New Voices 2015

NEW VOICES: Lander University’s Student Journal

Spring 2015

New Voices is a publication of the College of Arts and Humanities Lander University 320 Stanley Avenue Greenwood, SC 29649 Student Editorial Board: Jana Wilson Robby Maynor Faculty Advisors: Dr. Misty Jameson Dr. Amy England Dr. Andy Jameson New Voices congratulates Nicole Quigley, Winner of the 2015 Dessie Dean Pitts Award newvoices@lander.edu www.facebook.com/newvoicesLU

Table of Contents CREATIVE NON-FICTION “The Elements” by Nicole Quigley ................................................................................................................ 1 “English Leather” by Mara J. Sholette ......................................................................................................... 7

ART Trigonometry by Molly Ott ............................................................................................................................... 9

ESSAYS “Moment of Agency” by Kenneil Mitchell...............................................................................................10 “Roles of Women in Salt of the Earth and Real Women Have Curves” by Anna LaGrone.......14 “Fear of Physical and Emotional Harm as Painted by Literature” by Melody Brawner ........19 “Harrison and Hinduism: The Journey of George Harrison from Beatle to Believer”

by Mara J. Sholette .............................................................................................................................25

ART Thrill by Sydney Conley ..................................................................................................................................34

POETRY “The Arrowheads” by Anna LaGrone ........................................................................................................35 “Buchenwald” by Anna LaGrone .................................................................................................................36

ART Hiii-Power by James Elliott ............................................................................................................................37

FICTION “Underdog” by Elizabeth Romano .............................................................................................................38 “The Bystander Effect” by Bobby Suit .......................................................................................................42

ART Circle and Circle by Yuemiao Hu ..................................................................................................................46

ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................................47 DEDICATION ........................................................................................................................................................48

The Elements

by Nicole Quigley

Dessie Dean Pitts Award Winner

1

I huffed. I have my hand on my chest, and my heart beat is radiating throughout my body. I don’t remember how to breathe; my chest is heavy. Rain is smacking my parents’ car. I can’t hear anything. The sound of the rain is louder than my parents screaming at each other. I look out the window, and I can’t see anything. The car is probably going 15 mph. We aren’t getting anywhere anytime soon. I have never seen it rain this hard. The thunder is so loud that I can hear it in the car—usually I can’t. There are faint headlights of cars pulled over on the side of the road.

“Pull over, Bobby. Everyone else is pulled over. We are going to get in a fucking wreck.”

“Calm down, Wendy. We don’t need to stop.”

My mom is trying to grab the wheel. She looks like a mad woman—her eyes are crazed and red. Her bony hand reaches for the steering wheel. I close my eyes and try to maintain my breathing. What is this foreign feeling? Mom turns her head back to me and stares into my soul.

Her pupils are dilating in that sea of blue. Her facial expression changes as she recognizes what is going on.

“Bobby, Nicole is having an anxiety attack. Stop this fucking car right now.”

What the heck is an anxiety attack? Am I dying? Maybe this is a heart attack. I am starting to think of the signs of a heart attack. My heart is racing, and my chest is tight, but I am only eight years old. A heart attack is just not possible. I dismiss that thought. I feel like my life is about to end. The impending doom is overwhelming. My hands are sweating. My knees are shaking. I am not crying or screaming. I am trapped and alone. This is not going away. My vision starts to blur. ***** It is only 2:00 pm. It feels like we haven’t been at Carowinds for long. The clouds are taking over the bright sky. My head is dizzy from the roller coasters. I think my brain has been knocked around like those tiny balls in a pinball machine. The wind is blowing, and I love the crisp cool breeze, but I know a storm is coming our way and it’s going to end our joy-filled day.

“We have to ride one more roller coaster before it storms,” Kathryn says.

I want to ride my favorite roller coaster here, the Intimidator. I glance up at the red and blue coaster and grin. I point, and we all agree unanimously. We have to hurry because thunder is sounding in the distance. All of the families are rushing to the exit, and we are on our way to get our last quick thrill. Mothers scoop up their children like the Flood is coming. Fathers scramble

2 around to make sure their children are by their sides. Our hair is flowing in the violent wind. We are all running towards the Intimidator.

Of course, the line is very short. Usually it takes us about 40 minutes to get onto a ride, but this time we are on an express lane. The adrenaline is pumping through my body as we get on the coaster. The workers at Carowinds look so enthusiastic with their blank faces. Their parents force them to work a job every summer so that they can learn “responsibility.” As we board the roller coaster, I start to get that lump in my throat that I always get. Every time I get on a coaster, I get a little nervous. As we go up the tracks in this little cart, the tension builds. My nerves are shot. At the top of the coaster, I’m holding on to every piece of courage I have. The coaster drops with a jolt; I hold my breath. I feel like every worry I have ever had disappears.

The cool breeze turns to rain. It feels like bullets on my sensitive face. As the drops pierce my skin like needles, I smile. The seat is alarmingly slippery, and I could fly out at any second. It is like a cold shower—intense and refreshing. My breath is taken away instantly by the reactions of my body. The fight or flight response takes over. The roller coaster stops, and my journey is over. I am sad.

The rain is now constant as we run to the car. I am chuckling. For some reason I find it amusing that we are still running even though we are sopping like wet mops. My feet are swimming in my Nikes. My appearance is that of a wet rat. When I see Olivia’s car through the blur of pouring rain, I feel relief. ***** Everyone at work is talking and singing. It is about 4 o’clock, and the night crew is punching in their time cards. Each click of the machine echoes throughout the store. I am preparing pizzas and helping the morning people finish all their duties. Dana, my shift leader, is putting up some dry dishes. I feel bad for her. I know she is exhausted beyond belief, and, on top of that, she has to go home to four screaming children and a husband that does not look at her like she deserves.

“Dana, you can go home; I can put up the rest.”

“Thank you.”

She is pleased with her day’s work. Even though it is only a pizza place, she shows determination. I like her. Her bun is neatly pulled back without a stray hair hanging by her ears.

She is very slim, but curvaceous at the same time. I am mildly jealous of it.

3 The sun is shining on our counter tops. The tacky orange and yellow colors are puke worthy. It is a beautiful day. The only thing I can think about is clocking out of this wretched place.

I am at the oven helping Aaron with the pizzas. I haven’t looked out the window in a while. I look up to see the lovely view that is Canton Boulevard. The clouds are dark and have a green tint to them. Nina rushes up to us. Her wiry hair bounces every time she moves. She has her phone in her hand. I can’t focus on the screen that she is showing us because her arm is so boney. She is always high on some kind of painkillers, but she won’t be working with us for long. Drugs have a way of changing people.

“A tornado was sighted near West Mill Road,” Nina said as her fragile body shook.

West Mill Road isn’t far from where we are located. Everyone is wide eyed and pale faced.

All of our phones are making alarm noises that remind me of an apocalyptic movie. My eye twitches with each ring. I do not think anything of it. Abernathy does not get any tornadoes.

My manager, Jolene, tells us that she received a text from Matthew. Matthew is the owner of the three Pizza Inns in Abernathy. Shortly after he texts her, he calls her. All of the color disappears from her face.

“Okay, Okay. I will move them to the back of the store.”

I couldn’t believe it, a tornado in Abernathy.

The Pizza Inn crew is scurrying around the store like little ants that had their home stomped on. Everyone is terrified. We go to the back of the store and into the bathroom. I sit with my legs crossed on the cold tiled floor. People are texting their families telling them their goodbyes. I am too. I am frantically texting my parents telling them it was nice to know them. I hope that I have been a good daughter. We are all together in this small, tight space. My manager is praying over us as we sob into our knees. My friend Aaron is breathing fast and heavy. His anxiety is burning through him like a fire tearing up his insides. I put my hand on his shoulder. The silent whispers from our manager are comforting; she is praying to a God that she whole-heartedly believes in.

These 20 minutes seem like hours. Jolene receives a text on her phone and immediately stops whispering to God. She looks at her phone and smiles slightly. “Everything is okay; we can go back inside now.” We are all petrified. We really believed that we were about to croak. I look out the front window for the last time. Canton Boulevard is not in ruins like I thought it would be.

Cars are driving by as if nothing has happened.

4 Someone is knocking on the door. One of our coworkers, Evan, is standing there. He had no idea that there was a tornado near us, and he laughs at our shaken faces. ***** “Don’t you think it’s a little early to be drinking that?”

Kathryn stared at me with judgmental eyes. The sound of a beer cracking open makes her insides tremble. It’s snowing outside, and I am out of class, so why the hell not? I begin to guzzle the beer, not thinking about the consequences.

After about ten beers, I think it is a good idea that we head to Canton. My judgment is impaired, and my motor skills aren’t functioning. We are an hour away from Canton, and it is snowing outside. In the South, it is common knowledge that you stay off the roads when it is snowing. You also have to go to the grocery store to make sure you get milk and bread. God knows we will get stuck in our houses after a violent blizzard. The room is rocking back and forth; I am having a mini earthquake in my head. Everyone else is sober. Meanwhile, I am stumbling around like a toddler. I’m sure that my face is distorted. I can’t feel my cheeks.

Kathryn, Ashley, and I walk to the car with our bags packed. We have all of our snow gear ready to go. I sling my bag into the trunk of Kathryn’s expensive car. I am staring at my surroundings in amazement. My breath is visible every time I exhale. I don’t know if it is the alcohol or the scenery, but everything is so stunning. The white snow covers my apartment complex. It twinkles in the moonlight. I reach down and scoop some up in my hand. I blow into the snow, and it flies all around me. Each flake flies off into a new place. I laugh and smile, obviously entertaining myself.

I snap back into reality only to notice that my roommates are staring at me with concern.

“Nicole, are you done playing in the snow?” Kathryn asks sternly.

I think my drunkenness is annoying her. I nod and immediately stop. I get in the car and sit still, but I am restless. As we drive down the road, I stick my head out the window and feel the snow hit my face. I open my mouth so that I can eat every flake that falls. Kathryn starts to roll up the window in order to smash my head in.

“It’s cold outside. Get your drunk ass head back in this car so I can roll the window up.”

“She can’t help that she loves nature,” Ashley giggles. She likes to make fun of me.

Restraining myself is the most difficult task. I stare out of the car window at the Arctic tundra outside. Contentment is the only thing that I feel.

