An appraisal of the Blog System

As opposed to the Blog central, individual research blogs help one organize their thoughts for the RAE research paper. Posting on our blog was a constant in the research process. For example, we had to write annotations and explanations of our sources and post them to the blog. We also had access to each other's blogs so we were able to view the research progress of our classmates. Overall, I felt the RAE blog was a superfluous aspect of class. I found the most helpful assignments did not involve the blog. Aesthtically, writing my thoughts into a text entry box was not the best way to foster ideas. I actually thought the most effective assignment was the outline which truly helped me organize my ideas. The blog itself did not help me acheive any insight, it was basically a personal message board. As a matter of communication then, the blog was effective. Besides creating an arena for dialogue between the teacher and student, the blog did little else. Yet for this purpose, it may be a worthwhile addition to the class. However, it should not be added to a curriculum for helping students with research. Reading a blog is significantly more cumbersome than simply keeping a hard copy of the assignments.

Post Script to Synthesis Essay (Late)

After reading the comments on my synthesis essay, I realized that I was on the path to writing a research paper about the Holocaust, not my primary source. When I wrote my outline, I had a reinvigorated approach to the RAE paper, one where I focused on explicating my primary source through secondary sources. Previously, I had been using my cultural text as a platform upon which to pile facts; I saw it as the literary manifestation of my secondary sources. Now, I am viewing the assignment with an inverse outlook: my secondary sources are the factual manifestation of my primary source.
Specifically, I have focused more on the story itself in addition to the allegories and symbols within it. I feel that the innocently observational tone of the story is significant to its overall meaning. I had not even explored this idea in my Rhetorical analysis essay, but after much research it is relevant. As an account of Holocaust commemoration in Israel, "Shoes" presents the perspective of an Israeli youth who is somewhat removed from the Holocaust. His discoveries are analogous to the development of many Israeli pre-adolescents as they enter adult society. As the story progresses, the boy assumes a more intimate connection with his family's past and gains a greater awareness of the relationship between his heritage and the Holocaust. As the study of Israeli students' attitudes toward the Holocaust shows, Israeli teens share the same opinions as the narrator. The tone of the boys narration indicates that he is seeking reconciliation between the Holocaust and modern Israeli society. As a vibrant, socially-conscious society, Israel has reached a certain stasis in her commemoration of Holocaust victims, a state that the boys reaches at the end of the story.

RAE Checklist

1) I need to meet with Ms. Bates to discuss the viability of my thesis--does it conform to the parameters of the assignment?

2) I need to find a secondary source--if it exists--that discusses the process of writing about the Holocaust.

3) I need to finish reading my sources and contemplating their place in my thesis.

I mean a la mode...I'm an idiot

What's On my plate? How about some Primary Source a al mode.

Alex Greenberg
1) Working Thesis:
Shoes by Etgar Keret presents an allegorical paradigm of Holocaust observance in Israel. The young narrator reaches an ultimate equilibrium between honoring the past and adapting to the future—a state that is universal across Israeli society. Keret explores the societal components of this phenomenon, regarding relationships between social groups and factions in Israel.

2) Sub-claims:
a) In his story, Keret implicitly forwards a secularist agenda. He exhibits the “fighting-culture” of secular Israel through the old man’s militancy. The time and setting of the story also allude to the secular-religious debate that shapes Israel’s commemoration of the Holocaust.

b) In Djerby, the student who doubts the old man, Keret creates a paradigm of the sabra—the Israeli who lived in Israel before the immigration of Holocaust survivors. This character represents the tension between the Gahal (new immigrants) and the sabras.

c) As the boy grapples with the decision to wear his German-made shoes, the old man’s warnings reverberate in his conscience. Here, Keret symbolizes how the Holocaust survivor mentality has affected Israeli society. As direct descendents of survivors, many Israelis have lived with their parent or grandparent’s experience their entire life. This close proximity has affected their outlook on nationalism and religion.

3) More than my secondary sources, I want to focus partially on how the memory of the Holocaust has influenced the voracious nationalism of the Israeli army. I believe that at least subconsciously, Israeli soldiers dedicate their fighting to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Since the army itself is an enormous institution of Israeli society, the pain of the Holocaust is actively present in many Israelis. I haven’t found a secondary source that primarily discusses this topic. It will not be my singular focus, but definitely an important part of my greater thesis.

