Blog 4

Blog 4

The catharsis means the purging of the emotions of pity and fear that are shown to the viewer. The catharsis for me I see it happening in the scene were Bob was accused of rape. When Himes writes "Help! Help! My God, help me! Some white man, help me! I'm being raped" (Himes 180). It clearly shows that whatever Bob does in his life he will be always be treated like second class citizen or even as a slave. Also before that when bob was knocking at the door Alice yelled out loud like trying to tell someone saying “Okay, I'll open up, just a minute” (Himes 179). It would seem that she has this all planed out knowing that whatever Bob says to the police the truth or lies they count everything as a lie. It clearly shows the extreme racial tension during the early 40’s. Also in order to regain their sense of white superiority since they lost it after the loss of the civil war, they must attack Bob to regain and to show off their superiority.

In the book “Ruth Hall” by Fanny Fern, Ruth a mother of three, one died and a few years later her husband as well. She is left in a position were no family should be. In the book Ruth received little to no sympathy what so ever, I say no she does revived a little sympathy but it’s not the sympathy that we call a good sympathy this is what I like to call bad sympathy. As we can see it would seem that Ruth is not receiving any sympathy from her family member and as well as her in-laws.

But I say look a bit closer to her father. According to the definition of sympathy is a “Feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune” it would have seem that Ruth father Mr. Ellet have some kind of remorse for his daughter. The evidence is shown on page 77, where Mr. Ellet paid a little visit to the Doctor house, he started to talk how his daughter is taking her husband death very hard. Right there it would seem that he have some sort of sympathy for her, he then ask the doctor if he could take the children from her. Ok right there it would seem that that is being evil and all but look again on page 78 he said “that the children would be better off with the doctor”. Then again on the same page number “then her hands would be free to earn her own living, and she’s none too good for it, either’. It would seem that Ruth father is being sympathetic enough for that time period. We have to remember at that time men came in the world and in marriage. So it would seem that he Mr. Ellet has sympathy for Ruth but not enough for our standard for today.  

Linda Grasso short essay on Fanny Fern shows the status of the everyday women’s in a society where it’s dominated by men. According to Linda Grasso she is telling us that a woman has no rights what so ever, and were they are very depended on the men for food, shelter, and clothing. Because women at that time were not able to own any property, couldn’t vote or have a say, and always were deemed as second class citizens. 

One evidences of this male dominated world is on page 7 were Ruth schoolmate wondering why she took so much pain in book, when she is getting more and more prettier, and when the world all knew that is was unnecessary for a pretty women to be smart. This clearly shows that Ruth was unique, and not like the other girls. The other girls knows that if you are pretty you will get almost everything you want in material good, but Ruth doesn’t want that but only love something that is not measured by material goods. Another evidence of male dominance is on page 46 were Daisy was very sick and that she need to see a doctor, but instead of seeing the doctor face to face, only a bottle of medicine was given and as a result Daisy died due to her sickness. The reason why because I think that she did not received the proper medicine for that illness and if the doctor was their then she would have been all right and alive most importantly. So as those two evidence clearly shows that men does not care for smarts but only for beauty and young girls are consider as disposable.