5 ***** We walk through the streets of Charleston, SC. It is so hot that my t-shirt is sticking to my stomach. I hate the way humidity feels. The sun is scorching our bodies. Hot weather makes me feel sick, but I have a love/hate relationship with it. The warmth is heartening, but when it starts to get extremely hot, I get irritable.

Ashley, Hannah, and I are walking this long distance so that we can get to the beach. We are those clichéd spontaneous people who come to the beach for a day. Being extemporaneous is something that people brag about on dating profiles, and we are living that dream today. Hannah starts to complain that her feet are hurting, but we are going to make it to that sand, damn it. The thought of getting into a bathing suit is discomforting. My body is not up to par, and I hate the size of my chest, but I must embrace this weather.

We finally arrive. My toes are immersed in the warm sand. The sounds of the waves are therapeutic. I might fall into a deep sleep right here. The rays of the sun sink into my body as I sprawl out on the ugly patterned towel.

Instantly, I realize that I forgot to take my anxiety medicine. I jump up, and my meditation session comes to a halt. I am rustling around in my purse trying to find the pill bottle. I don’t have it. My heart starts to race, and my hands start to sweat. I am panicking. Racing thoughts cloud my sanity. I look at the ocean. I take deep breaths and stare at the view. Why am I freaking out?

Children are playing Frisbee with their parents. Seagulls are flying in the air with elegance. Young people are listening to music and singing as they chug their beers. All around me, there is life.

I put my purse down and look out into the horizon. The natural splendor of the beach is breathtaking. I don’t need a stupid pill. ***** It is a beautiful autumn day. I am sitting in my apartment staring out the window, which doesn’t make sense because I would rather be outside. I want to sit outside and read a book, but I have no tea to drink. My roommates are lying on their backs staring at their smart phones. I get up and go to the cabinet to get some tea bags. There is a bottle with one pill in it. I look at the label and study it.

ESCITALOPRAM 10MG TABLETS. TAKE 1 TABLET BY MOUTH EVERY DAY I shake my head and grin. I am thankful that I do not rely on those little pills anymore. I do not have to take a tablet to feel at ease. I remember coming off of it. Strange thoughts would form

6 in my head, and I couldn’t get rid of them. Over time, these thoughts came to a stop. I am now in control of my own mind. I put the bottle down and shut the cabinet door.

After I make my hot tea, I walk outside onto our small porch. We have some old chairs out there. They are black and rusty; I like to call them our vintage chairs. The fall weather is gorgeous.

Each leaf is a different shade of orange, red, or yellow. I sip on my hot tea and gaze at the leaves parting from their home. They flutter like butterflies in the summer. This is my favorite time of the year. The temperature is perfect. Not too hot, but not too cold.

The tea is burning my tongue. The wind is blowing and the dying trees are shedding their leaves. The rustling sounds are all around me. I am in an ocean of tertiary colors. I prop my feet up on the fencing of our porch and relax. I take out a cigarette and light it, knowing that my apartment complex forbids it. I don’t care.

7

English Leather

by Mara J. Sholette There’s an old half-empty bottle of aftershave in the medicine cabinet. It’s been there for at least seven years, but probably more. I am not very good at keeping track of time. Before it was in this cabinet in my bathroom, it was in the half-bath with the rest of Dad’s toiletries: Aqua Velva, Old Spice, half a bottle of Wal-Mart brand earring care solution, and dozens of tiny hair ties. In my head, I can still see it as if it were yesterday—the rings from his coffee cups that mark the counter, the startling number of Spiderman posters on the wall by the toilet, and the carpet worn from years of use, with the occasional earring back lodged between the fibres from where it had fallen from the counter’s edge.

I can go for months without taking down the bottle of aftershave. It’s Musk by English Leather, and it smells like my childhood. But then again pot and cheap incense burning also smell like my childhood, and I hardly ever make a point to smell them. But the aftershave. . . I don’t touch it for months until one day I open the cabinet door, maybe for a bandage, maybe for no clear reason at all, and I take it from the shelf. I don’t even need to open it to know how it smells. It is a scent permanently ingrained on my brain, in my nose. But I take off the top anyway. Bringing it to my nose, I inhale—not too deep, not too long. I close the bottle immediately. I don’t cry. I don’t let on that the smell hits me like a fist to the chest. And it does. It hurts, and it is a beautiful kind of pain.

The kind that I want to feel because it reminds me that I am alive.

But I still don’t cry. Instead, I put the bottle away, nestled beside the Pepto Bismal and the extra makeup sponges that, for some reason, Mom keeps in my bathroom, not the half-bath. We say it is her bathroom, the half-bath, but it isn’t, and I think she knows that. It is still Dad’s bathroom. And almost a decade later, we still sometimes find his belongings stashed away under a cupboard in there. Mom doesn’t have the heart to throw them away, not even the empty tin of tea leaves that is, at this point, covered in dust an inch thick. I can’t really blame her, though. Just because they couldn’t hold down a marriage doesn’t mean that she didn’t love him until the day he died. So they sit there, the tin, the aftershave. The many small tokens scattered about the house but almost always left untouched.

8 After I’ve held the bottle, opened it for that fraction of time, I can smell it on my hands for hours after. Or maybe I can’t. I might just be smelling it because I want to. Because it keeps him alive for a little while. So I keep it, closed away in the cabinet in a house I’m hardly ever in during the school year, and it sits. It sits waiting for me to need that smell again. It sits. And it waits. And time moves on for me to visit again.

9

Trigonometry

by Molly Ott

Moment of Agency

by Kenneil Mitchell

Interdisciplinary Academic Showcase Winner

10

Throughout the centuries, people in Ireland, like those in other nations, have gone through painful moments in their history such as civil wars, poverty, and political upheaval. It is difficult for many people in Ireland to find their inner strength in order to move on from these problems and move forward in life. However, when people do find their own inner strength to make progress in their lives, they reach their moment of agency. According to David Brooks, a writer for the New York Times, the moment of agency occurs when people find themselves “having engraved inner criteria to guide action.” In other words, people gain their own moment of agency by creating internal goals for themselves and then putting them into action by finding ways to solve their problems.

The moment of agency also serves as a revelation to people that they need to use their strength to overcome the problems that surround them. This is especially true to people who are disadvantaged in life, whether it’s financially, emotionally, or mentally. According to David Brooks, people’s “lives can be so blown about by economic disruption, arbitrary bosses and general disorder that they lose faith in the idea that input leads to predictable output.” David Brooks continues with, “You can offer job training programs, but they may not take full advantage because they don’t have confidence they can control their own destinies.”

Many different characters in Modern Irish drama find their own moment of agency after an irrational journey that tests them emotionally, physically, or mentally; this journey, though, allows them, ultimately, to have control over their destinies. Three main characters, June Boyle (Juno and the Paycock), Hester Swane (By the Bog of Cats), and Christy Mahon (The Playboy of the Western World) from Modern Irish drama each share the common force of the Irish family and try to balance it with the shared Irish cultural issues of politics, poverty, and war. I will explore how these three common forces from Irish culture—the turmoil of the civil war (June Boyle), poverty (Christy Mahon), and gender conventions (Hester Swane)—threaten each character’s moment of agency and how most of them regain it.

June Boyle’s two main forces that stand in the way of achieving her moment of agency are the turmoil of the civil war and her family. According to Sheeba, after Captain Boyle chastises Mary for getting pregnant, June “decides to leave him to make a new house for Mary’s baby – a positive, optimistic dedication of herself to the new generation” (78). All June wants is a peaceful life, but

11 the stresses of the civil war and politics in Ireland and Captain Boyle’s drunkenness at that time seem to make it impossible for her to move out. This stressful situation forces June to use her moment of agency to decide to escape Ireland with her daughter. The civil war that Ireland is fighting clearly affects her health, sanity, and family. She wants to escape this stressful place with her daughter to live the life she needs.

June regains her moment of agency by using maturity and determination to leave Captain Boyle and the war-torn turmoil of Ireland in order to protect her daughter and her grandchild. For example, after Mary complains that her child will not have a father who will help her raise the child, June Boyle quickly adds that “It’ll have what’s far betther – it’ll have two mothers” (O’Casey 244). Rather than lambast and ridicule her husband or the state of “chassis” that Ireland is going through due to the civil war, she handles the stressful situation by determining to take care of her grandchild along with her daughter in order to move forward in life. June Boyle uses her moment of agency to obey her motherly instincts, intuition, and knowledge to take care of those that need her the most.

On the other hand, Christy Mahon’s main force that stands in the way of achieving his moment of agency is the stress of poverty. In Irish culture, the Irish peasant was viewed as a national symbol, primarily from the ideologies of Nationalists, due to them being hard-working men who sacrifice everything for Ireland. Throughout the play, Christy is tired of being a peasant living in poverty who doesn’t get any recognition from anyone, not even his own father. In order to escape poverty and become a man, he tells a lie to everyone about committing patricide. As a result, Christy becomes known as “the Playboy of the Western World” because of his exemplary storytelling skills. This lie, however, pushes Christy even further away from achieving his moment of agency as he becomes distracted by the character he created for himself, which initially stemmed from his attempt to escape poverty.

Christy regains his moment of agency when he gains the courage to stand up to his father and not let the stresses of poverty get him down. According to W.B. Yeats, “the roof of manhood is courage and courtesy” (464). Christy has found his manhood by using his moment of agency to accept his natural place in the world as a peasant along with his family (Old Mahon) and deal with poverty with maturity and strength. Christy has set his mind to the future as he hopes to continue to be a strong-willed man. Christy goes against the cultural norms of Ireland at first to escape poverty and sadness while his opposition, Shaun Keogh, does not change at all.

12 Throughout the play, Shaun Keogh is a timid man who always wants to please Father Reilly and everyone else around him so that he refuses to go against Irish cultural norms. At the end of the play, Shaun doesn’t achieve a moment of agency because he has refused to overcome the social forces of Ireland of being a good Christian man who doesn’t try to break the rules. However, Christy doesn’t want his struggle to hinder him from learning his lesson. For example, after Christy tells the townspeople that he committed patricide, he explains by saying that “he was a dirty man, God forgive him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldn’t put up with him at all” (Synge 75). Christy tells a lie in order to escape the struggle of poverty and allows himself to get hurt in order to accept his situation with his father in the end. He finds his moment of agency and uses it to move forward with his life as a man. Shaun still acts like a little boy at the end of the play and therefore doesn’t achieve a moment of agency because he refuses to go against Father Reilly and the Church.

