In "This is Water" students are instructed to change their default setting (only thinking about themselves) by altering their perspective. They are told that to enjoy life, they need to think of events from many different perspectives. This is not for the benefit of others, David Foster Wallace proves that doing this will cause you to perceive a world that is less harsh. By being considerate of others, you're really helping yourself gain a more nuanced perspective on life. At the end of the piece we know there are two categories of people: those who have changed their default setting and those who have not. This thinking can be applied to The Great Gatsby. Nick starts out the book saying he doesn't judge anyone. While this is certainly not true (the reader can infer from his tone how he feels about various characters) the idea that he tries not to judge others means he is making an attempt to see things from their point of view. He says that "reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope." This means he hopes that people are better than they seem, just as Wallace suggests hoping the guy who cut you off in traffic had a good reason. The two would understand each other.
Jordan Baker is in the other category, she is a bad driver but she doesn't fault herself. She only hopes to never run into someone as careless as herself, she hates those people. This example shows that she can't experience events from the perspective of others as Nick can. Because of the contrasting philosophies of these two characters, I suspect Nick's story will end much happier than Jordan's will.
Allow me to play you out...
(a song about a couple who have material wealth, but don't love each other)
I wasn't in school most of last week, but I see on the blog we discussed masculinity so I guess I'll address that. When I went school shopping for this year I bought a pack of three pens.
In physics, my friend needed a pen to correct his work. I only had the purple so that's what I offered and he declined. He's a pretty masculine guy, he plays tennis all the time and he keeps track of football. Accepting the purple pen would contradict that. It's not that he's ignorant or intolerant because he doesn't accept the pen, it's just not who he is and that's fine. A couple of days later, a different kid saw me writing with the pink pen and complimented it. For our purposes this kid could be considered the opposite of the first one. He has cats on his backpack and his bangs barely curl in time to miss his eyebrows. He is decidedly un-masculine. I don't want to be the kid intentionally defying convention, but really I chose a side when I bought the pen. I understood that I was buying pens for girls and for whatever reason that appealed to me. There are parallels here to the no unmarked women concept. Guys have to choose whether they are masculine or not, and this will affect their lives in subtle and occasionally not so subtle ways. How masculine you are will affect who you can be friends with. It can also open you to judgment, particularly if you are on the extreme parts of the spectrum instead of somewhere in the middle.
Allow me to play you out...
(this dude seems comfortable not being very masculine)
While reading The Bluest Eye I was reminded of the book Watchmen several times. For those who don't know, Watchmen is a graphic novel by Alan Moore. It's not just a comic book though, TIME Magazine called it "A work of ruthless psychological realism" and ranked it among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. It's good stuff. I've found that Watchmen and The Bluest Eye are actually structured very similarly. Both are very powerful and moving so examining their similarities may highlight why this is. Each story is told from many perspectives, the audience is meant to sympathize with and understand many different characters. But at the same time the characters are all flawed. In the Bluest Eye, Geraldine hates Pecola, but we understand why she feels that way. We see Pecola's mother fail to nurture her kids properly but we understand why she is unable to do so. In Watchmen we understand why a Rorschach was driven to become a murderer and we sympathize with Dr. Manhattan even as he loses his humanity and ceases to care for those around him.
Perhaps the best example of all is in the end of Watchmen, when the audience understands perfectly why a character decided to destroy New York City. Neither book has heroes or villains, just people who have been broken down by society. One of the themes of Watchmen is "who watches the Watchmen," the idea that our heroes are just as flawed as we are, we just can't see it. The Bluest Eye explores the idea the black people and the ugly people have flawed thinking just as the pretty people and the white people do. Really neither book is about its characters. The books are about ideas, they explore human nature and society as a whole.
Other similarities are how both books use disturbing/uncomfortable scenes to move the audience and make more powerful statements, and also how both books have similar writing styles in places (but I didn't have room to expand on these.)
Allow me to play you out...
(this song was used in the Watchmen movie, also it reminds me of Bluest Eye: "Quite as its kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.")
