Psychoanalytic Criticism

I enjoyed the psychoanalytic criticism chapter.  I've had the thought before, "I wonder what kind of baggage you're carrying," when someone reacts to something small in a huge way.  But this approach really makes a lot of sense to me, not only in literary criticism, but in life.  I think that a huge amount can be told about a person by the way that they react to something, whether it be a book, a movie, or something that happens to them.

Tyson outlines the core issues of people:

1) Fear of intimacy
2) Fear of abandonment
3) Fear of betrayal
4) Low self-esteem
5) Insecure of unstable sense of self
6) Oedipal fixation (complex)

The core issue of a person can be carried with them throughout life, and they shape our behavior.  If we don't identify them and change them, then they stay with us, causing a destructive cycle.

Tyson highlights trauma, death-drive, and tons of ways that a person can be sexually screwed up, but then points out that we need to know all of these things in order to do an effective psychoanalytic reading of a work.  We should be looking for repression, family dynamics, and fears to understand the characters with a work when reading this way.

Tyson's reading of Gatsby points out that it isn't a great love story, but an example of dysfunctional love.  I'm not sure how anyone who reads Gatsby has the idea that it is about great love, but I am not sold on the idea that it is just about dysfunctional love.  However, after the Marxist reading, I am not sure that I can buy into any other reading. Ever.

Marxist Criticism

I really enjoyed the Marxist Criticism chapter, especially the reading of Gatsby through the Marxist glasses.  The idea that "getting and keeping economic power is the motive" of practically everything I think really resonates in the economical and political situation today (51).  The idea of the bourgeoisie being the wealthy class, the one percent, and the proletariat being everyone else, the ninety-nine percent, shows just how times never really change.  The Occupy Movement has died down a bit now, but just a little while ago they were all over the news.  Marx would be thrilled that there are people still fighting.

I also liked the part about the economically oppressed.  I think that these days, we call ourselves 'the working poor', making enough to get by, but never really making enough to improve our situation.  My husband and I joke that we live comfortably enough, as long as nothing breaks.  We are lucky enough that he works for Stevenson, and that I can go to school.  We are going to have the opportunity, I hope, to start climbing out of the whole that we have been stuck in, once I graduate and have my 'grown-up job.'  I have no idea how anyone else does it without going crazy or going into crippling debt.  I really don't.  But on to Gatsby...

For me, Tyson's reading of Gatsby in this chapter is the most different and appealing reading that we've done so far.  We've seen longing, the spirit of the day, and other meanings, but this one, the "dark underbelly", is unique (66).  The deaths of Gatsby and Myrtle never really felt right in any of the other readings, and certainly not in my own.  They always seemed too dark for the book, but with my Marxist glasses on, they make so much more sense.

While I've never liked Tom, the Marxist idea of commodification of people makes his character more believable.  He buys both Daisy and Myrtle, but I never understood his relationship with Myrtle.  She is portrayed as being big and loud, not a woman who would seem appealing at all to Tom.  I would think that he would be more likely to choose a woman who was quiet and obedient.  However, the fact that she is poor makes his wealth more exciting, thus making Tom feel better about himself.  With Daisy, they are of the same class, so his wealth isn't so impressive to her.  Tom keeps an apartment for Myrtle, a cheap, tiny little apartment.  This also always bugged me.  I never bought the fact that Tom would stay in an apartment like that.  But because of Myrtle's social standing, any apartment would be better than hers, and this made Tom's wealth seem more exciting.

Gatsby also makes more sense when you look at socio-economic class.  I always had a tough time with the fact that he had worked so hard to get to where he was, but then to refuse to enjoy any of it.  He was always absent at his parties, and it didn't make sense to me.  Why wasn't he out enjoying his parties, even if only to meet someone who knew Daisy?  Tyson's reading answers this with sing-exchange value: "he wants the image their ownership confers on him and nothing more" (70).

Thank you, Lois Tyson, for this reading.  You have made me love Gatsby again.

My Favorite Criticism

After finally reading up on all of the criticisms of Gatsby I feel the one that resides in me and my own writing style the most is reader response. I love how Tyson went through each character in the novel and explained how they project themselves onto Gatsby. Whether it be the party guests who simply love to gossip, all the way to Nick who looks up to Gatsby as a hope that the American Dream still does exist, Tyson was able to accurately back up her criticism. I also loved how she went through and picked out certain scenes from the novel which negatively and positively affected Nick's view of Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a novel, that without the reader bringing fourth some of their own opinions and understandings of how the world works, could leave the reader confused because of all the ambiguous imagery and unanswered questions. I am a firm believer that an author simply starts a book, but it is the reader who finishes it. Everyone has their own beliefs about what a novel can produce and as an aspiring writer/critic I want to be able to talk about not only what is in the text but how it effected me as a reader. This writing The Great Gatsby has helped me narrow down my subject for the final paper which I am happily writing as a reader-response critic! -Kayleigh