Research Findings...

In the book "The Seventh Million," by Tom Segev, I found some interesting information about Israeli prejudices against Germany. Segev tells how at the outset of the Gulf War, a wave of rumor and controversy spread around Israel, that the Germans were providing Saddam Hussein with technology and chemical weapons. Forty-five years after the Holocaust, Israelis were reluctant to forget the German atrocities of WWII, and extrapolated them to the Germany of their present time. The old man in my primary source epitomizes this mindset because he urges the children to avoid buying German goods and to actively seek revenge against them. In the greater scope of my paper, this information demonstrates how the Holocaust has so deeply permeated Israeli society, that its memory reveals itself in many national matters. As a side note, today's Israel is more welcoming of German goods. When I got off the plane in Tel-Aviv last year, I saw an enormous Volkswagen (a German brand) advertisement in the airport. Still there are some Israelis who refuse to buy anything German.

Strategy I: Making Sources Speak (other strategy is below)

Part D/Strategy Analyze as you go along…

In reading most of my secondary sources, I have created “journal entries” that evolve has I read more. Essentially, I make an outline of key details or ideas/epiphanies I have while reading that source. Specifically, I took notes on a critical chapter of Survivors of the Holocaust by Hanna Yablonka. This chapter, entitled Sabras and Gahalniks in the IDF, contains perfect information for my interest in the stressed relationships between sabras (native Israelis) and the Gahal (new immigrants). As I read, I wrote down the page numbers of key passages. One passage inspired me to examine the affect the immigrants had on the entire morale of the army. Psychologically destroyed by the Holocaust, the Gahal were simply not suited to fight in a stressful war (the War of Independence, 1948-49). Their inability to summon the fortitude to fight was a burden on the Israelis that had already been fighting. One soldier remarked “Caring for these immigrants demands nerves of steel” (Yablonka 131). I took testimony like this and interpreted it to show that the relationships between the sabras and Gahalniks were strained from the beginning.

One aspect of my primary source that greatly interested me was the author’s omission of any religious allusion throughout the entire story. His subject matter, the Holocaust, has had extreme religious implications in Israel, and I believe his omission is purposeful. In the book The Seventh Million by Tom Segev, I found some interesting material relating to this issue. Segev discusses in great detail the bureaucratic quibbling of building Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem. Specifically, Segev describes the arguments over religious symbols in the museum between the secular and religious communities. One memorial structure received the name “Ohel Yizkor” or Memorial Tabernacle. This name is an allusion to the biblical “Ohel Moed” or Holy Tabernacle, where Moses received instructions from God while the Jews were in the desert. In this example, the religious community successfully instilled religious significance in a part of the museum. Yet Yad Vashem, which is an entire campus comprised of the museum and Holocaust archives, does not have a synagogue, nor does it employ a rabbi. This is especially shocking because with an on-campus place of worship, Yad Vashem could have been a meaningful place for Jewish prayer. The inconsistency of the religious presence at Yad Vashem encapsulates the secular-religious debate over how to memorialize the Holocaust. The two groups clash over many issues, but Holocaust remembrance is especially explosive because of its central position in Israeli society. Etgar Keret, the author of Shoes, is a noted secular Jew, though his brother is a member of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. I feel that Keret’s unique, secular point of view had an impact in his writing of Shoes. He describes the boy’s quandary with wearing the Shoes in terms of his personal ethics, not religious ethics. He questions if he is “hurting” his grandfather while wearing the shoes, not if he is dishonoring God. The underlying secularism beneath Shoes implies Keret’s view that the Holocaust should remain a cultural, not religious, matter.

