Stick(ing) to it

"It's perfect," I said to my mom seconds after seeing what would become my first car. I had already spent hours pouring over internet listings and reviews of different makes and models of car before settling on this one--a green 2000 VW Jetta GLX. Front-wheel drive, a 2.8L VR6, sunroof, premium sound system, leather seats, and only 82,000 miles. I had lobbied for a rear-wheel drive V8, but my dad's caution forced the V6 compromise. When you're 16, the car is the ultimate symbol of freedom (for suburbia at least.)  Few things compare to being able to go places without having to rely on another person for transportation.

My mom got the car inspected and when everything checked out, we started haggling with the man selling it, settling on a reasonable price in a few minutes. It seemed as if the stars had aligned and I was about to taste freedom, but one little thing stood in my way--I didn't know how to drive a standard.

I knew the concept behind driving a stick, but translating a mental idea into precise foot control was easier said than done. I had never needed to control anything to within a few millimeters before, especially not  with my feet, adding to the pressure for a reasonably new driver. Furthermore, when you make a mistake driving a stick, your failure is immediately and gut-wrenchingly apparent to those inside and outside the vehicle. The car will suddenly lurch forward as the momentum of the engine is transferred into the driveshaft all at once before stalling. After this, it takes several seconds to restart the engine and ready yourself for another try, just to fail again. The whole ordeal can become pretty demoralizing after missing a turn signal because of your own inability to get the car moving.

But, as with most things in life, the only way to become proficient is through practice. With this in mind, my dad took me out to a secluded industrial park the weekend after purchasing the Jetta to work on accelerating from a stop.

"Just let the clutch out slowly as you press the gas," he said. "Remember to be smooth."


Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrklunk... Silence.

"That's okay, everyone stalls the first time. Try again," he said encouragingly.
Clutch in, put it in gear, start revving the engine... a simple checklist that kept running through my head as I readied myself for a second try.


Vrrrrrrrrscreeeech...

Too much gas. We lurched forward as the tires struggled to catch up to the now mechanically-connected over-revved engine. Not the best way to start, but at least we were moving. Except that because I had been so focused on getting going, I completely forgot how to actually drive once moving. I gripped the steering wheel tight in my sweaty hands as we trundled down the deserted street, the engine barely above idle. Aside from manually shifting, a car with a standard transmission is identical to an automatic--which I had been driving the months before--yet the whole experience seemed so foreign.

Over the next thirty seconds, my dad tried to convince me I should stop the car and try starting again.
"Starting is the hardest part, once you have that down, the rest is easy. Besides, you're going to have to stop eventually, unless you plan on driving this slow for the rest of time."

He was right. I would pass through several lights and stop signs on the three mile drive to school each day, let alone the countless lights I would hit driving anywhere else. With this realization, I became determined to master the manual transmission and gain my freedom once and for all. I came to a stop, started revving the engine again, slowly let the clutch slip...

Vrrrrrrrthuddd....


"You know, riding a bike isn't so bad. Good exercise, you don't have to pay for gas... maybe I'll just stick to that," I said bitterly.
"Try it again," he said optimistically, worried about the financial consequences of me giving up I'm sure. I restarted the car, began revving the engine again, wincing in anticipation of another cacophony of rapidly colliding metal components.

Vrrrrrrrrooooooommmmm...

Not quite perfect, but certainly sufficient for anyone. With this, I proved to myself that I could do, and that I only needed to keep practicing to get a feel for the point at which the clutch starts to bite and how much gas is needed to accelerate through the additional resistance smoothly.

We spent another couple of hours driving up and down that industrial road, pausing only for a root beer float break (my dad's favorite.) I stalled many more times, was the cause of more horrific sounds that I care to remember, but I started getting the hang of it--succeeding more often than not by the end of the day.

Today, driving that same Jetta has become second nature. I can accelerate smoother than most automatics without thinking and I enjoy the added control I have over the vehicle. Now, I can't imagine driving anything other than a manual on a daily basis. It just seems so natural. And all I needed was some encouragement and confidence in myself.

