Explicating Plum Plum Pickers

Raymond Barrio writes his except from the story Plum Plum Pickers in a way that makes his main character Manuel seem trapped like animal which ultimately leads to his revolt against his greedy boss. Barrio experiments with the idea of how pressured and physically tired does a man have to feel before he says "that is enough" and finally stands up for not only him self but his fellow workers. There is only so much torment a man can take. There is only so much lack of space in a man's cage in which they can endure before they have to break free. And this finally straw for Manuel is his boss's pay cut. A pay cut which was not only promised not too happen but one that was most likely going straight into the pocket of the acquisitive employer, Rodriguez.

In the first paragraph word choice is the biggest way Barrio reduces the workers to animals. Brute is repeated five times in only the first paragraph. If Barrio reduces the characters of the story it helps get a sense of how trapped and poorly treated they are. “There had to an end. There had to be. There- trapped. There had to be a way out. Locked. There had to be a respite. Animal.(Paragraph 1)" By repeating the phrase "There had to be" Barrio is basically saying that there is no way out. The workers can dream and believe that there is but they are trapped like animals. Barrio also uses one word sentence to get across the point of being reduced to animals. Words such as " Animal", "Locked", "Beast", "Wreck", and "Predator" are symbolized their imprisonment. Even the task of getting a drink of water relieved themselves from the day's heat transforms them into animals. “Replenish his brute cells and animal pores and stinking follicles and pig gristle, a truly refined wreck of an animal." Pig gristle is not phrase normally used for describing a man's pores and follicles but Barrio does to make it seem that these workers are nothing but low down dirty animals.

Lunch and Mid afternoon were only given one word to their paragraphs. These are the times that the workers look forward to. During the days work they pray for their time when they can relax. But Lunch and Mid afternoon are not long, relaxing, enjoyable times. These are short and when over the workers have to go straight back to work. Because these periods are so short they are given one word each. Barrio's techniques are working. After lunch thoughts are sped back up to the quick sentences with much thought in them. Trees and branched are being symbolized in this passage. "The briary branches. The scratching leaves. “The twigs tearing at his shirt sleeves." ( Paragraph 3). The trees are not hated by the workers. The trees are all they know. In Albert Camus’ essay entitled The Myth of Sisyphus he describes Sisyphus' rock as being "his thing". The rock is not hated but it symbolizes all the toil he goes through. In Plum Plum Picker's the tress are in a sense Manuel’s thing. The symbol all the work he has done throughout his years, and for what, to have all his money stolen by Rodriquez? No matter how hard Manuel tries his bucket will fall "splattering the fruit he so laboriously picked" to the ground and all of his work will go to waste.

The theme Barrio is getting across is located in the last paragraph of the except. It does not matter how trapped and animal like you feel you can always conquer and prevail. Man has the need to "experience on and pride. Or else they are dead before they die". If the workers continued to live their lives being steeped on Barrio is saying that they would be already dead. If it wasn't for the word choice and symbolizes earlier on the passage they overall theme would ave been lost. Men are not machines. Men are not animals. They are people who need to feel a sense of achievement and honor or else there would be no point in continuing one's life.

The Penal Colony by Franz Kafka blog posts

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Penal - of, pertaining to, or involving punishment, as for crimes or offenses
The Penal Colony. The Punishment Colony. This is a very fitting title for this particular story by Kafka. I started reading this one and there are a couple of questions I have that maybe you guys can help me out with.
The explorer is an interesting character that I don't understand. Since Kafka doesn't name any of his characters in The Penal Colony we are only introduced to him as simply The Explorer. He seems to be the only on with morals. The officer seems so intent on serving his Commandant, even though he seems more devoted to the old one rather than the new one, that all morality seems to fly out the door.

In all of Kafka's stories he seems to be creating his own world. In our world I am sure that a colony would take pleasure in seeing people's death sentences but Kafka writes in a way which makes the reader seem as far away from the world he is writing about as possible, for example, not naming his characters.

Let me take you to a passage on page 150. This is when the officer is talking about how each prisoner takes the punishment from the apparatus." But how quiet he grows at just about the sixth hour! Enlightenment comes to the most dull-witted. It begins around the eyes. From there it radiates. A moment that might tempt one to get under th Harrow oneself." I believe this is one of the most important passages I have read so far in this story. In the most severe forms of torture a human being will be enlightened. Enlightened by what? Do they have a religious experience? Do they finally see the error in there ways? Does anyone find it interesting that the fact that a person is enlightened during their sixth hour makes the officer actually want to get inside the apparatus himself? Also, "It begins around the eyes." This could just be the fact that James Joyce is following me around in life but Kafka has Enlightenment begins in the eyes makes me believe that he did this because of the myth of Oedipus.

