Will's Students- Brandon

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	5/9/97
Subject	Will's Students- Brandon
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Will's Students: Brandon
REPEAT OF INTRO . . .

Thanks again to the wonderful Pynchon List for indulging my students during this
busy time on the list (too busy, if you ask me -- I can barely read half the
list messages, much less respond).  I have asked my students to write about four
paragraphs or so about one of three stories:  TRP's "The Secret Integration,"
William Vollmann's "The Blue Wallet" (from THE RAINBOW STORIES) or James
Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues."  They will then be required to post responses to at
least three of the comments they receive from the List.

Please note that these posts are unedited by me.  Also, you should know that the
students' "central texts" this year have been THE WIZARD OF OZ (the movie), THE
SCARLET LETTER, HUCK FINN, Whitman's "Song of Myself," and THEIR EYES WERE
WATCHING GOD.  When reading THE SCARLET LETTER, they read a one page excerpt
from GRAVITY'S RAINBOW regarding heretical Puritan William Slothrop.  They are
steeped in the idea of Preterite and Elect as a metaphor for various dichotomies
in American society, as well as the idea that such dichotomies are often false
constructions.  This project in the culmination of the THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING
GOD unit, which has dealt with gender and race inequities depicted in American
Literature.

Again, we welcome your critiques, to be addressed directly to the students.

My next student is Brandon Skall.  He has written about the much-anthologized
Jihn Updike story "A&P," which was not part of the assignment.  Some kids will
never learn . . . .

*************************

	I believe that in the story A&P, John Updike, adds a new twist to the classic
preterite and elect theme. John Updike is answering why the preterite are the
preterite and the elect are the elect.

	First, I think that the narrator, Sammy, is the preterite and the three girls
are the elect. This is because Queenie and her friends do not need the financial
support over the summer to have jobs themselves. Furthermore they seem to be
very cool and calm about certain matters, in an erie-pretencious sort of elitist
way.  Sammy seems for the most part the non-wealthy type of kid. I believe that
in this story John Updike based the definition of preterite and the elect on
financial means.

	Sammy has lots of anger build up inside him. This is apparent when he describes
the lady he is ringing up in the beginning. He describes her with such animosity
simply because she caught his mistake. He lets all this anger build up inside
and he doesn’t know how or where to let it out. He just stows it away in the
back of his mind and lets it brew.

	The three girls elevate the tension in the store. Sammy stops concentrating on
his job even more. He shifts his focus to where the girls are, what they’re
doing, which cash register they’ll go to, etc. The girls cause him to manipulate
himself. The girls never asked him to sacrifice his job for them. They never
wanted him to be their martyr. In fact they don’t care. When Lengal tells the
girls that next time they need to have their shoulders covered, Sammy
manipulates the situation into a chance for him to be a hero. In his mind he
sees the girls falling in love with him instantly and then he walks out in a
glorious finish. But in reality he just makes a fool out of himself. Sammy
doesn’t know how to channel his emotions. He never learned how.  In this
situation, that came to haunt him. That is one of the reasons he ends up in the
preterite category. Another is that he couldn’t judge the situation properly. I
think Updike was trying to saying that the reason the preterite are preterite is
because they have poor reasoning abilities. This story is overall pessimistic
about America. It accentuates the failures that occur so randomly in everyone’s
life instead of the successes.

-- Brandon Skall