Respect

After a little confusion on the date and time of our second meeting, Haya and I eventually met up again last Tuesday. We had been slated to meet the Tuesday before, but she said that she mixed up the days of the week. We spent about the first ten minutes of our meeting talking about how she had thought it was Monday when in fact it had been Tuesday so instead of meeting with me she had been napping. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same if I thought my schedule was free.

When we did meet for the second time last Tuesday, she apologized profusely, saying that I must think all Saudis don't believe in punctuality because of her mistake. By itself, her worries wouldn't seem remarkable--I would do the same if the roles were reversed--but she earnestly believes that one should always be respectful. After my repeated assurances that her absence was quite alright, that it had given me a chance to relax and read the newspaper, she began to tell me a story about respect. 

She didn't divulge many details, but at some point since arriving in America, two individuals questioned why she wore a hijab (from my understanding, a headdress worn by many Islamic women to maintain their modesty as they are instructed to do so in the Koran) when other Muslim women do not necessarily do the same. They were inquiring, rather forcibly as Haya tells it, why she felt she had to wear a hijab when it obviously wasn't a strict requirement of her religion. Haya then dove into a long explanation of how her choice to wear a hijab was between "her and god," no one else. Her parents do not force her to wear it, her friends do not force her to wear it, she chooses to. She even went on to say that during a recent trip to Houston, she ventured out several times without her headdress and did not feel bad about doing so, only that she felt more comfortable with it on. 

Haya surprised me with how annoyed she was at the questioning of her beliefs. The notion that others would question and attempt to develop fallacies within her beliefs completely went against what her parents had taught her as a child. Not necessarily that the beliefs of others should be accepted without thought, but that we should have respect for one another's thoughts and practices. Haya believed that the actions of those two individuals was demeaning to her and she even went on to say that their actions were despicable. In fact, because she wanted to make sure that I understood her completely, she even took the time to choose the right word in Arabic that would describe her feelings before translating it to "despicable."

However, through all of this she didn't even think of trying to correct their actions with information about her religion. She told me that because she is not in her own country, she should not attempt to change what anyone else believes. Instead, she understands that there will be differences largely because of the culture gap and strives to maintain respect towards all opinions. 

I'm still struggling with whether I believe her choice to move away from confrontation rather than informing them of the reasons for her choices was "correct," but either way her choice not to lash back at the individuals should be admired. 

Experiences with Huck Finn

Huck Finn Experienced?

1. Have you read the novel –Huck Finn- before?  If so where and why?

Yes, I read Huck Finn my junior year of high school for English.

Answer either 2 or 3 depending on your answer to 1.

2. If you have not read Huck Finn before, surely you know something about the novel and character from references and allusions in popular culture.  What do you know about either the novel and/or character?

3. What was your response to reading Huck Finn, and what do you remember from your reading?  Also, did you actually read the whole novel, or just parts of it?  Did you read Cliff Notes or Monarch Notes instead?

Looking back on my first experience with Huck Finn, I don't remember much other than major plot points. I can recall some of the relationship Huck develops with Jim, but I did not remember all of the occurrences on the river, such as finding the wrecked steamboat. I did read the whole novel, and it did not seem as deep of a story four years ago. I definitely noticed more details this reading. 

4. If you were assigned to read Huck Finn in a previous class, either here or in high school, how did your class as a whole react to the novel?  Why do you think your instructor assigned the novel?  How did he or she try to “teach” the novel?

From what I can remember, the class reacted as many students around the country do when reading. Some are shocked by the racism and dark side of humanity, some think it's a great adventure story, and others don't take the time to read it. I'm sure it was assigned because the teacher thought that all students should experience the novel at some time during their education, but she did not attempt to censor the story whatsoever.

5. If you were required to read Huck Finn in a previous class, what sort of assignments were you required to complete, and what exactly did you do during the classes when

Huck Finn was being discussed.

I honestly don't remember any specific assignments involving Huck Finn. I'm sure there were reading quizzes and some sort of essay or final test on the novel. During class, we would often spend thirty minutes or so each day talking about some event in the novel, usually while going over the answers reading quiz--using it as a springboard for discussion.

