Category Archives: American literature

Pesticides, Poverty, and Poisoning

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In part two of Viramontes’ Under the Feet of Jesus Alejo gets directly sprayed with pesticides while in the height of a tree, picking it’s ripe fruits. After this contact with the pesticide or insecticide, Alejo explains how he feels as though he cannot breath right after the spray of the poison gets on him. Extreme pain envelops over Alejo’s body as the poison gets onto his pores. For the next few weeks Alejo gets no better, although some days are better than others.

After reading about Alejo’s conditions not getting any better in part three, I wanted to do a little research on pesticides, and what kind of effects they have on the human body, when in contact with one another. I found out that there is three categorizes to pesticide poisoning. Mild, moderate, and severe. Alejo had all the symptoms of the severe pesticide poisoning, with symptoms including any:

  • inability to breathe
  • chemical burns on skin
  • respiratory distress
  • loss of reflexes
  • uncontrollable muscle twitching
  • unconsciousness
  • convulsions

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Struggle and Unionization Among Migrant Farmworkers

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In Viramontes’ Under the Feet of Jesus, the difficult life of the main characters takes place against the greater backdrop of the struggle among migrant farmworkers for legal protections, safe working conditions, and fair pay. As I read the book, I was reminded of details from a history class I took last spring that explored the awakening of political awareness among different ethnic groups during the civil rights era.

Although people of Hispanic descent have been present in the American Southwest since before California became a state, the arrival of large numbers of Mexican immigrants began in the early years of the Second World War, when the Bracero program was hatched. Conceived as a guest worker program during a period of growing agricultural demand, the idea was to bring in farm laborers during the harvest season who would then return to their native land in the off season. While it was in effect, the Bracero program was interrupted at regular intervals by deportation actions such as “Operation Wetback” in 1954. Nonetheless, by the time this legal framework ended in 1964, over 4.5 million guestworkers had entered the country at one point or another.

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The Use of Spanish in Viramontes

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This week I will write about the use of Spanish in Under The Feet of Jesus. Viramontes use of Spanish in Under the Feet of Jesus has a jarring effect at first if you do not know Spanish (or even if you know some Spanish but cannot speak it that well like myself). Even though I am an English major I have plenty of trouble with the English language so  any additional languages lead to doubts about being able to relate to the text, but it will be argued here that this may be a desired effect.   It seems that the result of combining two languages seems to alienate the reader who does not know Spanish, unless they spend time researching what these passages say. Yet the use of English as the main text does give insight into these experiences, so for the English speaker, Spanish seems to be used as a method  of saying while you can relate to these people in the text, they are also part of a different world that you can only relate through by a translation. From what I have learned about Spanish a translation may suffice, but it is not the same as knowing the language as something always seems lost.

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Darwin’s Population Limits

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One of the key arguments that Darwin makes in his On the Origin of Species concerns the Struggle for Existence. Individuals are constantly locked in competition, whether with other members of the same species, different species that may occupy the same or similar ecological niche, or environmental factors. Those organisms that survive then reproduce and pass their traits onto the next generation. Those that do not win out die, and if this concept is applied to entire species, it may result in extinction due to a failure to adapt to changing conditions.

The most important aspect of the struggle involves the environmental limits that all organisms must face. These restrictions, which encompasses resources such as food, predator and parasite interactions, and climate, drive natural selection. Without these forces at work, Darwin’s theory would not stand. Since abundance reduces conflict while scarcity leads to competition, nature provides the pressure that fuels the engine of evolution.