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Before I dove into the Marxist Criticism I wanted to make sure that I understood the main points from the New Historical Criticism and Cultural Criticism (after not being in class Monday). To begin, New Historical Criticism focuses on how the event has been interpreted and what those interpretations says about the interpreters. It also brings fourth the idea that we do not have clear access to anything but the most basic facts about historical events. There is only the interpretation which could ultimately lead to an objective analysis. Then there was Micheal Foucault who produced the idea that power circulates in all directions through the proliferation of exchange. In the end it states that Historical Criticism cannot be objective, cannot adequately demonstrate that a particular spirit of the times or world views accounts for the complexities of any given culture and it cannot adequately demonstrate that history is linear, casual or progressive. Moving onto Cultural Criticism which draws on political theories, Marxism, and Feminism. It is highly interested in popular culture and it takes into account the way in which media production might not be viewed the way the entertainment industry intends it to be viewed. Cultural Criticism also performs at the hands of those who respond to it. I believe these are all of the major points from this chapter. Do I seem to be missing anything?
Thank you- Kayleigh

The Kristen Stewart Hypothesis

For this post I decided to go further into the comment I left on Kayleigh's post. For me, it's difficult to remember the time period before the Twlight films were out, because they were such a big part of the saga's reign over pop culture. Before that, it was easy to ignore, but when the films came out, it seemed that everyone had an opinion. I think that Kristen Stewart is a huge factor in many people's dislike of Twilight. Throughout her career, she has been criticized for her aloof attitude, subpar acting skills, awkwardness, etc. In reality, she's not much different from most teenage girls, but because of her job, she has been and is being compared to other actresses such as Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley, who better fit the Hollywood mold (do not mistake Lawrence's attempts to be quirky and relatable for anything other than carefully constructed PR). What I am trying to say here is that if someone goes into Twlight with the preconceived notion that it's stupid, sexist, just for fangirls, ect., they're less likely to change their mind if they find the actress on the screen annoying. There's no way to confirm this, as we can't erase everyone's memories and remake Twilight with a more popular actress, but I believe that the discussions surrounding the franchise would be very different if we could.

Qualms about Leisha Jones Essay

I really wish I would've been able to make it to class today because this reading has left me struggling to find the point Leisha Jones was trying to make. The difficulty I had with the reading was Jones' sentence structure and her references to things only few people would have knowledge of. In regards to sentence structure, Jones tends to use difficult words, obscure phrases, and makes them far longer than necessary. I think she could have made her argument more clear with shorter sentences and/or more accessible words. Also, a lot of what she says is murky. I had the thought while reading that Jones herself is the only person who understands what she is trying to say. A few other readings we've had came across to me this way as well; however, in the case of those readings at least, further analyzation paid off. I left those other articles feeling I learned something valuable, meaningful, and deep, that I would have a lot to say about. Jones' essay on the other hand--aside from the last four pages, which aren't argumentative, but informative--left me with nothing that I didn't already know and certainly nothing I cared about. I had an "O..K..?" moment in other words. And the fact that I had to try to sift through all of her complicated speech just to ultimately come out with nothing of any substance was slightly frustrating. Again, the final four pages were very new to me and Im glad I was able to leave with something. The names and descriptions of different approaches (sensate, brand, polyglot) that some girls are taking in their own interactive, bildungsroman experiences with Twilight were very interesting and something I hadn't known was so extensive. All in all, I feel this reading has value--but not particularly any value for contemporary readers like us, as much as it will have for readers in the future that will in fact be interested in the ways our generation interacted with art.

Criticisms of Leisha Jones' Reader Response of Twilight

Good Afternoon Everyone,
                        I wanted to start of by going off of something Julia said while giving her presentation in class today about how she does not agree with the traditional female experiences i.e learning submissiveness, fearing sexuality and womanhood, marriage and motherhood. As a reader of Twilight I feel that Jones is completely wrong when stating that Bella is submissive. She demands from Edward to tell her everything, she makes him come back with her at the end of New Moon, in Eclipse she even wraps the Volturi around her finger by stating that she will, in time, become a vampire, and finally in Breaking Dawn she becomes a vampire which is exactly what she wanted. Bella is not the submissive one in this relationship, it is Edward who bows to her every desire and command. Another thing that bothered me was her statement that "She finally becomes both woman and mother simultaneously"(444). Does this mean that a girl cannot become a woman unless she is a mother? What about all the women who choose not to have children or the women who cannot have children? She even at one point calls Bella obsessive of Edward, but in turn is it not actually Edward who is obsessed with Bella? He watches her in her sleep! I enjoyed reading this article because I believe Jones' reader response of Twilight to actually be completely wrong. She missed the love and instead deemed it obsession with Edward and the idea of preserving beauty, but I believe she wants to live forever, not because she wants to stay young and beautiful, but because she can then love forever. Although I could be reading too much into this I wanted to know what you guys thought specifically about Jones' interpretation of Twilight rather then the fan fiction's she mentions. Thank you! -Kayleigh