Alarm

At least once or twice a month, something will be cooking in the oven at my house, and a small piece of it, usually a speck of cheese, will fall onto the oven floor and catch fire. What ensues is a tiring struggle to fan a tiny puff of smoke away from the smoke alarms around the kitchen. There were two of them: one was in the hallway, and one was at the top of the staircase leading down to the basement. It was never fun to put up with the eardrum-shattering beeps while waving a hand-towel of futility at the alarms, but it got worse when my dad decided to put in a third.

The third alarm was technically in a different room, but it was still in the same area: in the sun room, near to the doorway, right next to the kitchen. When my dad suddenly came in saying that he had a new smoke alarm he was going to install, by brother Linus and I told him that it was a bone-headed idea. We would then have three smoke alarms in the one area where they were more of a pain than a safety device, and if there were a fire in the sun room, the nearest alarm was already fewer than ten feet away. As was typically the case, he didn't listen.

He climbed a stepladder and placed the alarm on a ledge near the doorway. He pushed a button to activate it, and a small red light flashed. With his job complete, he climbed back down and said something about how that would keep us all safer, a statement to which Linus and I both rolled our eyes.

As Dad was folding up the ladder, the new smoke alarm suddenly started beeping. Flippantly, I said, "Oh, there's a fire. Run for your lives." Dad let out an aggravated sigh as he put the ladder back up to examine the alarm. He pushed the reset button, but the alarm continued to beep. Linus, who was not enjoying getting his ears blasted out, demanded that the alarm be shut off. I voiced my agreement. Dad pushed the reset button again, and nothing happened. Before Linus could become unpleasantly agitated, I suggested that the battery be removed from the alarm, a solution so simple, I was somewhat aggravated that he hadn't thought of it himself. Dad took the alarm down, but he did not take the battery out. At this point, Linus and I were both getting unpleasantly agitated, as we asserted that the best course of action was to remove the battery. Dad then informed us that there was no way to open the alarm to remove the battery. Statements such as, "What do you mean?" and "Whose stupid idea was it to make a smoke alarm you can't shut off?!" followed.

As Dad looked at the instructions on the package, Linus trotted down the basement stairs. I was somewhat annoyed that he wasn't going to suffer along with the rest of us, but I was prepared to join him if the alarm could not be silenced soon. Apparently, the instructions recommended to Dad that he push the reset button, which he did. Then he pushed it again. And again. Just as I told him to quit faffing around with the reset button, Linus returned with the off button: a hammer. He told Dad to give him the alarm. A short discussion took place, and Dad agreed to relinquish the alarm to Linus. He took it and the hammer outside. Before long, there was a loud bang and the sound of shattering plastic, followed by a heavily distorted "bueeoueoep". There were several more bangs. Linus walked back in and declared the alarm dead.

As my ears recovered, I began to appreciate that we would not be installing a third alarm where it would be least useful and most annoying. Our reluctant attempt had been a waste of time and an unpleasant experience, so I assumed that another would not follow. I was, however, wrong. A couple days later, Dad came home with another alarm, which he installed without incident, though there were plenty of arguments and reminders of what had happened the last time. Luckily, this new alarm came with two buttons: one marked "test", and one marked "silence".

Cookies

A cookie is little more than a mass of flour, sugar, often vanilla, butter, and various other items lying around the kitchen that have been warmed in an oven until golden brown (or in some cases, a considerably darker brown). Despite the simplicity of these small bundles of health problems, some of us humans (and occasionally our pets) find ourselves uncontrollably attracted to them, resulting in those of us with greater restraint being beaten to the cookie jar by our hungrier counterparts and finding, when we finally get there, that there are no cookies left for us.

Every year around Christmas, this is the problem in my family. As a tradition, my mother devotes herself to baking so many "seasonal" cookies that we nearly run out of cookie tins to store them in. She makes several different styles of cookies, from traditional jam and chocolate filled German ones, to decorated sugar cookies, to new creations from online recipes she discovered five months ago but decided not to make until what she considered a more festive occasion. No matter what the cookie, my brother Linus devours them all. From his usual unresponsive position behind his laptop screen and between his extra-loud headphones, he will mysteriously arise and follow his nose to wherever it senses the strongest aroma of freshly baked sweets. Often while they are still piping-hot, he will begin to almost passively consume large quantities of the sugary treats.