Finally, Hester Swane’s main force standing in the way of achieving her moment of agency is gender conventions for women. In Hester’s case, gender conventions in Irish culture create expectations for women to act gracefully and respectfully and to take care of their children and husbands. Hester is the antithesis of Ireland’s gender conventions as she is loud, violent, and angry over her situation with her estranged husband Carthage and her daughter Josie Swane. Her view on family is also against the cultural norms of Irish culture as the picturesque family of a wife, husband, and children all together. She views her family as just herself and Josie, although she’s trying to get Carthage back so that she can be happy again.

However, despite her determination to achieve her moment of agency and have a happy family, she instead loses her moment of agency for good when she tries to connect to Carthage through Irish society. Hester’s attempt to make life better for her and Josie backfires because Hester doesn’t meet society’s conventions of what a good woman is. After losing her only moment of agency—in which she attempts to be a part of society for the sake of her family—Hester becomes desperate when she realizes the only conclusion to end her suffering is by committing suicide.

Hester Swane plainly doesn’t achieve her moment of agency. She instead gives up on herself and Josie by killing Josie first and then herself. According to Bernadette Bourke, “the killing of her child, by far the most controversial aspect of the play, is ironically perpetrated without overt violence, but with love” (592). Hester makes a selfish decision to murder her beloved

13 daughter as she wanted to go where her mother was going. For example, after her daughter Josie demands that she be allowed to go with her, Hester says, “It’s alright, I’ll take ya with me, I won’t have ya as I was, waitin’ a lifetime for somewan to return, because they don’t, they don’t. It’s alright. Close your eyes” (Carr 395).

Hester doesn’t conquer the gender conventions of women as she imploded with her own feelings of worthlessness and sadness. However, she does deny the gender conventions of women and the Irish notion of a good family by murdering Josie and herself. This heinous action is done to show the rest of the people that she is finished with trying to please them and fit in. She decides to abandon her moment of agency to make the future lives of her daughter and herself better. In a way, Hester becomes one with the Bog that she lived in as both she and the Bog are outside of the normal Irish society. When Hester kills Josie and herself, she makes the decision to stop both of them from suffering and trying to fit in Ireland’s gender conventions of what a woman should be.

Overall, reaching the moment of agency can be a true challenge. It’s not easy for people to reach that moment of agency after a devastating incident. It’s also not easy to handle the consequences after obtaining a moment of agency. The true triumph and beauty of people not only from Ireland, but from all over the world, finding that moment of agency is that they can overcome the problems that society puts before them and re-direct their lives for the better.

Works Cited Brooks, David. "The Agency Moment." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Nov. 2014. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.

Bourke, Bernadette. “Grotesque and Carnivalesque Elements in By the Bog of Cats.” Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: Backgrounds and Criticism. Ed. John P. Harrington. 2nd ed.

New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Print. 587-93.

Carr, Marina. By the Bog of Cats. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: Backgrounds and Criticism. Ed. John P. Harrington. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Print. 352-98.

O’Casey, Sean. Juno and the Paycock. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: Backgrounds and Criticism. Ed. John P. Harrington. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Print. 197-246.

Sheeba, S. "Sean O'Casey's Juno And The Paycock as a Realistic Play." Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) 2.1 (2014): 75-80. 16 Mar. 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Synge, J.M. The Playboy of the Western World. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: Backgrounds and Criticism. Ed. John P. Harrington. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.

Print. 68-112.

Yeats, W.B. “The Controversy over The Playboy of the Western World.” Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: Backgrounds and Criticism. Ed. John P. Harrington. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Print. 462-64.

14

Roles of Women in Salt of the Earth and Real Women Have Curves

by Anna LaGrone The two films Salt of the Earth and Real Women Have Curves both revolve around the trials and tribulations of Mexican-American families striving to make better lives for themselves. Based on an actual strike of zinc miners, Salt of the Earth was made in 1953 by Herbert Biberman, and the film was blacklisted for the supposedly Socialist ideals it espoused. Its story centers on a poverty-stricken family exposed to harsh working conditions and the racism of their white bosses, who refuse to provide adequate wages or even basic sanitation. Similarly, Real Women Have Curves, directed by Patricia Cardoso in 2002, tells the story of Ana, a young Mexican-American woman who dreams of going to college but whose family wants her to go to work to help pay bills.

The film showcases her pluck and determination in succeeding despite society's negative views towards immigrants. Both films share common themes of overcoming racism and the empowerment of women, and both suggest that for Mexican-American immigrants, the U.S. is not quite the land of opportunity it pretends to be.

The theme of racism is prevalent in both films, showing that society still views MexicanAmerican/Latino people as inferior even though Salt of the Earth came out almost fifty years before Real Women Have Curves did. Even within this gap of half a century, not much has changed for Mexicans/Latinos in America. For example, all the characters in Salt of the Earth face racism on a daily basis. This is shown through the antagonists' words and actions toward their non-white workers. The main character Esperanza's husband, Ramon, is forced to work long hours underground, mining for zinc. The work is often dangerous, with the death or injury of other workers mentioned in the film as though it were commonplace. Because Ramon frequently works with dynamite, his job is risky at best and potentially deadly at worst, yet his overseers pay him less than his white counterparts purely because he is Mexican. He is seen as much less important and easily replaceable because the white bosses know how poor he and the other Mexican workers are and that they could easily hire another immigrant to work for them instead. At one point early in the film, the bosses even encourage racial conflicts between the Mexican workers and the white workers, saying that the Mexicans are childlike and that the white workers know better than to complain because at least they make more money than the Mexicans. In the inciting incident of the film, a worker is killed after an explosion goes awry, and the Mexican workers go on strike, demanding better pay and better working conditions, and are treated with scorn and

15 brutality over their very understandable demands: “Stay in your place, you dirty Mexican,” Ramon is told. When he is arrested, he is brutally beaten, and while it is not stated that the beating has a racial motive, it is clear that the white police see Ramon as less than human because of his ethnicity and are not at all conscience-stricken by the beating. As if this blatant racism is not offensive enough, the bosses repeatedly refer to Ramon and their other Mexican workers as “Pancho” to undermine and belittle their heritage. In one memorable instance, after the men have gone on strike, one of the main bosses pretends he either does not know or will not say Ramon's Mexican-sounding name, calling him “Ray” instead, implying that Ramon and his culture are unimportant. The racism towards the Mexican-American workers is also shown in the scene in which the white bosses and the white policemen go to evict Ramon and Esperanza for striking.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that they know the Quintero family has no money, nowhere else to go, and three small children, the white men callously hurl all their belongings into the dirt, including a painting of Benito Juarez, one of the most important leaders of Mexico. In the same scene, one of the white men makes a point to step on the painting and crush the frame, showing either an utter lack of cultural understanding or deliberately degrading the family’s Mexican heritage. The racism and cruel treatment of the male Mexican workers leads to other consequences as well, as it creates a cycle of repression among the men and their wives— Esperanza points this out to her husband, saying that he comes home and treats her as an inferior, just as the whites treat him.

The underhanded racism shown in Real Women Have Curves may not be as stark and violent as that of Salt of the Earth, but it is still there. Throughout the film, much like in Salt of the Earth, the Mexican-Americans are shown working in menial positions, implying that their worth in society is limited to doing the dirty work that no one else wants to do. It is clear that the working conditions for Mexican-Americans have not improved much since 1953, when the events of Salt of the Earth took place. While Ana's family is not as crippled by poverty as the Quinteros were, they are still obviously considered second-rate citizens. Ana's father, for example, has a job cutting grass and doing yard-work for more affluent, white families and does not make enough money to send his daughter to college. Ana's sister does have her own business, but as Ana says of it, it seems more like a sweatshop than an actual business. It is dark and hot, with old-fashioned sewing machines, but most shockingly of all, the Mexican women who work there do so for pitifully low wages, making dresses for rich (primarily white) women. The seamstresses slave away to make

16 extravagant dresses, which they are paid $18 apiece for by larger companies, who turn around and sell them for $600. This directly shows how Mexican-American labor is still deliberately exploited to increase profit for white-owned companies. The hypocrisy of this is not lost on the astute Ana, but her sister believes that that is just how things are for immigrants. Another example of racism occurs when Ana's sister cannot pay the rent on the sweatshop and she is behind on an order, so she and Ana go to talk to the wealthy woman who commissioned the order. When they arrive at her office, they are treated with scorn and disrespect, and the wealthy woman shows no sympathy for their plight; she is condescending and rude to them. It may be just an order of dresses to her, but for Ana and Estela, it is the only thing keeping food on the table.

Both films also feature themes of female empowerment and feminism, which culminate in a realization of self-worth. In Salt of the Earth, the issues between the strikers and their racist bosses are contrasted with the issues between the strikers and their wives. Esperanza especially does not like the timid, domestic role she is expected to play and resents Ramon's lack of respect for what he sees as “woman's work.� While he works at the mine, Esperanza must work too, spending her days chopping wood, hauling the wood to her home, boiling water outside every time she has to cook or wash clothes, and caring for her children. She is also pregnant at the time.

Her life is hard and cheerless and is often made worse when Ramon comes home, angry from being mistreated all day, and takes it out on her. Esperanza begs him to ask for more sanitary living conditions, and instead of treating her as an equal, he makes fun of her. She loves him but is angered by his sexism. She wants to participate in the strike, but Ramon forbids her. The MexicanAmerican women of the community decide to take part in the strike anyway despite the mocking of the men because they are starting to see themselves as worthy and important, not just as someone who cooks and cleans. Esperanza's realization that her struggles are every bit as important as Ramon's encourages her to disobey him. Once she has the courage to go against his wishes and become her own person, Esperanza is transformed. Esperanza realizes her own selfworth and realizes that, if they want to win the strike, then the husbands and wives must come together as one equal entity and demand rights for all. In a reversal of traditional gender roles, Esperanza becomes the one marching at the strike, while Ramon stays at home caring for the children and cleaning. While a competent miner, he is unable to fill Esperanza's role in the home, forcing him to recognize just how hard she too works. In one memorably amusing scene, after Esperanza has declared her independence, the sheriff tells Ramon to make the striking women

17 behave. Ramon replies that the women will not listen to a man anymore. After the women have all been arrested and imprisoned, they scream in unison at their male guards, giving the impression that they have been imprisoned by gender roles all of their lives, but now they are fighting back for equality on all levels. Because of the strike, Esperanza grows as a person and fights for her own rights instead of remaining content to be subservient to her husband. This is a hard idea for the traditional Ramon to process, and at one point in the narrative, he threatens to hit her. Before, Esperanza might have let him, or simply cowered, but she stands her ground and forbids her husband to touch her again. Eventually, Ramon must come to terms with the idea of his wife as a person with her own dreams and goals, not just a quietly obedient wife who stays at home and bends to his will.