Strategy III: Put Your sources into conversation with one another

Strategy III: Put your sources into conversation with one another

Two of my sources, Survivors of the Holocaust by Hanna Yablonka and Attitudes Toward the Holocaust Among Israeli High School Students by Uri Farago, use statistical analysis to prove their respective points. Yablonka cites a 1949 study that surveyed the general sentiments of Holocaust survivors fighting in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Farago’s article explores the results of a questionnaire given to Israeli high school about their opinions of Holocaust commemoration. These studies were conducted forty-two years apart, they both shed light on the experience of the Holocaust survivor in Israel and the relationship between survivors and sabras (Israeli-born natives). The statistics in Yablonka’s work focus on the experience of the Gahal (new immigrant) soldiers compared to the sabras. By 1948-49, many Holocaust survivors had emigrated to Israel and within weeks were drafted into the Israeli army. Immediately, most of the Gahal had a “deleterious effect on the army” (Yablonka 131). Still recovering from the wounds of WWII, the survivors were not psychologically equipped to handle the strain of the War of Independence. A January study reported that 43% of the of the immigrants experienced low morale. 88% percent of the Gahal soldiers reported “they had been given insufficient information on opportunities in Israel” (Yablonka 131). 14% of Gahal soldiers versus 81% of sabras and army veterans reported having made “lots of friends” (Yablonka 132). Yablonka’s article also discusses the subordination of Holocaust survivors and their inabilities to assimilate into the army culture.
Farago’s 1991 study of Israeli high school students illustrates a greater level of acceptance in Israeli society. He describes the Holocaust’s position as the center of national consciousness and the crux of Israeli “civil religion.” Farago asked the students various questions relating to their identification with Holocaust survivors. He asked them to rank their responses, and he organized the results by ethnicity (Israeli, European/American, Asian/African). To the question “Sense of identification with Jews who suffered in the Holocaust,” 85.5% of Israel answered either “Considerably Yes” or “Yes.” Clearly, the Holocaust is, at least subconsciously, on the minds of most Israelis. Yet the Israeli youth had a more difficult time relating to the actual experience of the Jew in the Holocaust. Only 44.6% of Israelis agreed with the statement “Every Jew in the world should regard himself as if he were a survivor of the Holocaust.” Only 24.1% felt as if “he himself were a Holocaust survivor.” Only forty years removed from the event itself, Israelis had lost the immediate sense of the trauma from the Holocaust. In Israel, the consensus opinion is that this removal is a positive, healthy development in society. Many of the students who answered the survey probably had relatives who were involved in the Holocaust. Still, they have undergone the innately human process of healing. Forty years earlier, survivors were unable to assimilate, unable to behave as functioning members of society. They were simply paralyzed with grief. But as Farago’s study indicates, one or two generations of separation helped absorb the horrible memories into the status quo. These two sources show the grieving process’s progression in Israeli society.

Note: I have no idea how to align the citation correctly on Blogger

Halt, Harken to this correction:

This is the actual citation for Jose Brunner's essay:


Jose Brunner. “Contentious Origins: Psychoanalytic Comments on the Debate over
Israel’s Creation.” Psychoanalysis, Identity, and Ideology: Critical Essays on the
Israel/Palestinian Case. Ed. Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin, and John Bunzl.
Massechusetts: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. 107-129.

3 Secondary Sources with swell interpretations

Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israeli’s and the Holocaust. Trans. Haim Watzman. New York: Domino Press Ltd.: 1991.

This source gives an account of the Holocaust from the Israeli point of view, from 1939 to the present day. In the chapter “What does it do to me?,” author Tom Segev takes the reader on a tour of the Israeli National Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. Every construction in this museum bears a specific symbolism to the Holocaust—a symbolism that implies the Israeli perception of the Holocaust. In one passage, Segev recounts the history of the rift between the Holocaust survivors and the Sabras (residents of the kibbutzes that immigrated to Israel in the early 20th century). My primary source alludes to this exact relationship and I plan to expound on it in my paper.


Dalia Ofer. “The Holocaust, the establishment of Israel, and the shaping of Israeli
society.” Shared Histories. Ed. Pogrund, Benjamin, Walid Salem, and Paul
Scham. California: Left Coast Press, 2005. 135-147.