6. Huck Finn is still one of the most controversial and most banned books in America.  Why is it so controversial? 

I think any work that spends much more time focusing on the greed and immorality present in even the "good" characters is likely to be controversial. Highlighting the dark side of humanity is liable to rub some Americans the wrong way.

7. Is Huck Finn still relevant to you as college student today?  Should it continue to be taught in college classrooms?

I do think it is still relevant.Not only does the novel reminds us of a time in American history where there was not freedom for all, but it depicts a life full of adventure that most of us wish we could live at least in part. Besides, college is an adventure itself--it's only fitting to study an adventure novel while in college. 

8.  The general consensus among critics is that Huck Finn is a brilliant and powerful novel, but also a flawed and problematic novel.  What do you think might be flawed and/or problematic about the novel?

I think, while adding to the atmosphere of the novel, some of the dialogue can be a bit inaccessible at times. Beyond this trite flaw though, I believe the dearth of lasting consequences throughout make the story seem somewhat unrealistic.

Adventures of (Reading) Huckleberry Finn

This wasn't my first experience with Huck Finn's narrative of his journey down the Mississippi river in search of freedom and adventure. My first encounter with Mark Twain's so-called "Great American Story" was near the end of my junior year of high school, right before a slew of AP tests, so I didn't allow myself the opportunity to really sit down and read it. Huck Finn is certainly not the type of book that can be skimmed or read quickly and have almost the same impact. You have to pay attention to what is happening in the story and how the characters develop for the story to hit home. Twain's constant use of heavy southern dialects can be unwieldy at times, but it certainly caused me to slow down immensely and on occasion I even had to pause to actually speak the lines to figure out what someone was trying to say. (Which I'm sure drew some odd looks from those sitting around me the few times I was reading the book in between classes, but oh well.)

Frustrating readers with complex dialect probably wasn't Twain's objective though--instead he intended to give an insight into the South for all of those people who weren't able to experience it first-hand. There were no televisions, no internet, and many people never left the area immediately surrounding their place of birth. Thousands in the North probably had no experience of slavery or what life in the South was like. Yet just two decades before the publishing of Huck Finn, America was ripped in twain (too good of a pun to pass up) by a horrendous civil war which was, at least partially, caused by the issue of slavery. Even though he grew up in Missouri and even "fought" for the Confederacy (albeit only for two weeks or so) during the Civil War, Twain obviously tries to paint slavery and those who own slaves as a blemish on human society. Many times Huck wrestles with reconciling his ideas of what makes a person good with being surrounded by slavery, which Huck eventually decides is immoral.

Although much of the controversy surrounding Huck Finn deals with slavery and racism, we cannot forget another major theme in the novel--adventure. I think just about every boy wants to go on adventures when he is 13, I know I did. However, parents (especially moms) always seem to ruin all of the fun in the name of safety. Navigating hundreds of miles down one of the largest and most heavily-trafficked rivers in the world, encountering unsavory personalities all the way, what could possibly happen? I suppose it's probably for the best Huck didn't have a mother around to prevent the story from becoming reality rather than a dream. Although now that I think about it, that would have been a wonderful ending--300 pages of Huck floating down the Mississippi living the life of a boy with no mother around to tell him to wash his hands and stop doubling the weight of his clothes with mud each day, only to end with Huck waking up an realizing the whole thing was merely a dream and he was still back in Widow Douglas' house, being "sivilized."

Not that the actual ending is much better. Aside from the resolution of Jim's quest for freedom, the rest of the story ends rather weakly in my opinion. Several chapters are consumed with the ludicrousness of Tom's plans, with little connection to the rest of the story except to remind us that Huck is a pragmatist at heart and not a dreamer like Tom. Eventually though, the plan is enacted and seemingly as a plot device, Tom's antics almost get himself killed so that Jim prove he is a human being in the eyes of the Phelps' before being informed of his freedom. Then the book wraps up with what became a running theme throughout: Huck decides to just keep on moving, west instead of south this time, to get away from any of the corruption and immorality that develops in human society. In a sense, Twain posits that continually moving is better than planting yourself somewhere and actually making a change in society.

I don't agree.