Likewise, Real Women Have Curves focuses on the concept of a Latina female realizing her own self-worth and taking her future into her own hands. For Ana, the idea of her self-worth is closely tied to her body image. While very pretty and intelligent, Ana is overweight, something that causes her equally chubby mother to belittle her. Carmen, her mother, constantly calls Ana fat and tells her that she needs to lose weight so that she can find a husband and give her grandchildren. Ana's own goal of going to college is seen as unimportant by Carmen, who insists that Ana go to work instead. Like Esperanza, Ana realizes that her value is not tied to how others see her and that neither her weight nor how hard she works in the sweatshop determines who she is. What helps Ana to understand this is her acceptance to a prestigious college and her romance with the sweet, accepting Jimmy. In a pivotal scene of the film, Ana and Jimmy are about to have sex for the first time, and Ana insists that the lights stay on so that Jimmy can see what she really looks like. He tells her she is beautiful. Ana has realized that her weight has nothing to do with her worth as a person. She has empowered herself in the same way that Esperanza has, through understanding that she is an intrinsically worthy person whose merits are not based on what others expect but what she expects of herself. Her new-found confidence gives her the courage to defy her manipulative, selfish mother and go to college anyway. She knows that, if she stays with her family, her life will follow the same pattern as her mother's: get married, go to work, have children, and remain in the cycle of poverty. Ana is determined that she should have a better life, making her seem like a modern-day Esperanza facing the current issues dealt with by MexicanAmerican women. These women may not be going on strike and being imprisoned for it now, but nonetheless, they are not presented with the same favorable choices as whites in this day and age.

18 Like Ana and Esperanza, many Latina women have to empower themselves as women and fight for their rights.

Both films deal with the complex issues of racism and feminism, of the acceptance of one's self and acceptance by others. Perhaps most importantly, though, both films show the difficulties endured by Mexican-Americans who have come to the U.S. hoping for a better life and instead receive racism and inequality. The situations presented in films from 1953 and 2002 show that the lives of these immigrants have not improved as they should have during this fifty-year span.

Esperanza's name may mean “Hope,� but she must create her own hope for a day when all are equal because America offers her no such equality. Ana too must create her own hope for a better life when she insists on going to college instead of working. Both women are hurt by the meager lives meted out to them by America, the supposed land of opportunity, but both women also have the strength to rise above their hardships and succeed.

Works Cited Real Women Have Curves. Dir. Patricia Cardoso. HBO Films, 2002. DVD. Salt of the Earth. Dir. Herbert Biberman. Independent Production Company, 1953. DVD.

19

Fear of Physical and Emotional Harm as Painted by Literature

by Melody Brawner Fear is a protective trait that is engrained into humanity. Oftentimes, it manifests itself as a healthy defensive prompt, which acts to preserve self-respect or survival; however, misinformed fear transforms into another monster entirely, one that can demolish. Literature provides us with one of the most useful ways to explore this concept. Beowulf, Shakespeare’s Othello, and Bronte’s Jane Eyre contain prime examples of fear and monsters within English history. Within literature, authors naturally will depict worldviews of their societies that are frequently more insightful than mere history. Unlike history, fiction allows the author to write about topics outside his or her own situation. This extraction of physical self, therefore, creates a liberty for authors to discretely saturate literature with their own worldviews, whether this action is conscious or not. By analyzing Beowulf, Othello, and Jane Eyre, we see that, throughout English history, fear is not a human trait that simply goes away with more civilized societies. Although fear manifests itself in different ways in each society, the theme is similar. Fear is generated by humanity’s realization that mankind and its surrounding environment are not composed of perfection. Therefore, fear stems from mankind’s inability to control such imperfection. This case study shows that, just like Beowulf, Othello, and Jane, humans naturally desire to control their own corporal as well as, on a higher degree, spiritual and communal perseveration. Yet, desires seldom come alone. Instead, the fear of imperfection’s ability to abolish this goal intermixes itself with the very desire to uphold it.

The ratio in which these fears and desires mix, which ultimately depends on the strength of the protagonist’s source of trust, leads to one of two categories: success or destruction.

Although the fear of death is present in the less advanced society of Beowulf, terror of corporal destruction is categorized below other fears of powerlessness. For example, minor characters demonstrate the dread of mortality, rather than does Beowulf himself. This is seen when Hrothgar and his kingdom are terrified of the inevitable corporal peril that Grendel puts them in, but Beowulf and his comrades travel to the kingdom not expecting to “ever see [their] homeland again or get back to [their] native place and the people who reared him. They knew too well the way it was before, how often the Danes had fallen prey to death in the mead-hall” (Heaney 30). Beowulf was more focused on glory than any potential death. Because Beowulf’s fears juxtapose with those of the kingdom, this creates a sense that corporal fear is not as elevated since Beowulf is the protagonist. However, both fears should still be discussed.

20 The reason for this focus on glory or the fear of death comes from the Geats’ worldview that there was no afterlife. Therefore, one would strive for fame after death by attempting greatness during life, or someone could try to preserve his life. The kingdom had the latter desire.

Yet, even though the kingdom feared, their terror of the powerlessness they felt at the hand of the uncontrollable fiend Grendel did not remain stagnant. As common in human nature, unmet desires produce fear, but, in turn, that fear also produces a search for hope. The kingdom needs a power greater than itself to turn to for survival. Therefore, Beowulf enters as this authority.

As typical of lore, Beowulf is described as a person whose abilities surpass those of mere humans. Not only does he seem without fear of death; his other qualities are otherworldly. Even before Beowulf meets his antagonists, his “sword had killed nine sea monsters” (Heaney 25). This act, along with the fight against Grendel and his mother, shows strength that is above that of human capability. Thus, Beowulf is more powerful than Hrothgar’s kingdom, and, therefore, they put their trust in him for survival. The superhuman depiction of Beowulf reveals the worldview that solutions must come from a higher power than humanity. In Beowulf’s supernatural act of saving the nation, who could not do it itself, we see a parallel to Christianity.

Yet, the translator also wants to point to the lacking of Beowulf’s pagan efforts as well.

Beowulf cannot be the constant savior that the Geat people desire. When Beowulf dies, there is a great sense of loss and fear of what is to come because their source of hope is now dead. A Geat woman grieves the uncertainty of the future by saying “her nation invaded, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement” (Heaney 138). This demonstrates a fear of instability, which also points to the historical fear that England had with all of the changing leadership and the Vikings’ violence during Beowulf’s creation. The fear of the unknown is what makes mortality so unnerving: the woman lists potential threats but does not know exactly what the future holds. It is also that way with the monsters. Their gruesome qualities make the terror seem more striking; however, it is not just their qualities that are feared the most, but rather it is the kingdom’s powerlessness and the lack of control to stop them. Therefore, although there is a success, when the source both of clarity for the unknown and of hope dies, so does security.

Fear of death or absence of it is also seen in a lesser degree in both Shakespeare’s Othello and Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Because of the time periods they depict, physical harm, although a danger, is not as much of a risk as emotional turmoil. Yet, fear of physical injury and of its associations with the unknown is still apparent in both works of literature. In Othello, there is a clear depiction

21 of how society’s expectation of gender roles influences the manifestation of this fear dramatically.

Before Desdemona’s death, she expects that Othello plans kill her, so she tells her servant, “if I do die before, prithee, shroud me in one of these same sheets” (Shakespeare 1128). However, she never allows her fear have the preservative qualities it should. Therefore, although she protests, Desdemona just lets her husband kill her because she believes it is her womanly duty to please her husband. This action demonstrates the way that Shakespeare’s society elevated submission in women. Desdemona is afraid to step outside cultural boundaries into the unknown.

However, Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, rightfully gives women a more active role. Although women were still expected to be demure, Queen Victoria’s reign indirectly gave women more rights because it elevated the status of household duties. Yet, Bronte wants to take the woman’s role a step farther towards equality. Therefore, Jane’s fear of corporal injury, although occasionally still sentimental, is logically handled. The first case of this happens when Jane, “after the climax of her fear,” strikes her cousin John back after he bashes her head with a book. This independent act displays a different tone than Desdemona’s in Othello or the kingdom’s in Beowulf. Instead of compliance or an appeal to a higher power, Jane takes matters into her own hands. This action is congruent to the class change that was becoming rapid during the Victorian era. The mentality of a woman creating a position for herself and looking out for her own survival became more and more apparent as the class divide widened. Similarly, Jane must act for herself. Her striving to work for her bread so that she will survive also argues this point. Only when her strength is failing does she plead with others and, therefore, still fights for her life in a way that Desdemona is incapable of. Therefore, Jane’s fear of death is dealt with by action rather than just despair.

Jane Eyre also fully explores the association between the unknown and fear of physical harm by its inclusion of gothic imagery. Even when Jane was a young child, gothic imagery flutters around her, whether it is in actually or in her imagination. For instance, when Jane is wrongly punished for her self-defense against John, who she previously feared as a “tyrant” (Bronte 10), she is locked in a room, which soon takes on a dark, emotionally overwhelming atmosphere. In addition to injustice, Jane “thought [she saw a] the swift darting beam [and it] was a herald of some coming vision from another world” (Bronte 16-17). Jane’s physical well-being felt threatened by her imagination’s formed unidentified figure, and thus she “was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down… [and] had a species of fit” (Bronte 17). The fear, in both the case of physical abuse and emotional drain, depended on three qualities: its relation to physical

22 harm, certainty that harm would come, and the unknown factor of how exactly it would take place.