One aspect of this essay by Dalia Ofer examines the absorption of Holocaust survivors into Israeli military culture. Ofer discusses how Holocaust survivors arrived in Israel and quickly joined the ranks of the underfed, under-trained, and under-armed Israel army. Based on empirical evidence, she proves that survivors suffered the same hardships in the war for Independence as their Sabra brethren. In Shoes by Etgar Keret, the belligerent old man expresses his desires to commit acts of violence against the Nazis. In my analysis, I will consider how Holocaust such as the old man have embraced (or rejected) military service in Israel.

Jose Brunner. “Contentious Origins: Psychoanalytic Comments on the Debate over
Israel’s Creation.” Psychoanalysis, Identity, and Ideology: Critical Essays on the
Israel/Palestinian Case. Ed. Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin, and John Bunzl.
Massechusetts: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. 107-129.

Brunner’s essay primarily discusses Israeli-Palestinian relations, but it also sheds light on the creation of Israel as a result of the Holocaust. He speaks of the “divide” in Israeli academia over the “uniqueness of the Zionist project.” Specifically, this divide refers to the ambivalence in an Israeli society that owes its existence to the Holocaust. Brunner raises the question, was the creation of Israel heroic or selfish? Did it benevolently provide a home for displaced survivors, or did it engender the loss of homeland for thousands of displaced Palestinians. This is the core of all arguments over the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel’s statehood. In Shoes, the boy’s vacillations in deciding to wear his shoes allegorize this ambiguity of the Zionist question.

Research Update

I found a secondary source that described Israeli's as "over-memorializing" the Holocaust. I had never thought of this aspect of my research before, but upon re-reading my primary text, I realized that the boy's concern for his shoes could simply be unnecessary, Israeli neurosis. Perhaps the Holocaust's impact on Israel is eternal, and Israeli's efforts to constantly memorialize it actually inhibit social progress. Maybe some subcultures "over-memorialize" and some "under-memorialize." Though I may not incorporate this at all, I feel more comfortable having a wide scope of research and then narrowing it, as opposed to beginning with a narrow scope. The latter is a myopic approach that does not yield itself to thorough, latitudinal research.

Presentation of "Shoes" by Etgar Keret

Analysis of Shoes by Etgar Keret

• Primarily, the story deals with the theme of memorializing the Holocaust while moving forward with life.
• At first the boy is hesitant to play with his shoes because he feels he will be indirectly harming his grandfather.
• Yet he “forgot, just like the old man at Volhynia House said people tend to do,” and plays soccer in his shoes.
• At the end, he remembers what he has done, but decides that his grandfather would have approved.
• In a way, this boy is a microcosm of Israeli society. Like him, Israelis do not actively remember the Holocaust on a daily
basis, yet its memory does motivate certain societal constructs.
--The mandatory service in the army propagates from willingness avenge
the deaths of the Jews that died in the Holocaust
--The divides in Israeli society between Holocaust-survivor immigrants from Europe and Sabras (the pioneers of Israel). When Djerby (a Sephardic—Middle Eastern—Jew) implies that the old man is a coward, Keret is alluding to the Sabra disdain for Holocaust survivors.
--The almost superstitious Israeli grudge against Germany and gentiles of Eastern Europe. Obviously, the old man’s refusal to by anything German epitomizes this fact. The boy’s ambivalence over wearing his new shoes mirrors the Israeli ambivalence over assimilation.

This is the Full Text of my primary source, "Shoes" by Etgar Keret.

