AP Lit Fam

I realize that my follow-up posts to the text blog always come after I've posted it, so those scrolling down just see 2-3 seemingly out of context reposts before finally getting to see how it comes together. Aha my bad 🙏

For reference:

Maybe just that’s a lot to say very little, but the constant interweaving of historical events reminds me how time is less of a thread and more like a tapestry, with millions of stories happening all at once, thousands of beginnings, endings, changes, and choices happening every second. It’s amazing and overwhelming at the same time, and reminds me again of the wonderful complexity of being human.

A song I’ve really been into lately would be “It’s Called Freefall” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise. Right from the start, it brings you into the tone of the song with instrumentals and lyrics on the first beat. In a soft, almost mumbled voice, the singer tells us, “Called to the Devil and the Devil did come,” which immediately has us assuming there’s some shady deal about to take place, yet the warm monotonous voice tells us otherwise. “I said to the devil, Devil do you like drums? Do you like cigarettes, dominoes, rum?” The singer twists the classic narrative by trying to converse with the demon he summoned. The Devil himself seems uninterested in worldly escapes and tries just talking with the man, presumably to convince him it might be better in hell. A good use of syntax can be found here as the lyrics are mostly structured around dialogue, with casual language and short sentences. Each stanza repeats the introductory “Called to the Devil...” however by the third verse, the Devil retorts, “Hey! Why you been calling this late? It's like 2 AM and the bars all close at 10 in hell...” marking the progression of relationship between the two. It amusing to me to picture a man that keeps summoning the devil to rant about to his problems, while the demon slowly gets more frustrated and gives more and more exasperated advice.  The chorus is pretty simple by comparison, just repeating the line, “you could let it all go, you could let it all go, It’s called: freefall”, which seems to be a reference to falling into hell, as well as a “falling out” of friendships. Diction is again used throughout the song to create a natural banter between the two characters, shown in the last line of the chorus, “Cause ain't s--- free but falling out, and that s---’s easy let me show you how, it’s like...” which works with the relaxed tone of the song as a whole. Neither figure is trying to be someone they’re not, as both are exhausted, lonely people that have no need for fancy language. All these factors work together in such a way to create a song that I can’t get tired of listening to.

For my independent novel, I am reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The character that resonates with me so far is Queequeg, the polynesian harpooner that the main character, Ishmael, befriends. Queequeg is introduced very early on when Ishmael is trying to find a place to sleep at an inn. The landlord suggests he “share a blanket with a harpooner”, seemingly as a joke. Then, after trying in vain to sleep anywhere else, Ishmael begrudgingly consents to the harpooner’s room. By and by, Queequeg stomps in, not realizing there's another already in the bed. Delightful hijinks ensue as Queequeg assumes Ishmael is there to kill him and tries to fight back with a tobacco pipe. On first encounter, Ishmael sees Q as a lowly, “abominable savage”, pagan, canabalistic, and heathenish, who smokes in bed and has dark, stripey tanned skin. However, as the chapters progress, the two form a bond. Through the cliche “and there was only one bed” trope, the roommates end up cuddling and appreciating each other’s warmth and companionship. Ishmael expands his perception of the wider world and starts seeing Queequeg as a person, friend, and confidante, while Q is able to open up, seemingly for the first time since he left his family. Smoking tobacco in bed becomes a bonding ritual for the two instead of an isolating annoyance. Queequeg, although first introduced as an intimidating outsider, is quickly shown to be gentle, tender-hearted, and loyal; a welcome companion to the lonesome Ishmael. I love seeing those aspects of both characters explored in such a delicate way. Ishmael reacts as you'd expect others to respond to native cultures around that time, and yet the author goes an extra step to show the open-mindedness of Ishmael and the unexpected affection from Queequeg. The intimate, often incidentally homoerotic friendship between the two is so refreshing to see between two male characters, especially at the time this book was published. While I don't relate to either character individually, the descriptions of the two together remind me of a cozy sleepover, or when I used to share a room with my sister and we’d share secrets deep into the night. A surprisingly warm and fuzzy start to a book about crazed captains and wild whale chases. 

There’s something to be said about the simplistic beauty of children’s literature. The stories, books, poems, and fables all achieve what is expected in a more mature novel in a much reduced format that would make sense to the smallest little minds. These are themes like love, ambition, adventure, sympathy, sadness, and the ever present modeling of what is right and wrong. These books teach morals to the young readers in such a way that relates, entertains, and educates all in one. An excellent children’s book will do all of this and more: adding another layer of wit or beauty to the stew pot of positives. This is often the case with the works of Beatrix Potter. Her stories take common woodland animals such as rabbits, mice, and hedgehogs and personify them, relating them to the reader by the way they dress, talk, and act. One of my favorites is The Tale of Two Bad Mice, in which a married mouse couple breaks into a dollhouse and ruins all the toy food and furniture once they realize it’s all fake. The story ends with them regretting being so rude and pledging to clean up the mess. It’s a simple tale of making and fixing mistakes, but adds in the wonder of being inside a splendid dollhouse and exploring the miniatures as if they were the real thing. This story always resonated with me as a child since it whisks the mind away to some other place and time entirely, doing so with the most adorable, exquisitely done illustrations, and descriptive language. The stories may date from as far back as the 1890s, but I still find her books to be refreshing and lively. Such is the precedent I now seek out in other children’s books: message, method, and charm.