In this way, Jane’s fear and Beowulf’s society’s fear towards the monsters are rather similar. Other gothic instances in Jane Eyre occur in this manner when Jane is at Thornfield. They include moments when Jane hears malicious laughter, dreams of children, and hears noises in the middle of the night which conclude in various startling situations, such as when Mr. Rochester’s bed is set on fire, Mr. Mason is attacked, and Jane’s veil is torn by a horrifying figure. All of these events, like the monsters and the potential invading armies of Beowulf, point to the way that corporal fear and the unknown are often intertwined.

Yet fear of corporal destruction, as stated earlier, is not the most frequent fear that encompasses society. With further civilization, an abbreviated lifespan is less of a risk. Therefore, although characters in Beowulf, Othello and Jane Eyre still show aspects of fear towards bodily injury, it is not proportionally dwelt on by the protagonists when compared to other fears. This is because when civilization presents the security of employment and physical well-being, fear manifests itself towards losing one’s identity in a spiritual or communal sense rather than a physical one. For example, the fear of death, which is discussed at length earlier, is usually only present in Jane Eyre when class is in jeopardy.

Likewise, the protagonist of Beowulf, who is secure in his status, is at leisure to have fear in the higher realm of Maslow’s hierarchy. Despite the dangers that Beowulf undergoes, he is described as “indifferent to death” (Heaney 65); however, there is another fear that replaces this -the fear of a nonexistent legacy. That fear causes Beowulf to rashly risk his life for glory. Beowulf explains this act by saying, “For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark” (Heaney 63). This “bulwark” refers to Beowulf’s desire to gain more rather than lose his place in his community. Therefore, Beowulf still wants immortality, but he desires it in a vicarious way by living through the stories told of his fame. The culture in which Beowulf was created molds this mindset. Records were kept by spoken word rather than by written language. This means that the anxiety of not being remembered is more important because people would have to pass down stories by the word of mouth. Furthermore, Beowulf did not believe in the afterlife. The diction “only bulwark” refers to this belief, where remembrance is the single preservation that he can depend on after death. Therefore, without this security of physical longevity present, Beowulf seeks to preserve his life in the only way he knows how: memory.

23 Othello, likewise, has a similar mindset in protecting the protagonist’s memory. Even in death, Othello wants to guard his pride and reputation, which were main factors in why he killed his wife. He pleads that “in your letters when you shall these unlucky deeps relate…speak of one that lov’d not wisely but too well…” (Shakespeare 1135). Overall, Othello wanted to keep his role in society, as a respectable citizen but most of all a man ardently in love, intact. The fear of having his love so rejected by his wife and imagining it to be so influences Othello’s fear to, as Jane in Jane Eyre called it when her horror of John’s abuse changed into self-defense, “pass…its climax” (Bronte 10) and act rather than just fear. However, Othello’s action does not lead to a right of injustice.

Instead, he depends on Iago and himself for clarity in this manner. Obviously, this ends in disaster.

Othello fears that people will question his love in his death and therefore his identity will be stolen from him.

Lastly, in Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane’s fear of losing her identity is most keenly represented in all the three works of literature. Jane does not want to give up her “independent will” (Bronte 226). Within the Victorian society, class and gender still influenced how an individual’s behavior was expected to be conducted. The “angel of the house” concept, where a woman was supposed to only look after womanly duties pertaining to her house or children, was emphasized even more than other eras. Bronte’s writing clearly shows that she does not agree with this. Although Jane fears society’s view of her in relation to both class and gender, which is displayed when Jane chooses not to live with her loving but poor family as a child as well as when she distances herself from Mr. Rochester during their engagement, she is more afraid of the confinement of her independence, thoughts, and feelings than society’s condemnation. This is shown when Jane chooses to advertise in the paper for a job, refuses Mr. Rochester’s gifts during their engagement period, and finally goes back to Mr. Rochester not yet knowing what to expect. Yet despite these assertions of independence, when she realizes that Mr. Rochester cannot marry her, Jane fears the loss of her intrinsic identity of self-respect as well as the loss of Mr. Rochester’s company. Jane deals with these fears by logically thinking through them, striving to do what is right by God, and making sure to not compromise her self-respect in the process. Because she depends on God and her own mortality, Jane decides to remedy both of these fears by going back to Mr. Rochester after her own experiences shape her knowledge of what she truly desired. Therefore, without Beowulf’s rashness, yet in similar resolution, Jane confronts her fears, unlike submissive Desdemona, with action that is healthy rather than Othello’s harmful one.

24 So as told by literature, the effects of fear, whether of corporal harm or loss of identity, depend on the source of trust, society’s worldview, and each individual’s perspective. Fear is always going to be a factor in life. However, like our protagonists, our personal decisions, which are informed by the above resources, determine whether fear generates success or failure.

Works Cited Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Pleasantville: The Reading Digest Association Inc., 1984. Print.

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: W. W. Norton & Company:2001. Google Docs. Web. 04 April 2015.

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942. Print.

25

Harrison and Hinduism: The Journey of George Harrison from Beatle to Believer

by Mara J. Sholette Like any good story of a Beatle, it starts in Liverpool, England. George Harrison was born in Liverpool on 25 February 1943 to Harold and Louise Harrison. He grew up the youngest of the working-class Catholic family of four children. Though it wouldn’t be discovered until the late 1950s, George actually went to primary school in the same place as John Lennon, future bandmate, though he was three years behind the other boy. He was a child more given to fun and music than to academic pursuits. However, that did not mean he wasn’t intelligent. In 1954, Harrison entered the somewhat exclusive Liverpool Institute for secondary school, where he consequently met Paul McCartney. Together with McCartney’s good friend, John Lennon, the early Beatles line-up was formed.

Harrison initially played a key role in the creation of new songs for the band, but by 1962 he had been pushed to the side in favour of the dream-team that was Lennon-McCartney. Early on, The Beatles split their time between Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, where they would play crowded shows in clubs of questionable repute. While in Hamburg, the band was playing a very different set of songs than the ones they presented to the world only a few short years later. Their set list included covers of American and British dancehall songs as well as songs of their own composition. Their original songs were a fairly even three-way split of who produced the most useable material. Not only were Lennon and McCartney writing songs, but Harrison was as well.1 For some reason heretofore unknown, by the time The Beatles were back in England, Harrison’s songs had begun to be phased out of the shows. The most widely accepted theory is that this was due to the powerhouse that the two other men became when together, in conjunction with the fact that Harrison was willing to take a more backseat role in the name of group stability.2 The debut album of The Beatles was Please Please Me, on 22 March 1963. Half of the songs on the album were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with the remaining being written by various professional songwriters. While Harrison was featured on lead vocals on at least one

1 2

Ian Inglis, The Words and Music of George Harrison (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010) 2.

Ibid.

26 track, he did not provide any songs. On their second album released, With The Beatles,3 George Harrison only provided one song. This song was called “Don’t Bother Me.” By the time the albums A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles For Sale were released, Harrison’s writing input was marginalized. Neither album featured any songs by Harrison. However, the two albums after that helped to set the precedent of Beatles albums having two to three songs written

by George Harrison that continued for the remainder of the band’s career. Help! (1965) featured “I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much,” and Rubber Soul (1965) contained two as well: “If I Needed Someone,” and “Think For Yourself.”

Aside from helping to set the precedent of Beatles albums featuring two Harrison songs, Rubber Soul is also important to note as it was the first recorded use of a sitar in a pop music single.4 George Harrison was the one who played the eastern instrument on the track. He was first introduced to the sitar when the band was filming their movie Help!, which was released alongside their album of the same name. An extra for the film had a sitar lying around the set, and Harrison, ever curious, was not able to resist playing with the exotic instrument. This led him to buy his own.5 Unhappy with his Catholic upbringing, George Harrison was always looking for something, something that could not be provided at Confirmation,6 which he neglected to attend. He often felt confused by his priest’s teachings; how could Jesus Christ be God’s only begotten son if we are all God’s children? He appreciated the knowledge that Christ had died on the cross for him, but was that really all there is to religion? These questions led him away from the Church, but also left him open to other philosophies.7 Until he found the philosophies that made sense to him, Harrison searched for material things. “All his life,” Joshua Greene states in his Harrison biography, “he had wanted things he couldn’t afford—fast cars, fancy clothes, a big house, a beautiful wife,” yet, when he finally obtained these things, he found that they didn’t satisfy him.8 Hinduism then came into his life in 1966.

3

This was released in the United States as Meet The Beatles.

“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” The Beatles Rarity, accessed 8 December 2014, http://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/norwegian-wood-this-bird-has-flown/.

5 Joshua M. Greene, Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006) 60.

6 Confirmation is a Roman Catholic ceremony where, at the age of thirteen, Catholics proclaim their faith in God and take a saint’s name as a sign of their faith.

7 Greene, 6.

8 Ibid., 63.

4

27 Harrison’s introduction to Hinduism was through music, like most things in his life. By picking up the sitar that day on the Help! film set, he set in motion a spiritual awakening. His love of the sitar inspired friend David Crosby of The Byrds to steer him in the direction of the music of Ravi Shankar. In June of 1966, Harrison was finally able to meet the sitar virtuoso, who agreed to give him lessons.9 After this meeting, Harrison said, “The first person who ever impressed me in my life was Ravi Shankar, and he was the only person who didn’t try to impress me.”10 Shankar was similarly impressed with George Harrison. Interviewed after the other man’s 2001 death, Shankar stated that he believed Harrison had tyagi. This is a Sanskrit word meaning nonattachment or renunciation, which can also be defined as a “sense of freedom bordering on exultation.”11 Shankar, who had an “almost missionary desire to increase the world’s appreciation of India’s classical music,” would eventually go on to be more than just a teacher to Harrison, and they became close friends who later worked together on the Concert for Bangladesh, a charity effort to raise money for the Bengali people, of whom Shankar was a descendant.12 Ravi Shankar believed that music was the channel to one’s eternal soul, which led him to teach more than just the technicalities of the sitar to Harrison. He also expressed to him what the songs meant philosophically and religiously. Harrison took to these teachings like a fish to water.13 He also took to the musical style of India, Harrison being unique among western artists who experimented with the eastern sound by keeping much of the music in its original form. His compositions from the time of his early convert-fervour contain very classically inspired arrangements.14 Two examples are “Love You To” and “Within You Without You.” From the album Revolver, which is said to be the point at which Harrison came into his own as a songwriter,15 “Love You To” features a thirty-five second sitar solo as it starts. Despite the fact that Harrison does not perform the instrument on the track himself, preferring rather to hire a professional sitar player, it is a strong example of where his writing style would go as he grew.16 The instrumentation, primarily sitar and tabla, is classical in style, whereas the lyrics are not, showing 9

Inglis, 8.

