In western ideology, animals are lower than humans, they are less valuable and soulless creatures to be exploited. Beasts of burden serve those who are capable of controlling them. Colonial violence can be compared to violence toward animals. Animals, compared to humans are helpless, they have no weapons, no language, no intellect. Colonizers force themselves above the colonized, they rule over with technology and justify their dominance with the belief that the colonized are weak and unintelligent, like beasts. South Africa struggles with the dynamic between the former colonial rule and hierarchy. The white man is said to treat black people like dogs. The relationship between animals and humans is mirrored between white colonizers and black Africans.

Humans project their hatred of other humans into animals. Animals represent creatures undeserving of love. Deep racism is justified with biological answers. The concept of race is closely connected to the concept of species, of being from another and having different DNA. abusing animals is seen as a lower crime than if the abuse was on a human. Being compared to an animal degrades a human and decreases the responsibility felt by an abuser. Terms like brute and beast are often used as racial terms. Prisoners and victims of the apartheid were dehumanized because of their race. Dogs symbolize the non whites in South Africa, their treatment in Disgrace changes in David’s mind, he has little respect for the stray dogs, but then feels bad for his daughters dead dogs. Lucy has been an animal rights activist from the beginning of the novel, this is paired with her understanding of the oppression of non whites in South Africa. Her compassion for one is seen in her compassion for the other.

Abuse of women is also paired with imagery of animals. Davil Laurie, in the rape scene, likens Melanie to a rabbit in a foxes mouth. He acknowledges that she is being preyed on, and continues as if he is as righteous as a hunter. His daughter Lucy is an animal rights activist, he is disapproving and considers her love for animals and her love for women as wrong. He disagrees of her being a lesbian.

The attackers of Lucy and David kill their dogs and take pleasure in it; killing the watch dogs meant to keep blacks out. Their aggression toward the animals is race based. They hate the white man and his dogs. “in a country where dogs are bred to snarl at the mere smell of a black man. A satisfying afternoon’s work, heady, like all revenge” (D 110) this complicates the relationship between victims, the rapists are victims of racial hostility, they had been attacked by guard dogs bred to harm black people. Lucy and David had clearly been attacked though. The dogs represent Lucy and David in this scenario. They are in a way ‘racist’ and hateful, but were then killed, the reader feels bad for the animals as they do for Lucy.

Last term we talked about who has the right to tell stories. Whether truth could only come from those who have experienced something directly, or could anyone tell each others story? I, Rigoberta Menchu is a story of an indigenous Guatemalan woman, she emphasizes that her account is a testimony of all indigenous peoples experiences. She believes she has a right to share this testimony accurately because she lived through the struggles described in her book. Menchu wrote about how her people’s history had been muddied because white people had the predominant voice to explain the circumstances of the indigenous. It is very important to her that she told her stories as an indigenous woman. In high school, we read a book called Little Bee, a fictional story of a Nigerian girl refugee in the United Kingdom. We discussed how qualified the author was to write this novel, given that he is a white man who had never known a Nigerian girl refugee. Is he allowed to tell this story even if it is completely made up? I do not think so because it is supposed to represent a current issue and comment on a political matter from the perspective of a group that the author is not a part of or connected to.
I think that Art Spiegelman has dealt with similar questions pertaining to his right to tell his father’s story in Maus. Could his proximity to his father and the events give him enough licenses to rightly publish a book about it? Is his father the only one who could accurately describe the horrors of the holocaust? I do not know, Spiegelman had a lot of power and ability in his storytelling, because it was represented with pictures. The medium of graphic novel gave him more agency to illustrate the story in a voice that was not his father’s. The characters are represented as mice and cats, but this is an interpretation done by Art and not his father. On the other hand, Spiegelman is part of a group who was affected by the holocaust, he is jewish and his family directly bears a huge burden. There is a level of generational trauma experienced by Art which gives him a particular lense to write his story through.
Spiegelman is aware of this dilemma. He feels guilt associated with not having lived through the holocaust himself while benefiting from his father’s experience. He questions his place to be able to use a story not his own. I think that there is a connection between survivors guilt and the right to tell certain stories. In the case of Maus, it would have been impossible for Spiegelman’s father to tell his own story, he died before the book was complete. He was not an author or illustrator either. Many important experiences are held by people who have died, their story can only be told by someone else. This can worsen the survivors guilt because they have to acknowledge again and again that they did not die or escaped the pain. It must have been painful for Spiegelman to listen to his father’s story and know he could never truly understand. Beyond not being able to understand, he watched his novel become a bestseller in his name. There are a pile of issues weighing on Spiegelman. He had not gone through the pain his family did, does his privilege prevent him from writing an accurate story? He survived and made money because of those who did not. I do not think that Art Spiegelman is at fault, but I can imagine that he has guilt to overcome.