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" The Commandant in his wisdom ordained that the children should have the preference; I, of course, because of my office had the privilege of always being at hand; often enough I would be squatting there with a small child in either arm." (154). This sent me over the edge. People used to fight to get a spot at the chance to see the death sentence of a criminal and they would give priority spots. How shameless can a colony be? They, and when I say they I mean the colony sense Kafka uses no names, are taking the innocence of little children by letting them get the first spots to see a man be tortured for twelve hours because they most likely committed a small act of defiance. It is not good that I think the most sane character in this story is the mn who said " Throw that whip away or I'll eat you alive." to the captain. Like I said this is like a different world. Of course people like to see the punishement others, but not like this. The apparatus audience reminds me of the Salem witch trials but only worse. And when something is more immoral than the witch trials one could only imagine the other horrible things the Penial Colony has the power to do.

What would happen to the explorer if he pointed out the immoral acts that the officer is performing? The officer seems to really care about the thoughts the explorer has. I see this because the officer wants to fully explain how the apparatus works and if the explorer gets the wrong idea of the machine the officer quickly fixes this notion. "The explorer thought to himself...The injustice of the procedure and the inhumanity of the execution was undeniable. No one could supposed that he had any selfish interest in the manner, for the condemned man was a complete stranger..." (152). So obviously this island is one of the only places which uses such harsh punishment. The explorer is a traveler who has seen many places and never usually has urges to comfront the inhumanity that the people use but in this senario he wants to stand up for the prisoner. Will he?


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Wrapping up my blogs on The Penal Colony I wanted to adress the theme of absurdism. As suspected the officer does put himself through the apparatus. I was thinking that Kafka wanted to satire how people are so devoted to there kings. All of The Commandant's follows were waiting for an absurd prophecy to come true. The prophecy went as such, "after a certain number of years the Commandant will rise again and lead his adherents from this house to recover the colony. Have faith and wait!" (167). This is absolutely ridiculous. I wish I could understand why Kafka ended the story like he did. He never really answers many questions. He does have the officer go on a rant of why he was trying to impress the explorer and his planes to overthrow the new Commandant which answers many of my earlier questions but the end of the story is very anti-climactic.

The condemned man and the soldier make the effort to leave the corrupt colony but the explorer leaves them. I believe what he witnessed was enough and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the colony so he left and didn't look back. The author's purpose I am still confused about. At first I was thinking it was to show the enlightenment a person can gain during their last few moments of death that no one can understand until they have reached that moment in their life. After finishing the story I believe the author's purpose was to show corruption in a colony and how people follow inhumane acts just for amusement. I don't think I have gotten it right just yet, but I feel I am close.

Description of a Struggle by Franz Kafka blog posts

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Kafka has one very interesting way of telling stories. In "Description of a Struggle" his main character is found sitting alone at a table. As a reader I don't know why he was invited to this party, and why he is sitting all by himself. The confusing style in which Kafka writes makes me believe that the main character is somewhat insane and most of the story is being told inside of his head. Why didn't his acquaintance burst out into rapid conversation the minute the two had left the party? His acquaintance seemed so intent on telling him the story of the lady he had been with and when they were finally on the walk nothing was said between the two of them. This makes the narrator seem very self-conscious thinking of all different ways that his acquaintance would be planning to kill him sense they were both alone and nothing was being said.

" -that I began to feel a certain fear. I realized that whether I allowed myself to be stabbed or ran away, my end had come."

As the story proceeds his thoughts become more and more absurd. The wording is beautiful but his thoughts become crazier. He thinks way to hard about things and his thoughts becoming over exaggerated turning his walk with an acquaintance into a fight for his life. This is why I believe most of the story isn't happening but being imagined in his head.

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" Oh well, memories," said I. " Yes, even remembering in itself is sad, yet how much more its object! Don't let yourself in for things like that, it's not for you and not for me. It only weakens one's present position without strengthening the former one- nothing is more obvious - quite apart from the fact that the former one doesn't need strengthening." (15)

This quotation seems extremely interesting to me. The protagonist's mind has been wondering before this passage and when he spoke these words they jumped out at me and I thought that I couldn't agree more with them. Tell me what you guys think of this passage. Every day people are stuck in their memories, trying to figure out how they could have done something better, differently, or not at all. The way Kafka describes these people is brilliant. They constantly try to strengthen the past which is only making the present weaker.