George Harrison, in Olivia Harrison, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, edited by Mark Holborn (New York, New York: Abrams, 2011) 216.

11 Olivia Harrison, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, edited by Mark Holborn (New York, New York: Abrams, 2011) 11.

12 Greene, 61.

13 Ibid., 61-63.

14 Inglis, 9.

15 Ibid., 7.

16 Ibid.

10

28 Harrison was still early in his spiritual growth, as he would not meet Ravi Shankar until after the song was written. The narrator of “Love You To,” presumably Harrison as it is in first-person perspective, states his distaste for the world at large. His words are bitter, laced “with a blasé rationality” that reminds the listener “that in a world of material dissatisfaction and moral disharmony, there is always the solace of sexual pleasure.”17 “Within You Without You,” from The Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is even more authentic to classical Indian music than “Love You To.” It features a hypnotic sound produced by George Harrison on the sitar and the use of a tambura and tabla.18 Comparing this song to “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” it is easy to see how much skill Harrison gained in playing the sitar in the intervening two years.19 Another striking thing about the track is that its lyrics are far more existential than those of “Love You To,” showing the influence his newly adopted religion had on his writing. “Within You Without You” tells about the space that separates humans from each other and how it limits “the love we all could share.”20 He states that the world is living “behind a wall of illusion,” which suggests he was already familiar with the concept of Maya, the veil of deceit that Hindus believe covers all things. It is likely that he learned this concept from his friend and teacher Ravi Shankar.

The year following the release of “Within You Without You” and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1968, was an incredibly formative one for Harrison’s spirituality and understanding of the Hindu religion. Two of the three important events that happened in 1968 include the first time The Beatles took LSD and the band’s time with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, beginning with a lecture in London. The first use of LSD, a hallucinogenic drug popular throughout the 1960s, was a total accident. In a story that seems nearly too fantastical to be true, Joshua M. Greene, author of Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison, tells how it happened. He states that Harrison’s dentist invited the group and their spouses to a dinner party and then slipped LSD into their coffee after the meal was finished. Fearing that the dentist wanted to engage them in an orgy, the group left the house for a popular London nightclub where the effects of the drug started to hit them, causing them to think that the entire club was covered in flames. Fleeing, they found their way back to Harrison’s car. He drove them safely home at a slow eighteen miles 17

Ibid., 7-8.

George Harrison, The Beatles, “Within You Without You,” Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967.

19 Inglis 8.

20 “Within You Without You.” 18

29 per hour. Lennon, however, would later state in an interview that at the time he believed they were going over one hundred miles per hour.21 George Harrison believed that the LSD had opened his mind to other states and levels of consciousness that he had been unable to reach before. It was, he stated, as if he had “never tasted or smelled or heard anything before.” The effect of the drug was that great.22 He was left for weeks afterwards with this one phrase constantly rattling around his head: “Yogis of the Himalayas.”23 This thought, as well as one important realisation, was why he refrained from partaking in the drug from then on. The important realisation he had was that the opening of doors to other levels of consciousness was not really due to the drug at all. He firmly concluded that “chemicals did not provide a path to enlightenment.”24 He decided this after realising that his bandmates were not experiencing the same level of consciousness as he had reached. While they had hallucinated, they had not been opened to new states of being. This deeply disappointed Harrison, as he desperately wanted his closest friends to experience the same wonderment and understanding that he gained more of every day.25 It was to Harrison’s joy, and by his wife Pattie’s urging, that Lennon and McCartney agreed to go to a lecture given by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi spoke on yoga and meditation, taking the time to personally meet with his famous listeners and invite them to a retreat he was holding in Bangor, Wales, later that week. At the retreat, Harrison and others learned how to meditate on a mantra.26 Olivia Harrison’s biography of George Harrison27 includes an interview from The David Frost Show where he and David Frost discuss mantra meditation. George explains how mantra meditation works to the audience: Each person’s individual life pulsates in a certain rhythm, so they give you a word or a sound, known as a mantra, which pulsates with that rhythm. The whole idea is to transcend to the subtlest level of thought, so you replace the thought with the mantra, and the mantra becomes more and more subtle

21

Greene, 54-55.

Ibid., 54.

23 Olivia Harrison, 190.

24 Greene, 55.

25 Ibid.

26 Greene, 86-7.

27 Olivia Harrison was his second wife. They got together in the mid-1970s after his first wife, Pattie Boyd, left him for his good friend Eric Clapton. Olivia Harrison, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, edited by Mark Holborn (New York, New York: Abrams, 2011).

22

30 until finally you’ve lost even the mantra. Then you find yourself at that level of pure consciousness.28 After the Bangor trip, both Lennon and McCartney were more interested in meditation.

They agreed to accompany the Harrisons to India in the summer of 1968 for an extended threemonth meditation retreat with the Maharishi. The goal of the retreat was to spend the time meditating and studying. However, for John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the trip became a wonderful inspiration for song writing.29 They wrote many songs over the two months30 they were there that ended up on their album The Beatles, commonly known as The White Album. This mass of songs being written greatly angered Harrison, who was also inspired by the trip, but in a different way. His inspiration was purely spiritual, and as a result, he did as much studying and meditating as possible. This commitment he had to spiritual growth greatly impressed his bandmates even though they were not inspired to be similarly dedicated.31 After the 1968 trip to India, Harrison came back filled with spiritual knowledge. He had learned the phrase “tat twam asi,” a Hindu phrase that translates as “thou art that.”32 This phrase shows the singularity that is all the world. Hindus believe in the concepts of Atman and Brahman.

Brahman is God and can be found in everything, though often concealed by the veil of Maya.

Atman is the part of Brahman that lives in humanity. The closest translation one can get to describe the role of Atman in one’s self is the word soul, though the concepts are slightly different.

The goal of Hinduism is to truly realise the concept of Atman and how it relates to Brahman in a spiritual sense, bringing at-oneness with God. This knowledge helped Harrison to grow in his understanding of the world and experience, showing him the “meaning and significance of his life.”33 He surmised that it was his meaning in life to give up pop music in favour of spiritual pursuits, in order to see the face of God.34 His first foray into music that was not intended to be secular can be attributed to his meeting with an American Hare Krishna. The Hare Krishna sect of Hinduism, which believes that Krishna is the supreme god and all others are just facets of Him, became very popular in late

28

George Harrison, in Harrison, 180.

Greene, 95.

30 Both Lennon and McCartney left the retreat early.

31 Green, 95.

32 Ibid., 69.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., xii.

29

31 1960s America. It was brought to England when a group immigrated to London and formed the Radha Krishna Temple. George Harrison first met an American who lived at the temple and went by the spiritual name Shymsundar.35 He explained to the Beatle that Krishna acts as a fountainhead from which all other gods of the Hindu canon branch off. He explained also that Krishna is the original personal form of God.36 This meeting inspired Harrison to make a record of the chants sung at the Hare Krishna Temple. It was a simple recording, the singer’s voices being done in hardly more than one take before it was on to instrumentation. In August of 1969, the recording was released as Hare Krishna Mantra on Apple Records.37 This album was accompanied by the single, the title song “Hare Krishna Mantra.” This single received constant airplay in the UK, reaching the number one spot on the charts, as well as being massively popular around the world.38 Harrison, who was always desperate to help the world, had now ensured that all countries in all corners of the world had heard the chanting of the names of the Lord.39 It was only a year after this that Paul McCartney filed a suit to dissolve the band. Starr, McCartney, and Lennon viewed the dissolution as an end, while “only Harrison seemed to understand that the group’s demise also marked a new beginning. He was no longer an enthusiastic and promising understudy to Lennon and McCartney, but their [musical] equal.”40 The break-up of the band allowed for Harrison to focus on his own music, not simply his Beatles-approved tracks. This gave the world All Things Must Pass.41 His first real solo album, this record was powerful. Martin Scorsese said of the album, “There was a powerful sense of the ritualistic on this album, in the sound he found with [producer] Phil Spector. I remember feeling that it had the grandeur of liturgical music, of the bells used in Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies. The wonder I felt the first time I heard that music has never left me.”42 All Things Must Pass opens with a track co-written with his friend and mentor Bob Dylan, called “I’d Have You Any Time,” before launching in to what was certainly the most popular song the album produced: “My Sweet Lord.”

The reason this song was so popular is probably that it can be seen as a universal declaration of

35

Ibid., 103.

Ibid., 103-5.

37 Apple Records was the production company created by The Beatles after the tragic death of their manager Brian Epstein.

Greene, 146.

38 Greene, 146.

39 Ibid., xi, 148.

40 Inglis, 20.

41 George Harrison, All Things Must Pass, 1970.

42 Martin Scorsese, “Forward,” in Harrison, 3.

36

32 faith. It uses words of praise that are both Hindu and Christian, such as “hallelujah” and “hare hare,” the latter being part of the Hare Krishna Mantra.43 It was difficult for Harrison to balance his deep spirituality with a popular music career.

This led him to pursue his faith more than his music after a while. He was driven to leave behind the material world in favour of searching for a deeper understanding of God.44 He described himself as a person who had reached “the top of the material wall, meeting along the way everyone worth meeting and doing everything worth doing only to discover how much more there was on the other side.”45 The other side was Hinduism. Harrison once claimed not to have a personal philosophy, preferring to think instead that he believed in the sap that runs throughout life.46 However, one philosophical statement he made says that there is potential for the divine in every soul, and that the goal of life is to manifest the divinity in one’s own soul. “Everything else,” he states, “is secondary.”47 George Harrison lived split between two worlds: the world of his career and fame and the world of Gods and belief—the spiritual and the material worlds. He did all he could to make the world a more beautiful place. He did this by hand: crafting songs and planting flowers, both done with utmost conviction.48 In a way, before he had met Ravi Shankar, before he found Hinduism and the Hare Krishna sect, before the fame, and before everything had really begun, he was already on the way to god-realization. Just seventeen when The Beatles played in Hamburg, Harrison “was more mature than the rest. He was calm.”49 Klaus Voorman, an artist who had worked with the band in Hamburg, Germany, discovered this when looking back at their early days after Harrison had passed.50 Though he lived split between worlds, his son Dhani Harrison tells how he died in only one, saying that he was “very set, pointed on one goal, and there was no more mischief or conflict or up and down. There was just one him.”51 George Harrison died of cancer on 29 November 2001. His last request was to be cremated and scattered in the Ganges, considered to be a holy and cleansing water by Hindus, which his widow and son obeyed. It is a fitting end to such a

43

Inglis, 24.