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Carson’s Imagery

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There are two landscapes depicted in the opening chapter of Rachel Carson’s, Silent Spring: “A Fable for Tomorrow.”(Carson 1) the idealized, but typical “town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings” and the diseased version of that same town after an “evil spell had settled on the community” (Carson 2). Carson uses idyllic, fairytale type imagery to get the reader invested in the town’s welfare, setting the scene as one of peaceful tranquility. Through the use of a mysterious antagonist she encourages curiosity in origin of the negative outcome of that same town, while imposing a feeling of adversity. When we discover, in the second to last paragraph of this chapter, that this is only a possible future, we are meant to feel a need to prevent the described dystopia from occurring. Continue reading →

A Connection Between Robert Frost and Henry Thoreau

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For the blog this week I am going to further a point I raised in class about the Woodchuck  found in the opening paragraph of the chapter Higher Laws. The Drumlin Woodchuck by Robert Frost calls attention to a Woodchuck as well. The Drumlin Woodchuck is a poem associated with nature, wilderness, and retreating from the influence of man. According to an article by Fritz Oehlschlaeger titled Two Woodchucks, or Frost and Thoreau on the Art of the Burrow the; “admiration for Walden(by Frost) is well known, and numerous critics have suggested both general and specific parallels between the works of Thoreau and Frost.” While this admiration adds a layer of depth when reading Frosts poems as they can be connected to the ideas of Thoreau, it is interesting to look at the poem A Drumlin Woodchuck as an explicit nod to the Walden, where the Frosts poem can be seen as a response. Oehlschlaeger claims to have discovered this original relationship between these “two woodchucks”, and suggests that Frost uses the name Thoreau through a pun; “so instinctively thorough”(line  31). The usage here is claimed to be a pun By Oehlschlaeger, and this analogy seems apt.

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Trains of Thought on Trains

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The passage starting in paragraph two on page 81 in the Norton Critical Edition of Walden by Thoreau clearly shows tension between nature and society as a train cuts through Walden Pond. However, I believe even Thoreau feels conflicted about the meeting of these two opposing forces.

The chapter is Sounds, and, early on, Thoreau establishes his intimate knowledge of this meeting ground by saying the men who work on the freight trains bow to him as to an old acquaintance. This seems to give Thoreau credibility in the eyes of the reader. Immediately before that Thoreau explains how he commonly walks the railroad causeway, using the word often, and he even says he is “related to society by this link.” The two key words that stand out here are often and related. Thoreau is careful to express the habitualness of this walk through the use of the word often and the descriptions of his mutual comfort with the men of the train. He then uses the word related, a word commonly used to describe a familial connection to refer to the track. I believe this paragraph shows Thoreau’s uses for the meeting of the two worlds and paints them in a positive light. Continue reading →

The Cold

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Rowlandson effectively uses the wintery season she was captured during to portray the bleak and desperate mood felt in this excerpt. Her having had to “sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground,” portrays a lack of control over her environment. For her captors, the Wampanoags, would not provide shelter to her and her sick child, and she had no ability to affect that. This exposure to the elements also sets the scene as cold, which is something she puts emphasis on by using it twice in that one phrase. That coldness can then be transferred to the Native Americans in a symbolic gesture, further portraying Rowlandson’s situation as bleak. And if her captors, her environment, and her mood are all cold and bleak, what will keep her motivated?

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A Spiritual Awakening: Thoreau

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Excerpt from Henry D. Thoreau, Walden

“It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men.  Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.  Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.  It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.  Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.  If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.” Continue reading →

Nature and Man’s Connection

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To Emerson, the natural world is better than his own, offering mankind all the life and inspiration that is absent from society. Emerson paints a vivid picture of nature and man’s important connection to it. Emerson convinces his readers that the relationship between man and nature is sacred, comforting, and vital for survival.

Emerson asks his readers “to what end is Nature?” (27). He goes about answering this question with several arguments.  Emerson makes certain to his readers that “we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable,” this is so because the ”order of things” in nature will answer all questions (27). He then goes on to explain that, “the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul” (28). Assuming that the Soul resides in each man, Emerson makes the conclusion that “therefore, all that is separate from us…must be ranked under this name, NATURE”(28). Emerson also notes that nature is anything “unchanged by man” such as the sky, the landscape, the air, etc.  By slowly drawing out the definition of what nature is Emerson makes a mysterious entity become tangible to his readers.

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