After thinking about this passage I realized that the protagonist never goes back in time. The reader never reads of his past. Of course, he does go on a memory tangent after explaining how one should never live in the past but that is only to prove his point that he does indeed have memories. I believe that is why it was so hard to feel for and understand the character while first reading this story because he never gives us any back round information on who he is. Who is he? We know he went to a party and we know he works in an office. Other than that the reader is basically being thrown on a roller coaster into his mind because it is extremely hard to understand a man who tells us that he went for a joy ride on a man that he only knew for one night. That part of the story could not have possibly been real. This is were I am getting my notion that a lot of the story is in his head. There would be no way that his acquaintance would let the narrator jump on top of his and ride him up the Laurenziberg.

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I thought you guys would find this interesting so if you can search the link. This sculpture was influenced by Franz Kafka's "Description of a Struggle". The man is riding on the other man's shoulders but the acquaintance doesn't have a head. I thought this an interesting take on the acquaintance. What is the acquaintance isn't really real at all. This goes along with our theme of the story being all in his head.

" What is it that makes you all behave as though you were real? Are you trying to make me believe I'm unreal, standing here absurdly on the green pavement? You, sky, surely it's a long time since you've been real, and as for you, Ringplatz, you have never been real." (40)

This is a very intense quote in the Fat Man's story consisting of Jerome Faroche yelling at the moon. I tried searching who or what Ringplatz is all I could come up with is that it is a place. That is pretty much it. Do any of you know what Ringplatz is. It has never been real. This was an amazing speech said by Jerome and I feel like it needs to be done justice in my head by me knowing exactly what he is talking about.

The Movement of Water In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The Movement of Water In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

In The Portrait of the Artist As A young Man, James Joyce uses the movement of water as way of showing the tragic hero, Stephen Dedalus's coming of age as well as his lose of innocence. Originally, Joyce names the protagonist's name Stephen Hero. This was to show that Stephen was in fact the tragic hero. He did have some flaw which will utlimately lead to his downfall. Although to follow his Greek mythology theme he names his character Dedalus. Daedalus, the father of Icarus, was a tragic hero along with his son. Daedalus had the passion to change the laws of nature and in doing so his son was quietly killed by the powerful sea.

When boys at Dedalus' school are having a conversation about two other boys who got kicked out for performing some kind of homosexual play in the school urinal Joyce has Stephen remember Eileen, the first girl that Stephen ever had an attraction for This seems rather odd because what they boys are talking about is dirty and sinful and Stephen is remembering one of the purest memories he has. " Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she was a girl. They were like ivory: only soft." ( Joyce 51). Ivory symbolizes the utmost purity. Joyce describes Stephen's first encounter with a girl not of his family and he is awestruck by how innocent and pure she was.

According to Sigmund Freud's Oedipus Complex every man had an unconcious desire to grow up to kill their father and marry their mother. Joyce was well away of Freud theory and used it throughout his writing of the novel. The Doors put it best in their song "Then End" by having spoken lyrics that went " Father? - Yes, Son - I want to kill you - Mother, I want to...". Although the Doors, did fit the Oepdipus complex nicely into their music, Joyce consistently has the symbol of eyes throughout his story. Joyce has Stephen's eyes symbolize his manhood. When he is with Eileen she innocently covers his eyes to play as game which is somewhat like hid-and-go seek. Symbolically Stephen's eyes are being torn out because he fells he is sinning by having thoughts about Eileen.
Eileen is a Tower of Ivory, a House of Gold. In the passage in which Joyce describes Eileen he uses the movement of water for the first time in a pure sense. " Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like the gold in the sun. Tower of Ivory. House of Gold." (51). Joyce describes how her hair streams. To stream is to flow like water, tears, or blood. Joyce has water and tears in his novel and each time they are mentioned they are for purposes to enrich the fact that Dedalus is not in a happy place in his life. But Eileen is different. Her hair streams. This is the only time that the movement of water is symbolizes how happy Dedalus can be as well as his lose of innocence. Eileen is a real girl he doesn't have to imagine in his head and that makes him happy that her hands can touch him and her hair can stream. He actually is starting to have thoughts about girls not in a pure way and it is confusing him. At this point in the passage, Joyce takes the reader back to story of couple of children "smuggling" (50) in the urinal. After having water for once be a sense of happiness as well as lose of innocence Joyce uses water only for lose of innocence. Stephen wonders why the boys were in the urinal smuggling. " But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something. It was all thick slabsa slate and water trickled all day out of tiny pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there." (51). The end of the passage beautifully symbolizes the movement of water. Joyce decided that the dirty and sinful act that the boys were performing would take place in the urinal. Water dripped all day out of the tiny holes in the slates. Stephen is realizing how sinful a people can be and Joyce rightly puts wthe trickling of water in his mind while thinking of this.