Greene, xi-xii.

45 Ibid., 52.

46 Harrison, 297.

47 George Harrison, in Harrison, 207.

48 Harrison, 320.

49 Klaus Voorman, in Harrison, 92.

50 Ibid.

51 Dhani Harrison, in Harrison, 390.

44

33 man, as now all that remains is the music and the way he touched the world, which, in the end, is all that really matters.

Bibliography Allison, Dale C., Jr. The Love There That’s Sleeping: The Art and Spirituality of George Harrison. New York, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006.

“The Beatles Lyrics.” A-Z Lyrics. Accessed 8 December 2014. http://www.azlyrics.com/b/beatles.html.

Davies, Hunter. The Beatles. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1978.

Greene, Joshua M. Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison.

Hoboken, NJ. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.

“George Harrison Lyrics.” A-Z Lyrics. Accessed 8 December 2014. http://www.azlyrics.com/g/georgeharrison.html.

“George Harrison Albums.” The Beatles Bible. Accessed 8 December 2014. http://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-harrison/albums/.

Harrison, Olivia. George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Edited by Mark Holborn. New York, New York: Abrams, 2011.

Huntley, Elliot J. Mystical One: George Harrison after the break-up of the Beatles. Toronto, Ontario: Guernica, 2004.

Inglis, Ian. The Words and Music of George Harrison. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010.

“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” The Beatles Bible. Accessed 8 December 2014, http://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/norwegian-wood-this-bird-has-flown/.

“United Kingdom Discography.” The Beatles Bible. Accessed 8 December 2014. http://www.beatlesbible.com/discography/united-kingdom/.

Womack, Kenneth. Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles. New York, New York: Continuum International Publishing Inc., 2007.

34

Thrill

by Sydney Conley

35

The Arrowheads

by Anna LaGrone Once you built fires and told stories on the land now burdened by concrete, glass and light from the city, once sacred but now just civilized.

Once you hunted deer in the forests that had to be cut for a profit, trees with mutilated limbs, dragged through the dirt, disgraced.

Once you sharpened arrows and flint, but now you sharpen the pain in your heart, with a bottle of liquor that burns going down like trees on fire.

Once your copper skin glistened with the sweat of life, but now your fading legacy is a nickel stamped with a silver buffalo, out of currency and out of memory.

Once you roamed the plains and danced under the stars with the jade grass cool under your feet and the moon a pale sliver above.

Once you rode your painted mustangs, blue hand-prints on their flanks, woven feathers in their manes, then your wild horses were confiscated, shot to death by men in uniforms.

Once you spoke your own tongue, prayed to the earth and sky and sea, then your children were stolen, crosses shoved down their throats, their words beaten out of them.

No one wants to remember you, but someone made the arrowheads.

36

Buchenwald

by Anna LaGrone Cold.

The ice, the air, whistling through my bones and freezing my skin.

My blue lips, sunken eyes, paler than the snow, yet still alive.

Ice, diamond teardrops, cling to my lashes and make the world a blur, obscuring the sight of the snow, the barbed wire, the dying people that litter the ground at my feet, in the coldness of hell.

Hell is not flame and heat, but snow and ice, the bitter numbness of parched skin that bursts open like overripe fruit, raw with cold.

The barbed wire encircles us, a ring of briars that prick our skin, sharp and shining in the moon's pale glow, a reminder of our captivity.

The furnaces still burn, even in the darkness of the night, and the air smells of charred flesh, of bones and flesh and smoke.

The stars still glimmer in the sky, but all I see is ash.

Ice and hunger are my constant companions, nagging and persistent, sharp as nails driven through my skin.

The people around me would wring pity from the coldest heart alive, with their electrum-pale faces, their red-rimmed eyes, their skeletal forms, starved and beaten beyond repair. Their faces haunt my dreams. Their fragile skin, white with cold, translucent, blue veins running below the surface, and their shaven heads with dark stubble, frosted with snow.

My Aryan guards with their glittering guns laugh at me when I eat the snow, Ivory-rose skin, merry blue eyes, golden hair like lamb's wool. Murderers.

I cling to hope, but it eludes me now, for when I close my eyes, I see the hanging angel, writhing on his rope. I see the empty bunk where my father died, where I allowed him to die, where I covered my ears so that I could not hear him scream my name and beg for water.

There is not enough strength left for me to even weep for him.

Sometimes I curse God, but more often I forget about him entirely, as he has forgotten us, and I wonder if he is even real.

My heart rattles in my chest when I think that tomorrow I might die if my number is chosen, then I will be stripped of my rags, and sent to the gas chamber. My body, frail as it is, would be burned, enveloped in their scarlet heat, a life, melted into ash.

Night.

37

Hiii-Power

by James Elliott

38

Underdog

by Elizabeth Romano The heat of the lights hit my pale face as Stella and I walked into the velvet-lined ring. A leather lead brushed up against my sweating hand, and my body felt hot and cold at the same time. The dog and I knew that we were out of our league. Even though my second-hand dress was as glamorous as those of the judges and Stella’s fur was gleaming like the moonlight on Lake Greenwood, we knew that we didn’t belong. What right did we have to be in the AKC? We came from the red dirt and from the tall grasses and from the farm that bore us both. The dogs and humans in this place were pedigreed, their bloodlines carefully chosen. Their soft hands and soft paws had never known a blemish, while our rough hands and rough paws had been hewn from running after livestock. Even these leather collars and rhinestone-studded dresses were strange to us. The city and the New York crowds closed in on us. We had no right to be here.

This wasn’t the county fair anymore. This was the AKC National Dog Show in New York City. This wasn’t a 4-H county-wide dog show advertised in the local paper, our usual haunt. This was a national show where all eyes were upon us, the entire country just waiting for us to fail. Yet there was one thing that I knew we had that the others didn’t—we had love. Stella had been my Border Collie since she was ten weeks old, and I had been hers since I was a pup of ten years old. She had been my childhood friend and my trusted companion. These other dogs and their handlers were strangers to each other. Their owners had hired the handlers, while they sat back and drank their cocktails. Stella and I knew each other. We were one, and we shared a deep bond. True, we weren’t refined, and we weren’t rich, but we had each other.

That night, I was a nervous wreck. Stella, on the other hand, seemed cool and confident. To her, this was just another day out in the field with me. These other dogs were just minions in her pack.

In this moment, she was the alpha. Stella kept her head up high; she was the queen among dogs. If she was truly the underdog, it meant that the rest of the canines were under her feet. I had never seen a herding dog act so regal in all my life. She was simply showing what a farmer’s dog could do. The farmer’s daughter was another story.

39 About thirty minutes had already passed, and we found ourselves lined up with six other handlers and canines, standing rigid and perfectly still, Stella continuing to hold her head high with dignity.

The other handlers seemed amused at the teenage hick from South Carolina and her childhood pet. I could only leer at the overgrown spoiled brats in return. If you were in my place, you would be able to see that showing a dog isn’t as much of a peaceful sport as it looks. At this stage, nothing was simple, and nothing was peaceful. The crowd’s emotions were mixed towards us, and I could feel their passion and their pressure push down on Stella and me. I couldn’t tell whether it was true, but Stella looked at me with what seemed to be a smirk. For once, I felt the fear and pressure melt away.

Those feelings mounted back up again as the judge motioned for us to come into the center of the ring. It was the moment of truth for us both. The elderly judge waited patiently for me to arrive, as if to say that she was letting me have just one chance to make it or break it. She almost seemed to pity me for even wanting to come here and to feel sorry for throwing us into the fire of this intense competition. To my own amazement, I was able to communicate to Stella to stand square and show off her conformation to the best of our ability. The judge felt her topline first, running a hand from the base of her neck to her white and black flowing tail. The judge then turned her blue eyes towards me.

“May I see the bite, please?” she asked politely, as if she were speaking to another colleague. I nearly turned red in the face at this level of respect.

“Yes, ma’am.” I answered in my politest, sweetest tone of voice, keeping the reputation of the state that I represented in mind. The judge then carefully examined Stella’s teeth; Stella stood confidently and gave the judge another handler-imagined smirk.

“Walk to the end, about face, and come back,” the judge instructed in a low tone of voice.

Her assumption was that I didn’t know what I was doing. That was the only thing that she could get wrong. I gently led Stella towards the end of the ring, the hem of my dress flowing as Stella’s fur did the same. When we were about to turn back towards the judge, I couldn’t help thinking that we were going to make fools of ourselves. And then, as I looked into Stella’s eyes, I could see her confidence in me . . . and I thought it only right to have the same trust in her and in myself as well. I reminded myself why I was really there—not to fail, not to win, but to enjoy the sport with which

40 I’ve been obsessed my entire life. Just as Stella had done when we first entered the ring, I looked up at the crowd and the judges and gave a brilliant welcome-to-South-Carolina smile.

There were a few cheers from the crowds as we returned to our place, and now it was time for the competition to beat us out. I didn’t care anymore . . . until I saw the poodle in the line-up walk to the judge. Poodles won every year at this show, and we were toast. I would be going home emptyhanded today, but I would go back to the South with dignity and pride. I continued to stand tall and confident, and Stella did the same at my side. I could tell that she still thought that she owned the ring and that the judges were working for her.

We had reached the second moment of truth, the callbacks for the around-the-arena run. At this point, the judges were supposed to separate the chaff from the wheat. The dogs from the toy, sporting, and terrier group were eliminated. My heart felt like it was about to give out, and believe it or not, we were in the final four. I could have sworn that everyone else could hear Stella’s heartbeat as well as mine echoing in the silence of a nervous crowd. I told myself that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I was pretty sure Stella had already won in her own mind.

The judge cleared her throat as she was about to call the order. In this moment, all I could hear was Stella’s panting and my own roaring blood in my ears. All life stopped for me and her three competitors. Time froze as the judge rang out her proclamation: “Let’s have the Border Collie over here, please.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, and I had only seconds before I breathed out, “What?”

