But haven’t you heard of intergenerational trauma?
People just need to read a few books by Steinbeck and pull themselves up by their own goddamn bootstraps.
But hes a white dude so its pretty easy to advocate personal agency and self reliance when you’ve had the silver spoon of privilege.
Although, it would be absurd to deny how the historical disenfranchisement of an entire peoples might not have effects on their descendants down the line.
But so the hell what I say. You can pick a person and blame them for your problems. Try to tear them down. But if your not doing anything to better your own station then isn’t the result a net negative? That isn’t progress is it.
Yep, it makes more sense and I agree with you. Although Steinbeck was always really damn depressing for me to read lol.
I never believed in intergenerational trauma either. That’s not a real thing - yes historical disenfranchisement can absolutely affect people now, but a) that’s not “trauma” unless you’re a snowflake and b) as you noted you can’t ignore trying to better your own station.
I think of The Grapes of Wrath and one might even loosely define him as a “socialist”, progressive or big government proponent today. The novel ends with a dude suckling off a chick’s tit ffs lol.
Anti cop(preacher killed); preacher loses faith because he fucked too many chicks filled with the “spirit” ; prayers don’t put food on table; moral subjectivity(Tom); mental health(Tom’s Uncle); feminism(Ma); end of hypermasculinity(Tom); call for social rebellion(death of preacher; Tom); broken men(Pa, side characters); tit suckling(welfare; redistribution)…
Ma Joad:
“Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”
“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.”
Tom Joad:
"I’ll be aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be everywhere-wherever you look. Wherever there is a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folk eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there. "
Thanks. I did this book for literature in sec school but they didn’t teach these things at the time. I somehow managed to find some similarities between this and the themes in Mad Max: Fury Road, if you can believe that lol. I don’t even read much fiction.
It had a huge impact on me not not because of his ideas, but his deep understanding of the human condition. It was what made me really go brush up on my English since trying to figure out the vernacular in the dialogue was almost like figuring out Shakespeare for a non-Westerner.
And I fucking HATED Hamlet not because of the language, but because I had to memorize lines of a whiny little bitch. Dropped lit in pre-U and took F math instead.
Steinbeck did intricately understand the human condition, that’s a certainty. Talented writer.
Reading Shakespeare as a non-westerner has to be a special kind of challenge lol! Kudos to taking it on. Brilliant writer, and another one who had a deep understanding of the human condition. King Lear is top 3 for me and Henry V has some of my favorite speeches.
I feel like a lot is lost in the language for people… especially Americans, whose language bears so little semblance of Shakespeare’s time. The Brits have the history, and the Bard is one of their own anyway.
I will say Hamlet is now one of my favorite plays, and it became so after watching my university theater group put it on. I always used to think of Hamlet as whiny, but in the stage show I was able to see a darker, more obsessed and driven prince portrayed and that made all the difference. After watching it I could go back, read, and see what I missed.
I absolutely think a stage presentation with truly good actors helps immensely in picking up things that can be missed when reading it.
The Kenneth Branagh of adaptation of Hamlet wasn’t bad. Tried to be too flashy to make it look “epic” and cast a lot of actors who shouldn’t have been in there but his acting carried the film. I never liked reading fiction anyway, just watching movies. The only times I go to the theater is when Les Miserables is playing or I’m forced to attend piano recitals. Doesn’t work for me lol.
I think theater is really touchy. Good theater is phenomenal, and bad is simply unmentionable. I also think it matters how it’s introduced. For example the Hamlet rendition I spoke of was in a tiny circular theater, only about 5 rows deep. So actors we’re almost entirely surrounded by the audience and the audience was much closer and more immersed.
But damn do I love Les Miserables
Edited to say - I think one of the difficulties with Shakespeare is that his characters have complex psychology and motives, so they can be portrayed multiple ways which is not always compelling.
I will have to revisit GOW. But that was not my take away. Granted I was in grade 10 when I read it. So many moons ago.
Hmm. When I was in high school our principal was very motivated to improve the prestige of our school. So as to show how great she was of course.
One of the metrics in the States that they rank schools by is with how many students take honour and Advanced Placement (essential college in high school) courses.
She had the great idea to get rid of all of the “on level” courses. So if you were in standard English class you were bumped to honours English and if you were in honours English you went to AP literature. I refused to take AP lit as I had zero interest and had to fight to stay in honours English.
We of course had to read Shakespeare. But you don’t “read” Shakespeare. You assign people roles and you act it out.
The hilarity that ensued was magnificent. Some of my classmates had a tenuous grasp of the English language at best and struggled to read just a few lines.
One of these people who struggled with words had to write a reflective essay where you were not allowed to use I statements. My classmate Mr. Tyrone used I statements and had to rewrite the paper. What did Tyrone do. He replaced every I statement with “Tyrone thinks”. My English teacher just laughed and accepted his assignment anyways.
Imagine dudes who couldn’t speak English good reciting Shakespeare in lit class. That’s what happened in my class lol. I couldn’t even speak proper English at the time. Differential equations and matrices and linear spaces made more sense to me.
However, in terms of comedy, you can’t beat this:
Tell me you don’t half-expect Danny Glover to appear somewhere in the scene slapping his forehead and going, “Cut it out, Riggs, I’m too old for this shit!”.
I liked them up to the Bulls on Parade album. They’re a good band. I only hated the cover of this song. Maybe cos it’s Springsteen. He’s like Steinbeck in that he can REALLY put images into your head with simple words - Thunder Road, Born to Run, the entire Born in the USA album. Big fan of his.
Hamlet’s age is a matter of debate. There is one theory that his age was suggested as 30 in order to suit the actor who played him. Originally, the text had Hamlet’s age suggested as well under 30 (Yorick was dead 12 years, not 23) but there were probably few, if any, actors that young who had the ability to play him.
Oh well, I don’t really care. Not a fan of Shakespeare anyway. Only read Hamlet and 1/4 of The Tempest before I switched courses.
I don’t know about theater, but I don’t think any of the younger film actors of that era could have pulled off anything close to what Kenneth Branagh did in his film version of Hamlet.
Mel Gibson’s performance wasn’t too bad, just that it was inconsistent. He was good in some scenes and laughable in others.
