Sam P's HaF Blog

          I am going to take a different stand from other points of argument. Instead of looking at the land of Tralfamadore as a truthful place within the plane of  Slaughterhouse Five , I am going to look at it as if it  isn't  real, and instead Billy is traumatized by his experiences in the war. There are many examples that show this to potentially be the case within the book, from when and where he travels in time, to what he says.           One of the first parallels between Billy's time travel and PTSD or something similar (I'm not going to try to diagnose him, I know far too little about psychology or anything like that to even make a laughable guess) is the first couple of times we see Billy time travel. From Vonnegut's telling of the story, we hear that billy first time traveled while in enemy territory with the two scouts and Roland Weary. In this event, Billy jumps several places, but some of the earliest are ...

          One of the last things that we hear from Mumbo Jumbo from Papa LaBos is that the later culture will develop their own Texts for Jes Grew to follow in its relentless pursuit of all things dancing. So the question becomes, has the new Text of Jes Grew been created? And if so, what is it?           One contender that I think for the Text in today's world is social media. Social Media has a way of moving around ideas at an alarmingly fast rate. Sure, this was done through television and other parts of the Internet in the past, but social media does this in such a better way than any of those. One reason for this is that the language of social media is largely based in culture rather than politics. The greatest changes affected by social media were ones which shaped the way people acted, spoke, dressed, etc. Careers were started using social media, and groups of people are looking to monetize off of the culture spawned through us...

          One question that may be bugging the minds of people reading  Mumbo Jumbo  is just how strange the book is set up. Unlike traditional books, this book starts before the publication pages, and has many different dialectical differences. Also, its numbers are always displayed as the numeral rather than the word.           One reason that I have found that explains this book's reason behind designing itself in this way is, of course, the time period in which it is being written. Not the 1920's, that is the year the story takes place, but rather the 1970's at the same time as Ragtime  was being written and produced. This is right when Postmodernism is rising, which is the focus of the class. Manipulating the layout of the book is one easy way to cast a critical eye on traditional books and the meta-narrative involving the layout of books. It also pulls us out of reading the book, forcing us to disassociate ourselve...

          Ragtime consists of many different times in history. We see Father, an explorer who has traveled the world, only to find he doesn't belong, Coalhouse Walker, who represents the changing themes in music, as well as the racial tensions that will escalate years down the line. On top of all of this is the cynical narrator, viewing everything from a view on high, only letting those who represent later ideas speak their own voice. Three completely different themes merge into one book. In this book, Doctorow tries to explore the effects of newer and older sets of ideals being thrust together in one area.           The main theme that the book portrays is early 20th-century Modernism. The book is set in an era where ragtime music is first being developed, the most famous composer of these still being alive while the story takes place. This means that the world is on the crux of a social transformation, which unfortunately comes prim...