Later on in Stephen's life his lose of innocence becomes recognized. In Autumn, the time of death, he can no longer stand the sight of cows which were so interesting and beautiful to him before. " But when autumn came the cows were driven home from the grass: and the first sight of the filthy cowyard at Stradbrook with its foul green puddles and cots of liquid dung and steaming brantroughs sickened Stephen's heart." (68). The liquid is now used to symbolize the harsh truth that Stephen is going through changes. He is not the young innocent boy anymore. He is becoming an intellectual young man who's eyes are starting to open and is seeing the world for what is actually is : a steaming pile of liquid dung. His character Mercedes earlier became the first girl he had sexual relations with and now the world is not quite the same. Whether Mercedes was in his head or real nontheless he still lost his innocence and Joyce that through the movement of water. " The cattle which had seemed so beautiful in the country on sunny days revolted him and he could not even look at the milk they yielded" (68). The milk that the cows yielded is a form of moving water. Dedalus is revolted by this milk that the cows are yielding. In this passage he is coming close to adulthood but still has a way to go.
Whether movement of water is used to symbolize purity or the lose of Dedalus's disgust for what he once loved Joyce is always using water to show the lose of Stephen's innocence.

I, Mark of Senior Honors, to you

This is a short play I wrote. It was a research project on Charles Olsen.


Man 1: The People
Man 2: This is Polis
Man 1: The Body Politics
Man 2: This is Polis
Man 1: The Culture, the Place
Man 2: This is Polis
Man 1: Eyes
Man 2: This is Polis...Who Am I?
Man 1: Charles Olsen
Man 2: Where Am I?
Man 1: Here
Man 2: Where was I?
Man 1: There
Man 2: How did I get here?
Man 1: Istorin...Come Here
Man 2: No...You are going to slap me
Man 1: No I am not
Man 2: Ok
(Slap)
Man 1: Come Here
Man 2: No...You are going to slap me
Man 1: No I am not
Man 2: Ok
(Slap)
Man 1: What do you know?
Man 2: Pardon?
Man 1: What do you know?
Man 2: I know a house made of mud & wattles
Man 1: When?
Man 2: last week
Man 1: 300,000,000 years ago
Man 2: When
Man 1: The first human eyes to look again at the start of the human motion. (Just lastweek...300,000,000 years ago)
Man 2: This is place is fantastic...how much I love it
Man 1: ChangeOne Loves only formand form only comes into existence whenthe thing is born
Man 2: Kill those who advertise you out
Man 1: Kill Kill Kill Kill Kill those who advertise you out
Man 2: Kill
Man 1: Come Here
Man 2: No....you are going to slap me
Man 1: No I am not.
Man 2: ok
(Slaps)
Man 2: I love this place
Man 1: 300,000,000 Million years ago
Man 2: I loved this place 300,000,000 years ago...
Man 1: Come here
Man 2: No you are going to slap me
Man 1: No I am not.
Man 2. Ok.
(Slap)
Man 2: When will I learn?
Man 1: Istorin
Man 2: When will I learn?
Man 1: You will learn the simplest things last
Man 2: What?
Man 1: Come Here
Man 2: No...You are going to slap me
Man 1: No I am not
Man 2: Ok
(Slap)
Man 1: You will learn the simplest things last
Man 2: What?
Man 1: You will learn Worchester. You will learn theatre. You will learn poetry. You will learn Gloucester. You will learn Black Mountain College. You will learn history, anthropology, Robert Creely, power, advantage, liability. You will learn progress, you will learn regress, you will learn hate. You will learn Urban Renewal, tracks, trains. Call Me Ishmael, call me powerful, call me Moby Dick, call me comfortable, Call me Maximus, Call Me You, You is Ferrini, He is you, call me everything. I am greater than anyone you have ever known. You and I will learn water, you will learn Polis....And the fish.
Man 2: I understand
Man 1: And the fish
Man 2: I understand now
Man 1: And the fish...Come here
Man 2: No I understand now...you are going to slap me.
Man 1: No I won't
Man 2: No I know you will...
Man 1: persistence of place
Man 2: Polis is this
Man 1: Polis is fish
Man 2: Polis is here
Man 1: Polis is place
Man 2: Polis is culture
Man 1: Polis is eyes
Man 2: Polis is body politics, you, me, Charles, Kenny, Mark, Malden, Gloucester; Polish is 3 Million years ago, Polis is now.
Man 1: ...Polis is fish.

First Post

Just getting used to making my own posts. My actual work will be up soon. For now "The Old Guitarist" by Picasso.