Falling Out of Vogue

When I walked into the library's periodicals section, I honestly hadn't put any thought into which magazine I would start looking through. Figuring I would just walk down the aisles and be able to pick out a good volume to look through, I began in the basement wading through rows and rows of academic journals before I noticed a shelf full of Vogue, seemingly untouched for years. Why I pulled a volume of a magazine I had never opened before off the shelf, I couldn't say, but surely I could find a good candidate from the 12 issues within the tome. After about ten minutes of flipping through pages replete with pictures of women's fashion of the time, I started to lose hope of finding anything that I could enjoy reading through and then write about.

Eventually though, I did find an article from the series Vogue Essays on Etiquette concerning the proper way to write invitations, which the author seemed to think was a dying art in July of 1922. The article--along with the rest of the magazine--was definitely catering toward upper-class women who would soon be hosting parties themselves. I think one constant throughout many magazines (no matter the date of publication) is an emphasis on how-to articles. A plan for a model airplane, instructions for wreath making, installing new software, et cetera. All with the common purpose of educating the reader on a topic that the author decides is either a fun hobby or one of the necessities of coming-of-age and the added responsibility that coincides with getting older. 

In this case, knowing the proper ways to correspond with others and how to invite them to dinner were deemed a necessity for every young woman to learn when coming-of-age so she would not commit a faux pas when out in the world on her own. To me, how to address someone in an invitation or the terminology used to indicate whether an R.S.V.P. is expected does not seem to be a necessary skill. Obviously times have changed enormously since 1922, with invitations being one of the less noticeable differences behind other changes like say the Internet and television. Coming-of-age today is more about learning to drive and getting a job than learning that it is inappropriate to add a title to one's signature under any circumstance. 

However, in the 20's there must have been quite an emphasis placed on maintaining the proprieties of Victorian England, at least in the upper-classes (to which Vogue was seemingly marketed). Throughout the pages, there were numerous advertisements for boarding schools and many of the dresses and accouterments pictured looked as if they belonged at Windsor Castle. Nowadays I think the emphasis is on being trendy and new rather than posh and traditional. 

Nevertheless, if my sister's love of calligraphy and formal invitations is a good indication of the rest of American women these days, some of the guidelines laid out in Vogue's article seemed to have had a lasting impact. While invitations to a dinner are more likely to be sent via text than hand delivered by a butler, I rarely see a wedding invitation that does not at least aspire to evoke some sense of attending a great Victorian event. 

Coming-of-age has definitely changed over the past 90 years. Instead of focusing on the formalities and grooming of an individual into one who will meet society's expectations, the emphasis is now on the acceptance of responsibility and becoming self-reliant. 

Left to Right ... tfeL ot thgiR

When agreeing on a time and place to meet is difficult--not because of a pair of busy schedules, but rather because of fragmented emails caused by a definite language barrier--it seemed only natural to be leery of how the first meeting with Haya would go. I expected to muddle through an hour-long conversation akin to digging a truck out of a swamp, but I found myself surprised just a few minutes into our conversation. 

Haya is from Saudi Arabia, a culture that I soon realized is much different than our own. She has spent the last three months or so at TCU learning English through the IEP before continuing on with her studies here in a different field. Both her older sister and twin brother also are a part of the program, though I don't think they have conversation partners themselves. We talked a little about how the culture shock was mitigated a little bit by having family nearby, but she still mentioned being saddened by being unable to spend time with the other members of her family (3 sisters, 3 brothers, and a mother) back in Saudi Arabia. We discussed music briefly: she doesn't like American music because she does not understand the meaning of the lyrics, much like I would feel about Arabian music I'm sure. 

 

So far her life seemed to be close to what I imagined mine would be if I moved to a country with a different language and alphabet altogether. Maybe this is a gross generalization, but the majority of the time I hear about Saudi Arabia from a westerner, it is a land of strictness and a supremely patriarchal society. Halfway through our hour, I found no support of this idea from her attitude or demeanor. 