An hour or so later, I will be wandering through the kitchen in search of a quick snack, and, on the table, I will find two cooling racks, one with cookies and one already cleared. I casually pick one up, sniff it, take a bite, and smile as I savour the flavour that has begun to satisfy my sugar tooth. Meanwhile, Linus will reenter the room with his laptop and other necessities and sack out at the table to guard his hoard from any more of my thievery. His most common response when he sees that I am eating from his treasured stash is to show exaggerated emotion as he bites into the first cookie of his sitting in an attempt to deter me from eating his joy. Then, as I try to reach for one myself, he will surround the cookies with his arms, attempting to appear jovial while blocking me from the cookie rack. As I attempt to penetrate the blockade, his sinister intentions become apparent as he tells me to "Unhand my cookies!"

The pursuing argument lasts only a minute or two before he reluctantly agrees to relinquish a single cookie to me. As I leave, I give him an evil look to let him know, "this isn't over", but before I can return for round two, all the cookies are gone.

All Posts from here on will be for Nonfiction Writing.

Win's plot to get the US involved in Cuba again was to take a shot at President Kennedy, and from the first time he mentioned his scheme to Mackey and Parmenter, he made it clear that he didn't want to kill Kennedy; he wanted whoever the shooter would be to miss completely. Why, then, was Kennedy killed?

At first, knowing only that he would be killed, I assumed that with such a complex plot managed by only three people, somewhere along the way there would be a miscommunication or misinterpretation leading to Oswald killing Kennedy. However, as I read further, I found out that Mackey himself, who was in on the whole plan from the beginning, gave the order to Ferrie to recruit Lee to kill Kennedy and told Raymo directly to hit Kennedy in the head. In light of this, what could have gone wrong with Win's original plan? Mackey would appear to have no motive to kill Kennedy; like Parmenter and Win, his motive for contributing to the plan at all was to force further US involvement in Cuba. To achieve this, it would probably be better for their shooter to miss, because if someone who could be traced to Cuba were to actually kill the president, it might cause an over response from the government. Unless I am a very poor reader and have missed something, DeLillo reveals no other reason for Mackey to kill Kennedy.

The only reason DeLillo states that might cause Kennedy to be intentionally shot is that, as Win says, plans tend to take on a life of their own and move toward death. However, the "life" of the plot is not revealed to us. All we know is that Mackey avoided contact with Win and Parmenter and at some point independently chose to kill Kennedy. Any reason is left to the imagination. In a way, I think that is the point. DeLillo's picture of the Kennedy assassination is an interpretation of extremely vague evidence partly to point out that almost anything could fill in the details from a fairly simple explanation to the most complex conspiracy, but we will never know exactly what happened. His conjecture as to what may have happened must exclude certain details, because the most complete picture we will ever get, even if we were to have all the material that DeLillo's character Nicholas Branch has, will not include every detail. Motives especially would be hard to piece together, so it is only natural that these are the things Don leaves most unclear.

Another point I think he's making with this deliberate lack of explanation is that plots really do pick up a life of their own. With a plot as complex as the one he described (and much more complex ones have been proposed), any little error could easily cause an unwanted result, and any member contributing to the plot can direct it in a new direction, much like the reason for Win's plot in the first place: the failed Bay of Pigs, where one person's decision caused the whole plan to fail. The only difference between this and Win's plot is that instead of the result being a failure, it was a more severe success. Much like Oswald, Mackey leads a complicated life, and much like the official story (and DeLillo's) says that Lee killed the president despite all the reasons he seemingly would not, Mackey seems to randomly lead the plot to where it ends up killing Kennedy. The reason for this must be unclear, because it is unreasonable to expect every part of such a complex plot to reveal itself, even if that part is a person's decision, just like Lee is too complicated to fully comprehend in anyone's interpretation.

Win and Lee

Win Everett devises his plot to start a conflict between Cuba and the US by staging a fake assassination attempt on Kennedy, which he will blame on Castro. One thing to note about Win's plan is that it is rather extreme. While an attempted assassination on the president is more certain to provoke anti-Cuban anger than less extreme plots, it is also much more dangerous: if there is any slip-up, it is bound to be noticed by one of the hundreds of investigators who would be working on discovering the culprit. Why would he want to take such a risk? Another point is that, from the very beginning, he planned to cause casualties. Though there was supposed to be no risk to the Kennedy, someone had to be blamed for what investigators would see as a true attempt on his life, and that someone would undoubtedly face severe consequences. That man, in Win's plot, is just some guy who would believably have tried to kill Kennedy and who could be framed cleanly. In other words, Win plans to cause casualties of innocent people (or at least one innocent person) in order to start a war in which there would undoubtedly be deaths of innocent people.