I wonder if Mrs Dalloway was focused on Septimus alone, and his experience of the war, then It would be written more like Big Two-Hearted River. Hemingway is interested in what trauma does to a person, while Woolf explores how it affects a society. Both authors chose different narrative styles to show what impact memory of World War I had on populations returning.

We only hear one voice, Nick, in Hemingway’s short story, only whatever he does and sees. The readers perspective is limited by Nicks consciousness. Every action is explained in great detail, and every inaction is dragged out to a point of feeling tension and arrest the way Nick would. I think the point of this is to create empathy in the reader for someone they don’t know, and never will know. A whole population of young men came back from war with experiences no one else would, they struggled to have these emotions recognized and expressed. To Hemingway, he saw issues within the friends and family of soldiers, who did not know how to treat their loved ones. It was important to show the deep subtle impacts of trauma that might be looked over. The reader of Big Two-Hearted River can feel that there is something off about the seemingly normal situation of going fishing. The in depth narrative style puts emphasis on the personal struggles of memory.

In contrast, Virginia Woolf intends to examine how different members of society process the end of World War I. The reader does not just live in Septimus’s head, but floats through multiple perspectives. When Septimus takes his own life at the end, his doctor is perplexed and wonders why he would do it, while his wife understands his motives. Later some characters brush the incident off as ultimately an act of cowardice, but Clarissa is shaken by the tragedy. Woolf gives narration to multiple different characters unequally, it is clear which ideas she agrees with, but not without acknowledging the presence of contrasting beliefs. We know why Septimus killed himself, but did not feel the day to day build up and complicated memories associated with it, as Hemingway would have written. Instead, we look at societies perceptions of others coming back from the war, and why they were treated as they did.

Hemingway does not give more information that what is immediately present in a situation. He uses descriptions that add up to a conclusion. “He’s alright, Nick thought. He was only tired. He had wet his hand before he touched the trout, so he would not disturb the delicate mucus that covered him”(149). Nick is projecting his emotions onto the trout. He knows the animal is scared and hurting, but tells himself that it is only tired. Nick feels different and foreign, but could just be telling himself that it is nothing but fatigue. Without saying it, we can tell that Nick is referencing himself, because of the peculiar language used about a caught fish. Nick is not excited about capturing him, he does not want to slay the fish in a dominating way. He sees himself in the creature, that is why he takes care to wet his hand. These clues give the reader better insight than just saying that Nick is projecting, because they can recognize the behavior in their own life.

Coming from the US, the topic of 9/11 holds a certain meaning. It is synonymous with remembrance and resilience and bravery. It’s a major event in American history and because most people were alive when in happened it has great personal impact on many. The September 11th master narrative focuses on individuals specific tragedies. It is a day of great loss and tragedy for working class Americans and their families. Every year in school we watched documentary videos about that specific day; the hours and minutes after the attack. Our master narrative includes only about 24 hours of the entire story. Videos of people jumping from the top floors to escape the fire, first responders digging through rubble, sound clips of the last calls people made to their loved ones tugged on the deepest heart strings. Bush later goes down as one of the worst presidents for starting the Iraq war, but I will always picture the clip of him reading to a group of preschoolers while a secret service agent whispers the horrific news into his ear. That is how George Bush will be remembered on September 11th. The master narrative in the United States is heavily skewed to the singular day of tragedy and personal loss. It ignores the aftermath and the reasons for the attack.

