On the Topic of the Grenville Project...

An aspect of the Grenville group's presentation that I thoroughly enjoyed was the inclusion of a quote to describe Newgate Prison; although it didn't serve to describe the prison in any great detail, it instead depicted the mental state of one imprisoned there, which is equally essential to helping a reader visualize Newgate Prison. Another piece of information that caught my attention was that the number of laws that could be punished by execution increased from 1688 and the 1800s by over fourfold. Given that the extreme punitive measures for practically all laws was apparently a key reason that the US declared independence from Britain, it just seems odd that they would double down with the passage of time. Plus, increasing the number of offenses punishable by death doesn't really make sense given that they had just lost a fair amount of manpower directly due to said secession, but Britain was already established across the globe so that may not have been as important.

Finally, there were a couple of things I was confused about in the subsection titled "Different Trial Processes for Different Classes?" This may be an issue on my end, but I do not see an image of Old Bailey to the left of the text. Next, I couldn't really see how the title of the subsection reflected the contents; the different trials aspect seemed to be brought up in the subsection "Prison Conditions in 18th Century London," whereas this subsection focused on the inaccuracy of the contemporary written trial proceedings. Lastly, I was left wondering the extent to which Thomas Gurney was able to accurately depict trial proceedings, being that he was a single person, and the phrasing implied that he ran into challenges outside of his personal prowess.

On the Topic of the Lost Lecture...

Frankly speaking, I was rather shocked by how much of the material I was familiar with. Specifically, I learned about the specific instances of cultural genocide, e.g. cutting hair, changing names, etc., through a similar documentary in APUSH. The punitive measures for children who did not assimilate seamlessly were extremely harsh, and these reeducation camps were cited as one of the major factors that contributed to the calculated eradication of indigenous cultures. With that prefaced, there were still a number of bits and pieces of information from the lecture that I was either not made aware of at the same time I learned the rest of the information, or that I simply forgot.

Firstly, I was surprised by the fact that these reeducation camps kept running through the 1960s, as its recency is chilling to think about. Another part of my surprise came from a separate event in the 1960s: The Civil Rights Act. If you were to survey a random person on when they thought the US had the most significant shift to social equality, they'd probably respond with 1964 and the passage of The Civil Rights Act. Even though The Civil Rights Act didn't address indigenous peoples, it did represent a paradigm shift in public and, to an extent, systemic opinion of minorities. In that sense, the 1960s are probably the last decade you'd think would house cultural genocide, but there it was unabashed.

In a similar vein, I was appalled by the recent discoveries of mass graves for indigenous children. Just generally, I find the permanent harm of children to be inexcusable, but I guess those who murdered them didn't care enough to see them as humans in the first place.

On the Topic of Smasher...

I think that Smasher is a very straightforward character with regards to what he represents in the overall story. Smasher is an uneducated settler that is the stereotypical evil colonist, he cuts off and boils aboriginal ears, keeps an aboriginal woman to rape and abuse, and speaks of said aboriginals as if they're an unstoppable plague while simultaneously being animals to be scared off or slain. He is the simple colonist at its worst, taking what little freedom he is afforded in his new life and using it to impose his immoral will wherever he can. In a more abstract sense, Smasher is vice and hubris, based on his rampant alcoholism, schadenfreude, and motivation of pride.

That being said, I don't believe that the character of Smasher is particularly informative with regards to early Australian colonial history. For me personally, Australian colonialism was one of the instances of colonialism I was least versed in, but there are general categories of colonialism, and so Smasher simply indicated that there were individuals in Australian colonialism that murdered for its own sake. This was true of every instance of colonialism, but one can infer that Smasher's inclusion and prominence within the story indicated a sort of prominence of this type of colonist.

Being generous, Smasher can provide us with the perspective of an individual who was treated horribly and thus treats others horribly whenever he is given the chance. In that respect, he is the stereotypical bully taken to an extreme, as bullies are typically characterized as having a difficult home life, and taking out their frustration and learned behaviors on others. I'm hesitant to expand that reasoning to all colonists that committed myriad evils, but it is probable that there were at least a handful of colonists that were similar to Smasher rather than being evil gremlins by nature.

On the Topic of Colonialism on a Global Scale...

As a general musing, I thought that it was fairly interesting to break down colonialism into subgroups based on tendencies and actions of specific instances of colonialism. In primary education and general information, we've come a long way as far as teaching about colonialism and its consequences for aboriginals goes, particularly with regards to how we acknowledge the horror which colonists inflicted in order for us contemporaries to enjoy the privileges we have today. Although our collective acknowledgements may not come close to perfectly encompassing the truth of history, it's still a great number of steps we've taken. That being said, I think that we're going a bit too far such that the goal is being distorted.