That's not to say there aren't major differences in the cultures though. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, Haya (and all other women) are forbidden from driving. Instead, many families will hire drivers from a large pool of immigrants hailing from countries such as India and Pakistan. Haya's family actually has two such drivers who tote the female members of her family around. This might seem like an impediment to some of us, but not the way Haya explains it. She doesn't mind being unable to drive, reminding me that she is just as able to get around as I am, but from the comfort of a passenger seat instead. 

The conversation soon turned to the Arabic language itself or more specifically, the challenges of writing from right to left. Perhaps I was somewhat unprepared for our first meeting, this being the most major facet of Arabian life I have any certainty in my knowledge of. She told me that she had no problem switching to writing from left to right whenever she wrote in English. I soon decided that I would be unable to feel the same writing in the opposite direction than I have been for almost two decades, evidenced by the fact that it took me a full minute just to type "Right to Left" in backwards for the title of this post. I have been promised lessons in writing the Arabic alphabet (25 letters, with "e" and "u" being represented by one letter in Arabic) at our meeting next week along with traditional Arabic coffee, which seems to be like espresso after Haya's explanation. 

Frankly, I did not expect this project to be anything other than a burden on my already hectic academic schedule. Now I expect the project to be an interesting way to learn more about another culture somewhat different from our own in a mutualistic way. 

Candidly Desensitized

Wow. Normally I would strive to compare Voltaire's work with some other piece of literary work, but frankly I don't think I've encountered anything that so bluntly wades into a morass of death (well at least for the nameless masses), theft, corruption, rape, and vehement attacks on the author's peers.

The list of misfortunes Candide is witness to left me wanting the same bullet he begged for a mere four pages into the book after being flogged 4,000 times by his Bulgarian comrades. I do not know what injustices befell Voltaire personally to cause him to offer up such a string of calamities, but he certainly wasted no ink on frivolities such as character development and rising conflict. Throughout, he lingered on a topic just long enough to allow the reader to begin to comprehend the enormity of the incident before moving along to the next, like a UPS guy delivers packages the week before Christmas--the good old "throw it hard enough so the force of the package hitting the door alerts the residents of the package's arrival" routine that we all know and love.

Lest you think that I am somehow exaggerating--as Voltaire does in Candide--let us look at the events in just the first five chapters. By the time of the Lisbon earthquake, Candide has already seen a gruesome battle take place, witnessed at least two villages pillaged by the opposing armies of the Bulgarians and the Abares, been whipped excessively for exercising free will, watched his one-time savior drown saving an ungrateful sailor, and to top it all off Candide then watches as one of the great cities in Western Europe is decimated by an act of God. For any being to experience just one of these events would be emotionally devastating. Candide experiences all of them intimately and almost shrugs them off in the innocent belief that it was all for the best.

To me, the only way one could possibly consider this chain of events to be "for the best" would be to imply that desensitization to emotional trauma is what humanity needs to elevate to a better existence. This is where the irony is at work, because emotions and the reactions to trauma are what make us human. Without emotion and thought, what are we other than an organized collection of atoms? Yet Voltaire sarcastically implies that desensitization is essential to the betterment of humanity, that our inability to rationally interpret and plot a course of action no matter the circumstances causes us to remain distant from our full potential as a race.

This implication is Voltaire's ultimate attack on his peers during the Age of Reason. At a time when other intellectuals are emphasizing rational thought as the way to progress society, Voltaire shows that the purely rational removes the human element, which in turn, runs contrary to the actual progression of humanity. After all, what is humanity without human?

Reading through Candide reminded me of watching the evening news--a succession of often tragic events related to an audience in quick snippets without any emotion from the anchors. Hearing all of the terrible things in the world that happen each day effectively removes the immense significance of many events. The story of a murder can be relayed to an audience in mere seconds, but no sense of the effect on the lives of those close to the murder can be developed in such a short time. Candide kills both the Jew and the Inquisitor in a few sentences because of the absence of immediate remorse. Devoid of emotion, it was so easy to kill once that he might as well do it again to ensure his future.

After finishing the book, I was not desensitized enough to read through the it again, but I definitely empathized with Voltaire's worry of what humanity could become if we all forgot what it means to be human in the quest for rationality and answers to the world around us.

Now to enjoy some chocolate.