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The Head-Patting Incident

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       In class, we discussed whether Martine’s race matters in the head-patting incident and why? In my opinion race matters. Both cases (with a white person or a black person) are weird since Benji is already a teenager in this story, and head-patting is generally done to children. However, when a white person does this, it is much more serious since they generally do it to appease their curiosity. Rather than trying to praise a black person, they do this because they believe they have a right to touch another person's head, and in a way, they treat them almost like a pet by doing this. Benji even demonstrates how common of a pattern it is by explaining that this has been happening to him since elementary school. However, he doesn't mention any such pattern happening with black people touching other black people's heads, so it is reasonable to assume that if head-patting happens among black people, it is more often to show appreciation. Black people have no reason ...
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Proof that Jason Could Never be in Spooks

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  Throughout Black Swan Green , we see Jason trying to hide aspects of himself to try and fit in with the popular group while simultaneously doing anything to seem cool. However, it’s clear to us as readers that Jason is not really Spooks material and considering that the people involved in Spooks seem like bullies, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For me, there were two moments that stuck out as examples of Jason being too nice for Spooks: the situation with Dean and the situation with Ross’s wallet. When Dean got hurt, it was clear to Jason that going back would lead to inevitable exclusion from Spooks. This would be a huge issue for Jason since he was constantly afraid of being uncovered as the school stammerer. Turning away from a position in Spooks would have meant that the Spooks members would bully him, and if they ever found out about his stammer, Jason would become an even larger target. However, when Jason realized that “if I’d fallen through Mr. Blake’s greenhouse...
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Fun Home

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  Unfortunately, I didn’t like Fun Home very much; something about the presentation of the story as a graphic novel didn’t really click with me. However, the one aspect I really did like is the fact that the book manages to tell a story without telling you “facts”. Instead of trying to claim that her father definitely killed himself, Alison Bechdel explored several possibilities, all the while making it clear to the readers that she believes that he did. Many autobiographies or memoires try to give a series of chronological “truths”, and given that life and relationships are never one-sided, this approach doesn’t really give us a broad picture of the story. Obviously, this story is still biased towards Bechdel’s views of her father and family in general, but she doesn’t try to shove her point of view down the reader’s throats, and instead, she lets them explore the evidence themselves and decide what to believe. This works in this situation because the family dynamics are so comp...
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Dr. Gordon vs Dr. Nolan

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  For this blog post, I want to talk about the difference between Dr. Gordon and Dr. Nolan. It’s obvious to the readers that Esther respects Dr. Nolan and despises Dr. Gordon, so for this blog post I want to go deeper into the reasons behind this.             From the very first time Esther met Dr. Gordon, she said that “I hated him the minute I walked in through the door” (128). The first most, obvious reason for this is that he is a man. Esther spent all of the novel up until that point questioning her place in society, as a woman. Therefore, she likely didn’t think that Dr. Gordon could relate to her struggles since men didn’t have to deal with the social expectation that they would stay at home with the children or, at most, get a job as a secretary; men were free to go into more serious careers, such as being a professor or a doctor. Additionally, her experience with men so far had been largely dismissive of her stru...
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