Shoes/ Etgar Keret Translated by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman
On Holocaust Memorial Day our teacher Sara took us on bus Number 57 to visit the museum of Volhynia Jewry, and I felt very important. All the kids in the class except me, my cousin, and one other boy, Druckman, had families that came from Iraq. I was the only one with a grandfather who had died in the Holocaust. Volhynia House was very beautiful and posh, all made of black marble, like millionaires’ houses. It was full of sad black-and-white pictures and lists of people and countries and dead people. We walked past the pictures in pairs and the teacher said, “Don’t touch!” But I did touch one picture, made of cardboard, showing a thin, pale man who was crying and holding a sandwich in his hand. The tears came streaming down his cheeks like the divider lines you see on a highway, and my partner, Orit Salem, said she would tell the teacher that I touched it. I said I didn’t care, she could tell whoever she wanted, even the principal, I didn’t give a damn. It’s my Grandpa and I’m touching whatever I want.
After the pictures, they took us into a big hall and showed us a movie about little children who were shoved into a truck and then suffocated with gas. Then a skinny old man got up on the stage and told us what bastards and murderers the Nazis were and how he took revenge on them, and he even strangled a soldier with his bare hands until he died. Djerby, who was sitting next to me, said the old man was lying; the way he looks, there’s no way he can make any soldier bite the dust. But I looked the old man in the eye and believed him. He had so much anger in his eyes that all the rampages of all the iron-pumping hoods I’d ever seen seemed like small change in comparison.
Finally, when he finished telling us what he had done during the Holocaust, the old man said that what we had just heard was relevant not only to the past but also for what goes on nowadays, because the Germans still exist and still have a country. He said he was never going to forgive them, and that he hoped we would never ever go visit their country, either. Because when he went with his parents to Germany fifty years ago everything looked nice, but it ended in hell. People have short memories, he said, especially where bad things are concerned. People tend to forget, he said, but you won’t forget. Every time you see a German, you’ll remember what I told you. Every time you see German products, whether it’s a television set or anything else, you should always remember that underneath the fancy wrapping there are parts and tubes that they made out of the bones and skin and flesh of dead Jews.
On the way out Djerby said again that he’d bet anything the old man never strangled anybody in his life, and I thought to myself it was lucky that we had a made-in-Israel refrigerator at home. Why look for trouble?
Two weeks later, my parents came back from a trip abroad and brought me sneakers. My older brother had secretly told my mom that that’s what I wanted, and she got me the best pair in the world. Mom smiled as she handed me the present. She was sure I had no idea what was inside. But I recognized the Adidas logo on the bag right away. I took out the shoebox and said thank you. The box was rectangular, like a coffin, and in it were two white shoes with three blue stripes and the inscription ADIDAS on the side; I didn’t have to open the box to know what they looked like. ’Let’s put them on,’ my mother said and took off the wrapping, ’to make sure they fit.’ She was smiling the whole time, and had no idea what was going on. ’They’re from Germany, you know,’ I told her, squeezing her hand tightly. ’Of course, I know,’ Mom smiled, ’Adidas is the best brand in the world.’ ’Grandpa was from Germany, too,’ I tried to give her a hint. ’Grandpa was from Poland,’ Mom corrected me. For a moment she became sad, but she got over it in no time. She put one shoe on my foot and started to tie the laces. I kept quiet. I realized there was nothing doing. Mom didn’t have a clue. She had never been to Volhynia House. Nobody had ever explained it toפפפפher. For her, shoes were just shoes and Germany was Poland. I let her put the shoes on me and didn’t say a thing. There was no point in telling her and making her even sadder.
I thanked her again and kissed her on the cheek and said I was going out to play ball. ’Be careful, eh?’ my dad called, laughing, from his armchair in the front room. ’Don’t wear out the soles right away.’ I looked again at the pale hide covering my feet. I looked at them and remembered everything the old man who had strangled the soldier said we should remember. I touched the blue Adidas stripes and remembered my cardboard grandfather. ’Are the shoes comfortable?’ my mother asked. ’Sure they’re comfortable,’ my brother answered for me. ’These aren’t cheap Israeli sneakers. These are the same sneakers that the great Cruiff wears.’ I tiptoed slowly toward the door, trying to put as little weight as I could on the shoes. And so I made my way gingerly to Monkeys Park. Outside the kids from the Borochov neighborhood had formed three teams: Holland, Argentina, and Brazil. It so happened that Holland needed a player, so they agreed to let me join in, although they never accept anyone who’s not from Borochov.
At the beginning of the game I still remembered not to kick with the tip of my shoe, so that it wouldn’t hurt Grandpa, but after a while I forgot, just like the old man at Volhynia House said people tend to do, and I even managed to kick a tiebreaker. But when the game was over I remembered and looked at the shoes. All of a sudden they were so comfortable, much bouncier than when they were in the box. ’Some goals, eh?’ I reminded Grandpa on the way home. ’The goalie didn’t know what hit him.’ Grandpa didn’t answer, but judging by the tread I would say that he was pleased, too.
From The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories, (London: The Toby Press, 2004)

Rhetorical Analysis I

With irreverent and cynical colloquialisms, Loewen wages literary rebellion against the heroified perception of Woodrow Wilson. His candor of speech attempts to awaken the reader to the historical truth.