My experience about learning of the Iraq war is very limited. It mostly came from my parents or from news outlets, but in school we never talked about it. In my public school we watched videos of the twin towers collapsing, but never learned the history before or the outcome after. No one tried to justify the war to me specifically, but that seemed to be what was happening. If asked why the US was involved in the Middle East (not Iraq or Afghanistan specifically) my peers and I would respond “because of 9/11”. We learned the complexities of the Vietnam war and the atrocities the US participated in, but perhaps the screw ups in the Middle East are too fresh to be examined so heavily. Everybody has a 9/11 story and the memories associated with it are so upsetting, that Americans are willing to accept the master narrative.

I wonder if Americans purposely perpetuate the master narrative as opposed to just living in it? I just live in a world where the narrative of the Middle East and war on terror is handed to me, but for other Americans, they still feel personally upset by the events because they lived through it. I believe that although master narratives are very skewed representations of events, they are based in truth and emotion. September 11th was such a major event that it will influence people’s ideologies on the conflict over seas. For my generation and younger, we do not have this attachment to 9/11 and therefore we oppose the war. It must be an interesting time because it has been almost 20 years since the event and the firsthand opinions are becoming more objective as the population gets older and sees this event as history.

It took a long time for people to distance themselves from september 11th 2001 and see the islamophobia associated with it. People accepted the racism and encouraged it because everyone was so astounded by the news, the whole country was unified in outrage. The master narrative antagonizes the entire Middle East and all muslims without differentiation. People didn’t see the difference between an Afghani and a Saudi Arabian and still don’t. Bush created another us against them narrative, much like the cold war against the soviets.

9/11 is a crazy example of how only the atrocities we experience can make an impact on our behavior. There is a lot to process in the news, and so many horrific events that don’t even get covered for longer than a week. These are out of sight and out of mind truly. But the world trade towers were right in our back yard, the terrorists flew from Boston Logan airport and they had driven down the road which passed to the side of my high school. I remember my teacher pointing out the window and saying the terrorists must have driven past right there toward Portland Maine and flew from the jetport there only a day before they watched the towers fall that afternoon during class. He had remembered that day so well, and I sometimes got an eerie feeling driving on that road. I listen to my parents talk about the shock and horror of hearing about the events while we were out of country that September. The master narrative is fueled by personal accounts, which makes it so strong and inescapable.

Images of maize in latin culture are extremely important because they tie back to the roots of civilization in the hearths of Mesoamerica. The cultivation of maize has empowered people for centuries, and with the spread of corn, indigenous communities can feel pride in their ancestors. The history of maize is pre-hispanic, and pre-hispanic history is often told around maize, because they are the originators of such an influential crop. More recently companies started producing genetically modified seeds and selling them to farmers, who had been breeding their corn for thousands of years. This not only had economic effects on farmers, but it shifted the history of maize out of their hands.
Current artists are still using maize to tell stories and some example of contemporary work by indigenous people are located at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. The symbol is being used in the “Arts of Resistance”, curated by Laura Osorio Sunnucks, to exemplify the west and the white man’s exploitation of indigenous people. Although graffiti is not a traditional art form, there is a tradition of telling pieces of stories through still images. The political reality is that transgenic maize is affecting local markets, because it is cheap and the profits are leaving Mexico. This story is being told on the walls of buildings in Oaxaca Mexico through the stencils of an indigenous woman pointing a rifle at scientists extracting DNA from a corn stalk. Although this particular incidence may not have occurred, the artist chose the specific interaction of power to describe the feelings of her community.
A more broad interpretation of this piece of artwork could not only include the economic takeover of maize cultivation, but the historical ownership of maize. Indigenous farmers are no longer using the crops their ancestors did and people are no longer buying them. It is impending that the way society remembers corn will change. The collective memory will begin to remove the importance of maize from their culture, if foreigners change the farming practices and control the land. There is a power disparity between western scientists and a single local woman over rights to a crop of corn. This shifted when the rifle was pointed at the men, and the rights to the maize, including the monetary and historical value, were being taken back by the woman for her community.
Grafiti itself is a formation of resistance. The types of buildings that grafiti goes on also sends a particular message. According to the Museum of Anthropology, In Oaxaca, many images of human rights abuses were painted on colonial walls. There is a strong initiative to empower the Mesoamerican people by resisting to their oppression. Social change is often depicted through art, not only in the particular images, but how they are created and displayed. There is more meaning in defacing a Spanish building with black and green spray paint, rather than drawing it in a notebook with a pencil.

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