The judge just smiled as she nodded once again and motioned for Stella and me to come forward. I could feel the backlog of tears in my eyes beginning to flow outward, a wide, toothy smile coming to my face. I couldn’t believe it; we had won. While the announcer’s voice boomed above the crowd, I ran forward awkwardly, the Thanksgiving Day press snapping pictures and reporters talking to their audiences. Stella and I were embraced by flowers and lights and trophies. The cheers of the audience blanketed us, and I still couldn’t remember having any dignity when I shook my competitors’ hands. A swarm of reporters bombed me like a war was being won, asking me a line of questions that I could only answer with half-sobbing, unintelligible speech.

41 The one thing that I could see clearly through my torrent of joyful tears was Stella turning her nose up at the other dogs, those big brown eyes twinkling at me. The black and white dog jumped into my arms just as she did when she was small. This wonderful creature, who had given me the world, then licked my nose, her wagging tail swooshing against my side from the crook of my arm.

Her big brown eyes stared intensely into mine. If she could have talked in that moment, I swear that she would have said, “I told you so.�

42

The Bystander Effect

by Bobby Suit There wadn’t ever nothing to do in Toccoa, Georgia, on a Friday night except sit around and drink corn liquor, smoke raggedy old sucker-leaves, and wait on Saturday morning to come. Why? Saturday was the much-anticipated day of the week that the renowned and festive event known throughout Northeast Georgia as The Chicken-Fight. This ancient (and well-attended, I might add) carnival was held up on the side of Currahee Mountain in a run-down old tobacco barn called The Pit. Make no mistake; this was THE highlight of Stephens County, Georgia: no bars, no dance-halls, no liquor stores, not even an eating-joint to speak of. Even worse than that, I lived on a one-lane, dead-end dirt road with three trailers on it total: mine, Jeters’, and the Nulls’.

One Friday night, me and about fifteen of my boys were standing out in my front yard discussing the usual fodder: the value of a good set of gaffs, green-legged chickens versus whitelegged, my neighbor’s daughter’s titties, and other stuff like that. We were really just killing time, waiting on 4:00 to come so we could load up our chickens and take off to Toccoa. Anyhow, one lie led to another (and one swallow definitely led to another) until finally the subject of the upcoming Chicken-Fight came up. Two brothers and notorious chicken-fighters, James and Roy Lee Griffen, almost came to blows several times over the virtues of a certain untested, spangled-grey rooster Roy Lee had raised in comparison to James’s legendary, seven-time winning, green-legged hatch rooster that everybody called Tar-Baby.

If you don’t know one thing about chicken-fighting, know this: people do the talking, chickens do the fighting, and James and Roy Lee could talk with the best. First, James called Roy Lee’s chicken a “cold-blooded dunghill” which led Roy Lee to question the valor of the heralded Tar-Baby.

“Luck-of-the-draw, that’s all,” is what he said. “Seven times you drawed little ol’ stag roosters that weren’t even ready for the show yet. Luck-of-the-fucking-draw, Bro,” and he spit.

James countered back, “Hell, yo’ rooster ain’t even game, Roy Lee. Wanna’ know how I know? Easy, I slipped some Dominecker eggs under yo’ precious hen when she was sitting and laughed like hell when you said that that little grey stag she hatched was gonna’ be the cock-ofthe-walk.” Everybody cut up then and Roy Lee turned as a red as a schoolgirl in a cucumber patch.

43 He’d had about enough of James’s mouth, so he finally says, “I tell you what, Dick-Lick, I’m fixing to shut yo’ mouth fo’ good. We’ll get the chickens out right now and fight ‘em in the dark.

How ‘bout that? You fixin’ to see what Ol’ Grey’s all about,” and he took off to his truck to get his rooster out of the back.

Somebody hollered, “If we pull all the cars up around in a circle and cut on the lights, the chickens’ll think its daytime then, and they’ll fight like hell!” Somebody else vouched in, “Yeah, I heard that too,” so we pulled the cars around in a circle, cut on the lights, drew a pit in the dirt, and James and Roy Lee heeled up their roosters and was just about to turn them loose when Roy Lee said: “I got thirty-five dollars on Ol’ Gray. You do got some money, ain’t ya’ Jamie boy?”

James snickered, “Thirty five? Hell, I’ll put a hundred on Tar-Baby.”

Roy Lee snickered back, “That’s just what I wanted you to say, sucker. A fool and his money is soon departed,” and he stepped into the pit. They let the roosters hit a couple of times in their hands, stepped back across the lines in the dirt, and Hammer Adams (the self-appointed referee) yelled, “Pit!” When they let ‘em go, Roy Lee’s rooster looked around like a first-time tourist at Disneyland, and old James’s hatch-rooster tore into him like a Tasmanian devil. Dominecker Gray, as he was forever called after that night, squawked and had a sudden urge to run; but chickens can’t see a lick in the dark, and soon as he got out of the car lights, he hit a stump and then the side of the car and finally a tree before Roy Lee could get his hands on him. We cut up like a pile of mashed cats. It was funny as hell, and the more we laughed, the madder Roy Lee got.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with my rooster, he’s just got confused that’s all. He ain’t even woke up yet. He don’t know ‘bout them car lights. That shit ain’t natural!” He was searching. “You wait ‘till the sun comes up. You gonna’ see what Ol’ Grey can do then,” Roy Lee snipped.

Hammer Adams said: “Hell, let’s pit ‘em again, maybe The Galloping Ghost is awake by now,” and everybody (even Roy Lee) agreed, so we started the ritual once again.

This time James said, “I got a hundred and fifty on Tar-Baby, and I’ll lay fifty dollars that yo’ rooster’ll run again soon as you let him go and I won’t even set Tar-Baby down.”

And Roy Lee (madder than hell by now) countered back, “A hundred and fifty? Hell, I bet it all!” and took out his wallet and threw it on the ground.

44 The second Roy Lee’s wallet hit the ground, Jeter Adams (Hammer’s cousin) scooped it up and took off. Roy Lee tossed his rooster to his cousin and took off after him, but he didn’t have a chance. Jeter was faster than greased lightning. When he got a good enough lead on Roy Lee, he finally slowed down enough to look in Roy Lee’s wallet to catch a glimpse of the vast riches of a veteran chicken-fighter: NOTHING! Not even a dime. We did cut up then. Even Roy Lee cracked a smile: “Hell,” he said. “I bet it all, didn’t I?” No sooner did Roy Lee get that out of his mouth, that here come two little girls about eleven or twelve running down the dirt road, hollering and screaming: “Help! Help! Help us, please! He’s killing our Mama!” You could tell by the look on their faces that they wasn’t kidding.

Now, of the fifteen gentlemen present at the Chicken-Party that night, ten had pistols, three had knives, and the other two had beer bottles. And when Roy Lee hollered, “Let’s Get It!” they commenced to getting it. I kind of lagged behind, not partial to violence, and still leery of the law after a little reefer charge in South Carolina. The little girls were trotting along right beside me, and when I looked over at them, they were smiling from ear to ear.

As the boys all ran up the hill, every one of them had their weapon held up over their heads, and they were yelling at the top of their lungs.

“The freakin’ rebel yell,” I said to myself. After that night, I know how a Yankee soldier must have felt when he first heard that blood-curdling cry. And I know the way Stranglin’ Pop must have felt when we finally topped the hill.

Now, Pop DID have Granny in a stranglehold—that’s a fact. But when he seen that crowd running up the dirt road, hollering like hell, he forgot about murder real quick and started thinking about his own ass. When Pop took off for his trailer door, James Griffen (one of the knifewielders) ran across the yard and cut him off. When Pop saw he wasn’t gonna make it, he reached in his pocket and came out with his own weapon; a two-inch pen knife. For some reason (and I don’t know why to this day) James dropped his knife on the ground and reached over to a pile of 2 x 4s laying in the front yard and come up with a sixteen-footer, and it was on like popcorn, as Hammer later told it. We had us a real Chicken-Fight, now!

James would swing the 2x4 at Pop, and Pop would jump back. Soon as the 2x4 went by, Pop would rush in, knife slashing, and that caused Roy Lee to lower his pistol at Pop and holler: “Get ‘em, James!”

45 About half-way there, James would backswing the 2x4, and Pop would take off backwards to keep from getting hit, and Roy Lee would raise his pistol back in the air. Soon as the 2x4 went by, Pop would rush in, and the three of them would dance these same steps over and over again.

This went on for about fifteen minutes (nary lick was passed) until finally Pop said (almost outta’ breath): “Please, fellas, all I wanna’ do is get in my trailer. I ain’t messing wid’ ya’ll, boys. Please, Mister, just let me in my house. I ain’t hurting nobody. Can’t a man get in his own trailer?” He was exhausted and about to cry.

So James lowered the 2x4, and when he did, Pop made a bee-line to the door. Soon as he got in, we could hear him pick up the phone and start dialing. “Get me the Stephens County Police, quick. I just been attacked in my own back yard by a gang of longhaired drug addicts with pistols!

No, I ain’t shot, but they WAS shooting. Number eleven, Gumlog Road, but please hurry, they still out there, and it looks like one of ‘em is choking my wife. Oh, Lord, hurry!” and he slammed the phone down.

The party was over just like that. Everybody took off running back down to my place, jumped in their rides and squalled tires out of there. Everybody that is, except me and Jeter and Coby Null, who had nowhere to go. So we hid over in the weeds across the road from Pop, and while Jeter rolled one for later, me and Coby passed the jar back and forth and waited for the law to come.

46

Circle and Circle

by Yuemiao Hu

New Voices is published with the financial support of the Lander University College of Arts and Humanities and the Department of English and Foreign Languages.

The editors would especially like to thank Dean RenĂŠe Love and Dr. Jeffrey Baggett for their encouragement and assistance.

CONGRATULATIONS, JANA AND ROBBY! Thank you for all your hard work; we will most certainly miss you both.

Cheers to the Class of 2015!

In Memoriam

The faculty sponsors and student editors of New Voices would like to dedicate this year’s issue to former English faculty member Dr. Phil Purser (1979-2015).

NEW VOICES: Lander University’s Student Journal is a publication of the College of Arts & Humanities.

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