Passage I/468
All twelve of the textbooks I surveyed mention Wilson’s 1914 invasion of Mexico, but they posit that the interventions were not Wilson’s fault. “President Wilson was irged to send military forces into Mevico to protect American investments and to restore law and order,” according to Triumph of the American Nation, whose authors emphasize that the president at first chose not to intervene. But “as the months passed even President Wilson began to lose patience,” Walter Karp has shown that this version contradicts the facts—the invasion was Wilson’s idea from the start, and it outraged Congress as well as the American people. According to Karp, Wilson’s intervention was so outrageous that leaders of both sides of Mexico’s ongoing civil war demanded that the U.S. forces leave; the pressure of public opinion in the United States and around the world finally influenced Wilson to recall the troops.
Textbook authors commonly use another device when describing our Mexican adventures: they identify Wilson as ordering our forces to withdraw, but nobody is specified as having ordered them in! Imparting information in a passive voice helps to insulate historic figures from their own unheroic or unethical deeds.

Passage II/475
[Answering the question, “Why don’t they let the public in on these matters?”]
Heroification itself supplies a first answer. Socialism is repugnant to most Americans. So are racisms and colonialism. Michael Kammen suggests that authors selectively omit blemishes in order to make certain historical figures sympathetic to as many people as possible. The textbook critic Norma Gabler has testified that textbooks “should present our nation’s patriots in a way that would honor and respect them”; in her eyes, admitting Keller’s socialism and Wilson’s racism would hardly do that. In the early 1920s the American Legion said that authors of textbooks “are at fault in placing before immature pupils the blunders, foibles, and frailties of prominent heroes and patriots of our Nation.” The Legion would hardly be able to fault today’s history textbooks on this account.

The Search for a Primary Source

Friday 10/5/07: At meeting with Ms. Bates, I decided that I will most likely use a piece of literature as my primary source. I have many options, but so far, my favorite idea has been a collection of short stories by an Israeli author named Etgar Keret.

"15 minute auditions":
1) "The Nimrod Flipout" by Etgar Keret is a collection of short stories by an Israeli author. It presents a plethora of topics in significant depth because it explores not only the conflicts of Israeli society, but also the conflicts of human nature in general. Surprisingly, Keret does not examine conflagrations of Israelis and Arabs as much as he describes the Israeli mentality. His presentation of the mandatory service requirement's effect on Israeli society demonstrates how the fighting mentality has pervaded Israeli society. However, many of his characters are disillusioned with the army and rebel against its strictures. While Israelis stereotypically accept their army service with patriotic gusto, Keret creates characters that simply don't care for nationalism.
Another patterned theme of Keret's stories is his vilification of the Israeli hi-tech industry. In Israel, hi-tech is the highest grossing aspect of the economy. Yet all of Keret's businessmen are missing something, whether it be in their marriages, friendships, or with life in general. As a part of my paper, I would explore the social implications of the Israeli business world as presented by Keret.
Finally, Keret's stories encompass many of the far-reaching implications of the Holocaust on Israeli society. Some of his characters feel inundated with Holocaust memorializing and lost sight of the tragedy. Other facets of his stories explore the subtle dichotomy of perspectives on the Holocaust between Jews from eastern Europe and those from the middle east. When survivors from Europe first emigrated to Israel after WWII, many of the Jews already there regarded them as backbone-less cowards who submitted themselves like "sheep to slaughter" to the Nazis. These Middle Eastern Jews, who were pioneering the Kibbutz concept, had the self-image of staunchly independent, fiery nationalists. This ideology contrasted with the emaciated, sullen survivors who were beginning to arrive in Israel.

