The Cubs had this really annoying narrating style.  It took me a couple paragraphs to figure out that it was a group of people talking, all at once.  Still it seemed cruel to put hardly any punctuation in the story at all.  I realized later that the lack of punctuation gives the story a more accurate feeling of what it would be like to be talking to the group as they tell their story.  In the end, I chose to write my paper on that topic. 

For my paper, I focused on the grammatical because I am still not comfortable dealing with the different interpretations, especially when the author says that it had no symbolism in it.  I did try to look below the “surface meaning”. 

I started with the thought that when penises are involved, it is hard not to psychoanalyze.  The psychoanalysis would make it easy to explain that the author did not even realize that he was using symbolism.  But I could not find anything else in the novel to discuss on that idea.

I tried looking to history.  Perhaps Cuellar could represent Latin America losing its global power, and in the end petering out to global non-importance.  But I found nothing to go with that either.

In frustration, I thought that there is always some connection to Christ, right?  I found that the dog’s name was Judas, and there is not much more betraying of a boy in Latin American society than biting off his thing.  Cuellar does kind of walk on water when he surfs on the water that is deadly.  And he did die at a young age.  But, none of this shows me anything, so I dropped it.

As I have thought many times before class, I am quite currious to see what other people understood out of the story that I did not. 

I found it most weird how most of the poem has punctuaion, but there are times when all punctuation is left out, most notably on page 12-13. 

I did note some interesting ways to define himself in that area that is not definable.  That area that post-colonialist talk about that is not self, and not other.  I liked the picture that I got when he says that he includes himself between latitude and longitude.  I saw that as saying that he is not definable using the standards that we know today.

I did not follow the discussion about which English word best matched the ideas put forward by the French words for black.  I understand that languages are not going to match up word for word, or even thought for thought.  What seemed weird to me was the words that they did choose.  But maybe that is because I am not familiar with all the denotations and conotations of the words in my own language.  I was just surprised that negritude was choosen as a derogatory

The blending of reality and “non-reality” is one of my favorite things about Latin American literature.  I faked my way through every book report that I had to write until my junior year of high school when my teacher recomended that I read One Hundred Years of Solitude.  It was the first non-children’s book that I read in entirety and enjoyed!  So I have quite a warm feeling for the “realismo magico”.

In Pedro Paramo (as well as the later magical realism books), I have a hard time usinf the term “fantasy” or “illusion” for the non-reality characteristics.  They are too real to the novel to be considered not real, even though it could never happen in real life. 

Due to the interesting order of the narratives, I might have enjoyed more of a discussion simply comparing in what order we thought the action took place.  It may be that there is only one interpretation, but I would not be surprised if other students would have different interpretations than I did.  The ending, similarly was somewhat vague as to what was happening.  I am thinking about using this book as my book for the final project, due to that possible flexibility in interpretation. 

Even though it was a dark topic, I felt that the absurdity of the conversations kept it lighter than it could have been.  I love the fact that weird things are happening and no one seems to notice that it is weird.   

I greatly enjoyed the discussion of many different interpretations of the book.  I had not taken my reading to that level, but it was helpful to see the variety.  I have traditionally tried to stay to what seems to be the author’s intent.  I kind of like the idea that the meaning is up for interpretation, because that means that as long as I can explain my interpretation it is not wrong (as was the case in school).  However, I am not willing to accept that simply because they are not wrong, I should agree to hold that view.  Specifically the thought that Sab’s vomiting blood at the end was connected to the blood lost by Carlota at the loss of her virginity was a bit much for me.  I can see where it comes from, but…, yeah…, too big of a jump from what is on the page for me to get yet, maybe someday, but not yet.  

When we came to class on Monday, I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of what Humanism was, based on the reading and some searching on the internet.  Basically, it is an interest in “antiquity” (aka the Greek and Latin cultures).  That seems easy enough.  So, when I read the poems, I wanted to compare them to poems from the old greek poems, or the old latin poems, or perhaps to compare them to other non-humanist poems of the time period so that I could see the differences or similarities.  There I ran into some trouble; I don’t know enough about either of those groups to make any good comparisons.  Nor am I even a fan of more recent poetry.  So, I attended class curious as to how the discussion would go. 

In the end, I think that I was looking for something more concrete.  (example “This is written in iambic pentameter, which was not used until this poem.)  But I should have been looking at the topic, word choice, and voice.  Furthermore, not all of those will reflect humanism in one work.  The part of the work that reflects the humanist ideals may change, and the way in which it reflects those ideals may change.  

So, when I left class, I knew more than when I came in, and yet, it clouded up the picture of humanism.  However, I beleive that class was probably suppose to do that.