To elaborate a bit, I do not think there is an upper limit to the acknowledgements we can make, except until there is quite literally nothing more to elaborate upon. Rather than thinking that, what I believe is that some people are simplifying colonialism to a bare bones reflection of what it actually is. Unfortunately, I sometimes hear discourse on colonialism shut down with a simple "colonialism was bad." Certainly, the impact of colonialism unto aboriginals was atrocious, and that is a conclusion that nearly anyone would be able to arrive at if provided with a basic overview of what happened.

The problem with simplifying historical events within discourse is that it can create misunderstandings stemming from not having the full picture. To give an example of sorts, there's the whole "the Civil War was fought because of slavery." That statement is a simplification of tensions between the North and South that is taught in elementary school history classes; in reality, there were a series of socioeconomic factors of which slavery was component that had been stirring for a long while, coming to a head with the election of Lincoln. Now there are people who legitimately believe that the Civil War was fought solely for the freedom of slaves and act as though the Civil War was a fairy tale of good against evil. Was the North of better moral position than the South? Certainly, but to call them martyrs would be a stretch brought about from dumbing down events into a one-liner.

Hence, I think that simplifying colonialism into "colonialism was bad," while not false, mitigates events in a way that is unintentionally deceitful and counterintuitive to the intention that those who often say such things hold. It's one thing to stop and restate that colonialism had unfathomable effects, and that it was a gross violation of even the most basic, universal rights, but completely stopping discourse with such a statement is ignorant. So, I really enjoy that there are multiple authors like Kauanui, Wolfe, and Shoemaker that explore and represent different aspects and forms of colonialism, namely settler colonialism, the plantation-type colonialism, and genocidal colonialism.

On the Topic of Imagery in Part One...

As I briefly discussed with my group during class, an image that really stood out to me during Part One of The Secret River was when William's family is being introduced near the beginning of the novel (I do not have page numbers that would be useful because my novel is still shipping, and so I am reading off of a pdf presently). William's mother is stealing books, and in the process, she drops her baby. 

This stood out to me because the class divide is obviously a huge theme in the novel, but the novel also focuses heavily on negative aspects of the impoverished. A lack of compassion of that vein is showcased when William's brother Rob falls sick with a fever as a child, and his mother admonished him for it, wishing that he had simply died instead. 

With those two scenes in mind, I think that a significant theme in the novel is how very common sensibilities and basic empathy are wrung out of the impoverished as an aspect of the aforementioned class divide. 

A separate, more abstract image that I thought had meaning was the color red. 

First of all, when William's mother was stealing books in the aforementioned scene, William himself got away with the most expensive one, which was described as being red and gilded. Naturally, the book being gilded supports that the book was expensive, and the color descriptor in this isolated instance wouldn't provoke much thought.

Later on, however, William notes that he is in possession of two waistcoats, one of which is expensive, having received it from his master. That particular waistcoat was also red. I doubt that it's simply a coincidence, and will keep an eye out for other descriptors of color as the story progresses.

Anyhow, red in this instance would clearly symbolize wealth or high standing. This makes sense, at least in my head, because I often associate red with royal garments, even though purple is the color that is supposed to symbolize royalty.

On the Topic of Final Projects...

Going through each of the final projects again was nice, as even though we more or less digested the material already through the oral presentations last quarter, the Neatline exhibits were the intended medium of presentation.

Max's presentation on hostile environments in literature was incredibly interesting. When I initially heard the subject matter, I thought that the presentation would be focused upon authors in governments/regimes with heavy censorship, but the focus on literal, generally inhospitable environments is just as enlightening. I thought that incorporating the letters concerning an earthquake was a nice touch, but without reading the source material itself, I'm uncertain as to whether or not I would call it a story per say.

Jenna's presentation on tragic lovers was also fascinating. I'd wager that most people are familiar with the trope of tragic lovers, with Romeo and Juliet likely being the most well-known, but the trope itself is much more prominent than I initially thought. The other story with tragic lovers that I am familiar with is Orihime and Hikoboshi, represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively. It was through the presentation that I also noticed how often that tragic lovers take center stage in a plot; in fact, the only prominent story I can think of in which they do not take center stage would be Antigone, as I would argue that the central figure is Creon.

Bailey's presentation on challenging authority had a very similar subject matter to my own presentation. That being said, the stories selected had a general theme of the government/unjust tyrant receiving their dues eventually, and there being honor in giving your own life to bring about such an end. In stark contrast with this, the stories I selected were moreso mutually assured destruction, and even though all parties involved did suffer, the stories did not depict any semblance of righteousness or sacrifice, only misery all around. In that aspect, it was interesting to see how the very slight tweak between the topics of challenging authority and civil disobedience could result in a thematic difference of stories resultant during research.

Lastly, I would like to touch upon Avery's presentation on theatrical performances with a focus on political protests. I thought it was odd that The Cherry Pickers would be cited as the first aboriginal play while being created in 1968, but I guess it's the first modern indigenous play just as Things Fall Apart was the modern quintessential African novel. As an aside, I thought that the Noh masks were a great take on theatre, which use a lot of body language and expression in every action, to simplify facial expressions into singular caricatures.