After explaining this primary source, I have realized the bevy of themes and patterns I have to choose from with this topic. However some these ideas, especially the Holocaust theme, are featured more prominently in another work of Keret's short stories, "The Bus Driver who Thought He was God." I will definitely use both of these sources in my paper. Nevertheless, I will still keep an eye out for other topics (not necessarily literary) that would be interesting primary sources for this paper. The Starbucks example particularly fascinated me, especially since I have always thought the ubiquitous, pseudo-trendy set-up of a Starbucks to be silly and contrived. If I do not have a better idea by the end of the weekend (10/15/07), I will stick my Israeli society topic.

**Ms. Bates: Sorry for posting after the due date. I did not see this assignment on the blog because ensuing assignments "buried" it on the webpage, and I did not read telesis close enough.

Rhetoical Patterns from "Handicapped by History" by James W. Loewen

Throughout “Handicapped by History,” author James W. Loewen uses rhetoric to contemptuously highlight the altering effects of “heroification.”

“This chapter is about Heroification, a degenerative process…that makes people over into heroes” (463).

“Through this process, our educational media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect, creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest” (463).

“Heroification so distorts the lives of Keller and Wilson that we cannot think straight about the” (464).

“Keller, who struggled so valiantly to speak, has been made mute by history. The result is that we really don’t know much about her” (464).

“To ignore the ignore the sixty-four years of her adult life or to encapsulate them with the single word humanitarian is to like by omission” (464).

“But she was a radical—a fact few Americans know, because our schooling and mass media left it out” (466).

“But my students seldom know…two antidemocratic policies that Wilson carried out: his racial segregation of the federal government and his military interventions in foreign countries” (466).

“...textbooks wriggle to get the hero off the hook…” (468).

“Some textbooks go beyond omitting the actor, and leave out the act itself” (468).”

“Surely textbook authors want us to think well of the historical figures they treat with such sympathy. And, on a superficial level at least, we do” (477).

Yet another cultual text...

Because I am interested in pursuing a major (or minor) in writing, I would like to research a literay text as my cultural object. Lately, I have been reading a lot of short stories by an Israeli writer named Etgar Keret. Not only is Keret a celebrated for his quirky and poignant prose, but he is the qunitessential voice of Israeli culture. In a tiny country where nationalism is hyper-magnified, Keret's stories are viewed as small microcosms of the conflicts of life in Israeli society. His latest collection, "The Nimrod Flipout," is a delectable array of shorts that preview Israeli society from all angles. Although Keret avoids forwarding political opinion in his work, he illustrates a realistic picture of huge issues on the Israeli conscious--immigration, the army, repercussions of the Holocaust, the hi-tech industry. Yet despite the focus on Israel, Keret, like any good author, explores the conflicts of the broader human heart such as love, betrayal friendship, infidelity, aging, war, peace, nature--all of literature's major themes. As a thesis for a paper, I would choose a selection of Keret's writing that reflect a specific theme and examine how he superimposes this theme over Israeli society.

The REA Assignment

The basic purpose of this assignment is to choose a cultural text or object and explain how it embodies a certain aspect of culture. This can manifest itself in different ways. First, the object can act as a mirror for a certain cultural element, and can shed led on that culture. If one chose a Bob Dylan Album, he could write about Dylan's reflection of folk music in the 1960's, for example. Moreover, the cultural object could be more of a sum of cultural forces. For instance, a Michael Moore movie is always a response to various issues. In some way, the swirling dimensions of an issue in society culminate in Michael Moore production. In my previous considerations of a cultural object, namely the W.I.L.D. ad, I talked about using it more as a jumping point for a larger discourse of society's view of alcohol. For this assignment, it would be better to use the ad more centrally, specifically as a focal point in the discussion of campus alcohol policies (or any related topic).

New Cultural Texts...

My first item is the campus music magazine, "Eleven." This magazine had a special on a WILD preview, with the main picture a student lying on the grass, presumably passed out drunk. Around his sprawled hand, personal objects lay askew, forgotten temporarily in the wake of drunken stupor. Implied in this (staged) picture is a bevy of information and argument about Campus drinking policies. If I used this picture, or something like it from a student publication, I could write about college drinking policies and the students' perception of them. Are they feared or considered a joke? Are their rules well-known or obscure? Especially at Wash U, where the drinking policy has a unique bent, this paper topic would be interesting.

