from View from a Headlock, paying close attention to content, and I try to use his syntax.  In my essay, I will look at the various dictions: first, Mingus’s mulatto status and his friendly, warm characteristics; and second, Dylan’s white, “pure” behaviors that he wants to reduce in order to fit into the African-American community.  Dylan also has a persona that inclines him to befriend people of similar characteristics.  I tried to take into account the stylistic choice made by Jonathan Lethem to reflect upon the characters’ various dictions with the omniscient narrator of his short story.   Also, I have tried to take into account the various points of view between the aliens and the utopians, as well, when I had written my imitation.  My analysis will describe how I similarly use elements that Jonathan Lethem uses (of a single setting and cultural imagery (such as the music quotation) to make my imitation just as complicated as Jonathan Lethem’s.  Then, I will explain why I chose this segment over other segments—essentially, why I liked this passage a lot. 

I think the passage I had chosen exemplifies dialogism, and so in my analysis, I will point out how I use dialogism, too.  Since the passage that I selected contains dialogism and to some extent, carnivalesque diction, I had written those into mine to some extent.  And lastly, I will explain how I used a binary opposition in my imitation, relating it to the few I discovered in the original excerpt.  I will relate the subject of my imitation to the original, answering why I chose to talk about aliens instead of everyday life. 

I also think the passage has binary oppositions, and so, I have my own that are interwoven into the prose-imitation.  For instance, the difference power between the two characters in my imitation: one has to advice the other to go to the airport instead of not being needed to be reminded; there’s a difference of maturity.  Next, the obvious difference between interests: there’s a human population on the planet versus the aliens that visiting and who we see through their eyes.  Similar to the binary opposition of nature versus manmade phenomenon in the original excerpt, I have included imagery of nature—the dolphins for instance and the river—and the curving road, which is human-made.   

             In the excerpt, Lethem paints his setting with two heterosexual men who appear to be sitting on a lawn and conversing amongst each other in a friendly, concerned tone.  They appear to be talking in a monologue since they are both similar in what they like: they both like comic books, for instance.  Jonathan Lethem chooses to explain their ways of interacting (in terms of behavior and interpersonal communication) by an omniscient narrator who knows their thoughts, perfectly.  The characters aren’t necessarily aware of their own thoughts, though.  The unspoken, bodily behavior to offer Mingus’ hand to Dylan is symbolic of his friendship: he shows that blacks and whites can get along, especially if one is mulatto, so the example does not count, almost.  The main theme of the narrative as a whole—not the excerpt—appears to be about racism.  As you mentioned in class in a lecture, the author had structurally set up the story so that the blacks had a sort of racist attitude towards the whites—not the other way around.  While the two characters appear concerned for each other in a non-homo-social manner, as any pair of friends would, the omniscient narrator paints a kind of static landscape.  It does little to define where they are going or where they are, aside from a lawn, since the narrator is more concerned with developing the characters, which is the crux of this drama. 

The focus seems to not be on the urban landscape nor the natural “patch of land,” which are in binary opposition to one another (manmade phenomenon versus nature), but rather, how the characters are developing.  The focus then shifts from that of an innocent, urban setting, into what the humans have done to earth—they trashed it.  Lethem has inserted societal criticism into his imagery of the excerpt, though the focus is not on where they’re going.  Syntactically, he infuses each sentence with a lot of everyday imagery that are in dichotomy from one another, such as: “…weeds, choked in exhaust at the edge of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway…”; and a “…patch was littered with cigarette butts, forty-ounce bottles, shreds of tire…”  The narrator uses this imagery to take the focus away from the two main characters, temporarily, and it doesn’t detract from the story.  I try to do a similar thing in my imitation.    

            The stylistic choice of including a reflection done by the omniscient narrator on the first line where Mingus says, “Get up, son, you’re on the ground!” followed by “…another quotation, half Redd Foxx, half Foghorn Leghorn,” I have decided to include in my imitation but with a different character.  The tone of the author to include mood in the narrator’s diction I included as well where I said: “…Jake despairingly gasped,” except mine isn’t as positive sounding as “happiest.”  I also paid close attention to where the author includes nouns relating to characters and the relatively rare use of pronouns, which I decided to imitate in mine.  I tried to follow the syntax of the last, larger paragraph of the original excerpt in terms of where the author includes the subject.  My setting, however, with its similar, innocent-seeming city landscape is far more alien, which is what makes my imitation different. 

            Similarly to the author’s use of diction for the characters, my imitation is pretty casual sounding and matter-of-factly.  It’s not like my characters are in the military or speak in a secret language.  The characters, though abnormal like the author’s characters, are understandable to the reader yet they are alien, which is what makes my story unique.  Similarly to Mingus, Jake says “My friend, isn’t it time to go to the airport?”  This is what someone would say—not an alien.  Paradoxically, the alien seems to understand how to get across to the reader.  Similarly, Mingus, a mulatto, knows how to get across to the character on the page, and thus, to the reader. 

In terms of unspoken behaviors, Mingus, who offers his hand to his friend, Jake offered Robert some money that he owed and unlike Mingus, there are no homo-social problems among these aliens who speak among each other.  This difference can be overlooked however, as I do syntactically remain consistent in imitating the author’s prose.  Also, the behavior of Mingus “[leaning] against the wall”, I have my main character, Jake, do, but with a lamp post.  It is an uncanny lamp post, however, because it is created by aliens.             

I decided to write about aliens on earth who are personified, (if that word works), for it truly is impossible to understand aliens if we are to one day meet them, perhaps.  Sure, we’d be able to understand them in a limited way through their technology, math, etc., but our histories of development as a species is so radically different from theirs that we wouldn’t know how to begin to speak with them.  This is similar to the theme of View from a Headlock as a whole, because it’s about differences in histories and points of view. 

So what would happen if we met aliens like in my imitation?  In my excerpt, I have likewise chosen a scenario that aliens have conquered earth, like how whites mistreated blacks in a reversed sort of manner (during slavery), because in View from a Headlock, everything is switched.  Aleins would also consider us to be unattractive, and thus we would be like ants to them.  My imitation also explores the question: what if the aliens’ theory of Darwinian evolution is so wholly different and alien from ours that they view the definition of life to be not to breed, to survive, or to be able to move?  I take into account the possibility that Aliens would have other qualities that define their theory of life, and thus, we would be excluded.  It’s possible, and therefore, to add to the mystery of my excerpt, I decided to use this science-fiction aspect.