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.
