If I am to be somewhat honest, I'm having difficulty writing about The White Boy Shuffle or organizing my thoughts about the chapters. I think it's because of the details and some are absurd, and others are true though somewhat hard to believe, and then there's the whole thing with basketball, and it's getting lost in my head, but I'm going to try to write about it anyways.
(Side note, though, I think my intros are getting better, so there's some progress)
Something I thought a lot about was the contrast between the reactions of Gunnar and the narrator in Invisible Man when called the n-word. We already had discussion about this and some people touched on this on their blogs, but I'll put my thoughts out there too.
The narrator and Gunnar are similar in the sense that they both want to fit in (at least in the beginning). The narrator wants to be like Bledsoe, and wishes to become successful in his society, just like Gunnar wants to fit in after realizing how different he is from the other residents of Hillside. They differ because the narrator wants to fit into white society, whereas Gunnar wants to get away from the image of being a white black boy. I think we pretty much covered in class that this is one of the reasons why the n-word has different effects on the two, though they have similar goals.
On a somewhat different note, this Gunnar, who is elated at being called the n-word, is so different from the Gunnar who purposefully misses free throws and doesn't want to do things just because others want him to. This train of thought doesn't really have a point, but I just found it interesting that after Scoby gives Gunnar this confidence boost, he completely transforms and becomes the person we are reading about now. So trying to be someone he wasn't ended up making him the person he really is? Or something like that.
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I'm not sure if the Gunnar that was elated at being called the n-word is so different from the Gunnar who is missing the free throws. When he first arrives, Gunnar just wants to fit in, which is why he is so happy that Scoby calls him the n-word, but at the point where he misses the free throws on purpose I don't think he is a completely different person. After all, he achieved his first goal and has fit in quite well with the locals like Psycho Loco and Scoby. I feel like that moment is more about a sense of control that Gunnar likes and wields than a change of attitudes. I feel like the real change of attitudes is his transition from Santa Monica to Hillside.
ReplyDeleteOut of the four novels we have read so far, I definitely think Invisible Man and The White Boy Shuffle are the most similar. Both main characters change drastically throughout the novel and in many ways TWBS is like a modernized version of Invisible Man. There's a great deal of surrealism in both and Gunnar and the narrator both experience epiphanies after riots.
ReplyDeleteI think that this difference is due to the difference in time and place. Both Gunnar and the narrator want to be accepted. For Gunnar is is being the black guy in the "in crowd," but for the narrator it is about being accepted by whites.
ReplyDeleteCompared to the rest of the novels we have TWBS is most definitely an entirely different beast than the other novels we have read and it's definitely has been making it harder to interpret. The contrast is greatest between it and Invisible Man. Invisible man was polished for years, and you notice, every single word was thought about it. While on the other hand TWBS has a very laid back feel to it --I think it was intentionally done this way in order to match Gunnar's culture-- resulting in a harsh culture shock now reading TWBS.
ReplyDeleteThe contrasting reactions of the narrator when Bledsoe uses the word on him (which is done in contempt, to strip away the veneer he's been cultivating of himself as one of the "special", elite, educated African Americans in his region--a future "leader of his people") and Gunnar's (where the intent behind the word is entirely opposite--a measure of his inclusion, in which he takes immense pride) has a lot to do with the different time periods, and reflects the way the meaning and use of this word has changed over time. The "fraternal" meaning certainly existed in Bledsoe's time, but it wasn't nearly so ubiquitous as today. Gunnar isn't even remotely offended or confused when Scoby uses the word--it's as if he's been *waiting* for it. The post-civil-rights generation has embraced the word in a way that their parents' generation did not. Beatty's novel reflects this change in sensibility, also in the way that Gunnar uses it throughout his narration. The narrator of _Invisible Man_ *never* uses the word himself, either in dialogue or in narration. Beatty uses it freely in both.
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