What all this looks like is a war. Not a war against Cuba and America, no, that's just a part of it. Instead it's what Win, Parmenter, and Mackey see as a war between pro-Castro and anti-Castro forces. This is a war which has already started, which resulted in the Bay of Pigs when the anti-Castros were winning, and which made the Bay of Pigs fail to put the pro-Castros ahead. Both of these events caused real fighting and real deaths: the consequences of war. Now that the anti-Castros are trailing, Win devises a plot causing someone to take the blame for an attempted assassination. This sounds an awful lot like an officer ordering suicide mission. Just like the officer would see the casualties as unfortunate but necessary, because they died in the name of something greater [cringe], Win sees the Bay of Pigs, his shooter's arrest, and the fighting that will result as unfortunate casualties of war which are necessary to out Castro, which is somehow more important.

Returning Home

The section of Kindred, "The Storm" begins with Kevin and Dana returning home together after Kevin had been trapped in the early 19th century for five years. Naturally, after five years, Kevin wasn't quite used to what he knew should have been "home". Even Dana, who had only been away for a few months, remarked to herself that the Weylin house seemed more like home than her real home. The only thing she feels is more "homey" about her house is that it is in her own time period. What this shows is that both Dana and Kevin have become so used to the Weylins' house, that they are beginning to recognize the location as home, but, more importantly, they have also been able to transplant the norms of 1976 in to the time period to a great enough degree to make it feel less alien.

We have talked in class about how the 19th century society has had unwanted effects on Dana and Kevin, and these are obviously present in the scene described above. However, it is also clear that there are aspects of the 1970's that they have brought and maintained in the 1810's, which have allowed them to feel more at home there. This becomes especially clear in Kevin when he mentions that he was helping southern slaves escape to the north. He becomes agitated as he says this, and remarks that he isn't used to having people understand why he would do it. What this shows is that, although Kevin has adapted to living in a new society, he has only changed to a limited degree.

This is how Kevin was able to feel at home at the Weylin house. Although he wasn't living there when he was doing it, he must have associated it with his helping slaves to escape, because, as he was talking about the Weylin house to Dana, it led directly to him talking about helping runaways. He could only feel at home where he had spent considerable time and had demonstrated his 1976 morality most clearly.

This idea also applies to Dana. She felt at home at the Weylin house, where she had tried her best to apply her morality to other slaves, helping them where she could. This appears to be how Butler defines where her characters feel at home, and it shows that as much as Dana and Kevin change as they are in the 19th century, they still remain a product of their own time.

The Portrayal of Death

Step one in writing an anti-war novel is to remove any aspect of glory that one can associate with war. One of the most glorious things a soldier can do is die for the cause, so naturally, Kurt Vonnegut had to write Slaughterhouse-Five without any inkling that death was for a cause.

He does this in several ways, the first of which is by removing all cause from the war. There are only three characters in the whole book who appear to have any sense of what the war is about, and only two of them were shown in the war. Campbell, who is the least objectionable Nazi I've ever imagined could be in a book, and poor old Edgar Derby are the two men fighting for a cause. Both of them, however, are overshadowed completely by the senseless bombing that came right after their speeches, leaving the reader with the feeling of, "[So it goes, but] What was all that about?". Vonnegut further makes Derby's patriotism seem pointless by emphasizing at every possible opportunity that he will be shot for stealing a teapot in the ruins of Dresden [so it goes].

The second way Vonnegut removes the glory of death is in the line, "So it goes". This, of course, relates to the Tralfamadorian view of time that nothing can be changed; things that happen have happened and will always happen. This idea takes the glory not only out of death, but out of just about everything. There are no causes one can work towards, as the future is just as unchangeable as the past, and there is no death, because there are still plenty of moments the dead were alive. However, this is not the only way the repeated line removes glory from death. Vonnegut repeats it endlessly, throws it at everything regardless of the tragedy involved, even applying it to the death of bubbles in water [so it goes]. What this does is immunizes the reader to death, making sure we know every time there is one, and ensuring that we get not only used to it, but irritated with it, jovially thinking when we read about something that relates slightly to death, "oh boy, here it comes", and sure enough, there is meat hanging in a slaughterhouse. So it goes. The result is that we realize how common death really is and how little we are affected by it, just as Vonnegut appears to be under-sensitized to the deaths of over 100,000 people in Dresden. So it goes. In the light of this, one soldier laying down his life for his country seems rather insignificant. So it goes, and goes, and goes...

Finally, death is just violet light and humming, according to Billy Pilgrim. Sounds peaceful, and rather inglorious, doesn't it? So that goes too. If this idea were widely accepted, I'm sure tissue companies would go bankrupt and expire, as crying at funerals would be greatly reduced. So it goes. They might also cut down on the whole 21 gun salute thing for dead soldiers; it might disturb the humming, or even turn the light green or some other ghastly shade.