cursed post

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Welcome, dedicated readers. Today I am quitting my job. And also I think I have food poisoning. So you may say that the vibes are severely off on this fine Saturday afternoon. I am just not feeling it.

Therefore, please excuse the absolute nightmare that is about to be today's blog post.

Toni Morrison has been making someone (me) feel very heightened emotions this week (confusion, anger, despair, etc). Do you ever read or hear something really freaking smart and important and you're like, wow this is amazing. How would one come up with such an abstract yet aligned idea? Then the more you think about it, the more heated you get, and then you're just having a mild breakdown over the complexities of literature? Very common human experience.

I just want to know how someone can come up with a way to equate an EGG. AN EGG. As a symbol for something so rooted such as (deep breath) race relations...????? Not even in a way in which you may think, she's reaching, your honor; but in a way that actually makes sense if you can sit down and dissect it for a very long time.

Of course that's not the only thing stressing me out about Song of Solomon right now. The fact that just yesterday, nearly finished with the book, I only grasped the cat motif because the teacher pointed it out to the class. AND OF COURSE NOW IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!!!! Of course Guitar is the cat!!! Of course the bobcat skinning scene means that Guitar is now silenced, the equivalent of being dead, therefore his words are silenced and have no impact on Milkman!!!!

The worst part is that the way Madame Toni hides her evil little motifs and themes throughout the book, is so that once you actually catch one of them, it seems that everything else you missed was most literally hidden in plain sight.

Then you feel like a big dummy, to put it simply.


everyone in class when we figure out that one tiny detail that valentino has been trying to get us to find for 20 minutes


Comments

  1. Marz AhmadOctober 26, 2019 at 9:57 PM

    I agree with this post on a spiritual level. Every time Mrs. Valentino points out something in the book that I didn't get before but get now, I feel like an enlightened Renaissance man. So many times I have read the book and understood most of what is going but not anything metaphoric. When Mrs. Valentino started discussing what these events signify, I started to look for metaphors and symbolism more whenever I read which led to me making connections when I read that I never thought that I could make.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BrennaOctober 27, 2019 at 10:22 AM

    It truly is crazy how discreet Toni is in embedding her symbols, metaphors, and motifs. You read something and sometimes you forget about it, only to realize it is super MEGA important later on. Toni is the MASTER at making things come full circle! I wonder if she had to take extensive notes while writing this or if she is just a genius?

    ReplyDelete

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