My second cultural object is concerns the CD jackets of two albums I recently downloaded from Ruckus--"Let's get free" by the rap group Dead Prez, and "At war with the mystics" by the Flaming Lips. When I looked up the corresponding album jackets, I was very surprised at their differing themes. The Flaming Lips, a staple of indie rock, had a dreamy image of a small figure facing some sort of large explosion of color. The overarching theme of this picture is the figure's inferiority to whatever force is threatening to overtaking. Needless to say, the album cover is very abstract. On the other hand, the Dead Prez album depicts ranks of young, black soldiers pointing their guns to the air and yelling. These soldiers are probably child soldiers in Africa. This image gives an entirely different feeling than the first. It obviously has more of a concrete, cultural message, one that coincides with Dead Prez's nationalistic lyrics. In a paper I would explore the larger differences between the rock album and the rap album--namely in meaning and intentions of the lyrics.

Interview with a confused upperclassman

Q: What was the topic of your research paper last year?
A: I wrote mine as an examination of the fast food industry. Specifically, I argued that fast food plays a prominent on the American conscious and helps define America as a society. The primary sources I used were the movie "Supersize Me" and the book "Fast Food Nation," by Eric Schlosser.

Q: What advice would you have for beginning research?
A: Don't put yourself in a position when you have to read multiple books to gain information. You probably do not have time to fit in all of that supplemental reading. Scholarly articles are the best options for research because they encapsulate everything you need to know in a shorter length. Use any type of media you can: Movies, magazines, commercials, newspaper articles. Especially for a topic like mine, such cultural objects were immensely helpful.

Q: How did your paper evolve over the semester?
A: At first I had a very narrow scope of my topic. But as I did research, I realized the extent of fast food's impact on the country. I talked more about its medical connection to obesity than I would have thought at the beginning. In this way, a lot of my paper was devoted to America's obesity problem. One last thing: over-research! You can never have too much info, and you always want different options of direction for your paper.

The Interpreter of Maladies

The Interpreter of Maladies by Nobel prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri is a collection of short stories that depict the Indian experience in America and throughout the world. In many of the stories, Lahiri melds the themes of cultural tradition and assimilation with the universal themes of relationships, betrayal, and friendship. The style of the her works is elegant yet completely unpretentious. Her stories are far from esoteric, yet they can be interpreted on many different levels. Examination of her stories reveals her prominent use of foreshadowing and symbolism. My favorite story, "A temporary Matter," tells about an Indian-American couple who reconnect when their electricity goes out. Near the end, the husband-narrator believes that his failing marriage is saved, yet his wife presents him with divorce papers. The bluntness of the ending engenders endless interpretation of the stories meaning. If I chose to research this book, I would place it in the greater thesis of the Indian immigrant experience in America.

Fargo

This is a compilation of youtube clips, from the movie Fargo (by the Coen Brothers, the same people who brought you The Big Lebowski). I could not figure out how to only select one, so here are a few. Aside from many other social comments this movie proffers, it parodies midwestern culture. The accent, congeniality (which only masks pent up frustration), and omnipresent snow are all prominent parts of this movie. If I chose this topic, my thesis would probably concern the American perception of the Midwest. The second movie from the left is a series of every clip in the movie where the word "ya" is said in a medley of ridiculous Minnesotan accents. It's brilliant.

Writing 1

As his article is an example of historical revisionism, James Loewen displays a bias towards the unknown and unappreciated "underdogs" of American History. Loewen subtly proffers that the giants of American history should be reappraised for faults while the obscure should be ushered to the spotlight. Is this underlying generalization dangerous? Loewen even mentions that there exists a "characteristic American sympathy for the underdog." Do Americans sometimes do the exact oposite of Loewen's textbook's and heroify the underdogs?


"We name institutions after him, from the Woodrow Wilson Center at the Smithsonian Institution to Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in Decatur, Illinois, where I misspent my adolescence." In this sentence, James Loewen uses humor to censure Wilson. By association, the bitterness of his joke portrays Wilson negatively.

"But replying 'none' is too glib, too nihilistic for my taste. It is, however, an understandable response to heroification."