Wednesday, February 23, 2022

HW for March 3: William Faulkner's "Mississippi" (anthology, pp. 133-150)

 Answer to one or more of the following questions.





"Within the state [of Mississippi, a more nuanced cultural geography distinguishes the southern part of the state from several other regions. A person is not jus from Mississippi. He or she is from a particular part of the state that carries distinctive geographical, historical, demographic, economic, and cultural connotations."

Bridget Hayden, "The Hand of God: Capitalism, Inequality, and Moral Geographies in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Anthropological Quarterly 63:1 (2010), p. 180.


1. Can one surmise regional divisions within the state of Mississippi from W. Faulkner's essay? Which stand out and how are they characterized?


2. Can you determine different "cultural geographies" according to the perspective of different demographic groups? Try to elicit them.


3. Does history play a role in the division? How? (Think / research about Old South and New South)


4. How does "Nature" play into this characterization of Mississippi and its differences and developments? Substantiate your answer, commenting on short quotes from the text.

3 comments:

  1. In his essay, Mississippi, Faulkner describes one of the 50 US states, Mississippi. The essay talks about the history of the people after the Civil war (and the abolishment of slavery), and how the state has changed in the life of the unnamed “narrator”. The essay talks about different sides of the state. It starts with the description of where the “narrator” lived as a child. That was before Mississippi was “urbanised”. It talks about the difficulty of travel, as there were no roads to the east and west. The people lived off of the land, they hunted, and in doing so, they were slowly destroying the land. Hunting was not done for survival, but for sport, the practices of the people the likes of Sartorises and Snopes (references to characters in Faulkner’s other works) caused harm to the environment.
    The essay also talks about the role of racism in the society. There was a lot of tension among the people after the abolishment of slavery. Former slave owners did not want to give up their status, but there is also talk about a slave who chose to stay even after she was free to leave (it provided her some security).
    The essay also talks about the financial standing of the people. More specifically, it talks about how the rich were able to transform the state. Cotton played an important role in that. For many it was the source of wealth, the landscape was changed in order to accommodate the planting and distribution of it (they made fields and roads, enabled travel on the river, etc..). The more the scenery was changed, the more cotton they could produce, the wealthier (some) got.
    The essay talks about the rapid change the state of Mississippi went through in the years after slavery was abolished in the US. As it was one of the confederate states, the aftermath of the civil war had a big impact on the society.

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  2. 4. Throughout the text you see the big role nature had in people's lives, how it changed, affected them. And then also how people changed nature. On the first page Faulkner writes that 'it was impossible to travel east or west unless you walked or rode one of the horses or mules'. Then slowly throughout the text you see how people start to inhabit and colonise nature. Faulkner writes about the railroads being constructed, how they shortened the distances on p. 20: 'so there were railroads in the land now..'. It discusses people pushing away wilderness to farm palm trees for instace. Although nature remains strong, which is evident in a piece that discusses the flooding of The Old Man river on p.24, how it easily, alsmost effortlessly takes everything that people had built. Throughout, nature/wilderness keeps being pushed further and further and Faulkner names the sacrifices it made: how the pine trees were turned in to dollars and built cities for isntance (p.32). Near the end of the text the manmade change of Mississipi is charaterized by an artificial lake that is supposed to protect the cotton plantation. A symbol for people's 'victory' over nature in Missisippi in a way I think.

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  3. 1. He starts with Northwest corner, across the Memphis border, then routing southwards (Jefferson) along the western boundry ("...along the Big River p134), which is the Mississippi river. Then returning through the central and eastern counties (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Natchez and Pascagoula p135) to end up in Faulkner´s own hometown, oxford.

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Final HW: Walt Whitman and Derek Walcott (pp. 279-283)

1. Do some research on D. Walcott and try to account for the different perspectives of the ocean (and sea-crossings) in Walcott's "...