Volcanoes Erupting

Hello! And welcome to my blog. My name is Sunny and I’m currently a student at LaGuardia Community College. This semester, I am enrolled in a class known at this college as: ENN195.0962: Violence in American Art and Culture, taught by Dr. Justin Rogers-Cooper.

In my last blog, I presented a novel that our class is reading entitled: “Caesar’s Column,” written by Ignatius Donnelly.

Throughout the novel, numerous references to Volcanoes were used to describe the actions of a secret society (known as the Brotherhood) and the destruction associated with the organization.

One prime instance in which the theme of destruction referenced by a volcano appears is when Donnelly writes: “Above all this dreadful preparation the merry world goes on, singing and dancing, marrying and giving in marriage, as thoughtless of the impending catastrophe as were the people of Pompeii in those pleasant August days in 79, just before the city was buried in ashes;--and yet the terrible volcano had stood there, in the immediate presence of themselves and their ancestors, for generations, and more than once the rocking earth had given signal tokens of its awful Possibilities.” Here, Donnelly is clearly comparing the Brotherhood to the Volcano that demolished Pompeii. While the rest of civilization is unaware of the plans of the Brotherhood, in time, there will be an outbreak of violence that will take the population by surprise. This is an important passage because it foreshadows the actions of the Brotherhood and it compares the magnitude of violence to that of the volcano that obliterated the population of Pompeii. I think the volcano metaphor here is accurately used because it best describes the built up frustration of the less fortunate civilization and eventually things will get to a point where this civilization rebels or erupts like volcano. But not just any regular volcano, a volcano that that suddenly destroys a certain population.

Another moment in the novel in which Donnelly describes destruction in the form of a volcano metaphor is when he writes: “The line of the barricade is alive with fire. With my glass I can almost see the dynamite bullets exploding in the soldiers, tearing them to pieces, like internal volcanoes.” At this point in the novel, the rebel Brotherhood is fighting the Prince and his army. This is a really powerful seen because the image of violence is easily painted due to the volcano reference. It’s also ironic because it was the Brotherhood that was supposed to erupt like a volcano, but instead, some of the soldiers experienced “volcanoes” themselves and it certainly came as a surprise to them. Like volcanoes, the violence in this scene is chaotic, unavoidable, and devastating. I felt like Donnelly used the volcano reference here to try and depict the kind violence that was occurring, but also to remind us, the readers, that this was the destruction that was predicted earlier in the novel.

The first passage presented here in this blog basically foreshadows events that occur in the second passage. The use of the word “volcano” is supposed to represent destruction and death that is ultimately inevitable. The first passage predicts what’s going to happen and the second passage unveils exactly what unfolds when the Brotherhood finally carries out their plan.

I think that mentioning and referring to volcanoes repeatedly throughout the novel presents this sense of urgency that can also be related to that of a volcano about to erupt. It’s as if Donnelly was saying: Destruction is coming, destruction is coming, it’s inescapable, many will perish, chaos will ensue. This is ultimately what happens in the novel. There is this build or hype to the battle that occurs between the Brotherhood and the army of the Prince, just like there is build up in a volcano. Then there is this outbreak of violence and fighting, just like a volcano erupts. So I definitely think that the volcano metaphors were powerful in this novel because of how accurately the metaphors were able to describe the emotions involved and describe the events that took place.

One thing that I did wonder about when reviewing my notes to write this blog on the theme of destruction encased in the metaphors of volcanoes is: the Brotherhood justified their need for violence by stating and showing Gabriel just how horrible the population is being oppressed by the upper class and individuals like the Prince. This brought my attention to organizations that are known today such as ISIS or the Taliban. In today’s society, this groups are acknowledged as “terrorists.” They believe that they need to destroy the current civilization and rebuild to create a better world. Isn’t that the same intentions that the Brotherhood has? To demolish those that are cruel and unfair and repair a destroyed population in a better image? When compared to terrorist groups of today, the Brotherhood seems like the blueprint organization for terror. The Brotherhood believes strongly in destruction and revenge, but I can’t wrap my mind on how hell bent this band of brothers is on creating a “New World Order.” Individuals within the assembly are intelligent. They have positions of power and only lack money or funds that match the wealth of the upper class. Couldn’t the congress of destruction find some other way to overthrow those in power? Maybe use the intelligence and positions they have to plan something that would slowly decay the upper class without having to erupt like a volcano and spread terrorism?

The Future of New York

Hello! and welcome to my blog. My name is Sunny and I'm currently a student at LaGuardia Community College. This semester, I am enrolled in a class known at this college as: ENN195.0962: Violence in American Art and Culture, taught by Dr. Justin Rogers-Cooper.

This week, we started reading a novel entitled: “Caesar’s Column,” written by Ignatius Donnelly. The novel was first published in 1890 and was classified as a dystopian science fiction. This novel was actually many years ahead of its time and describes a futuristic New York set one hundred years into the future from the publish date of this work. To my astonishment, some of the “futuristic” advances in New York in the novel are actually realities that we experience today in the year 2014. Today, I want to reveal to you some of the ideas Connelly presented in the novel and connect them with the active and functioning realities of those ideas in present time.

One of the first ideas that Connelly flaunts is the notion of a subway system. “Below all the business streets are subterranean streets, where vast trains are drawn, by smokeless and noiseless electric motors, some carrying passengers, others freight. At every street corner there are electric elevators, by which passengers can ascend or descend to the trains. And high above the house-tops, built on steel pillars, there are other railroads, not like the unsightly elevated trains we saw pictures of in our school books, but crossing diagonally over the city, at a great height, so as to best economize time and distance.” With the exception of elevators on every street corner, this passage clearly describes what we New Yorkers know today as the subway system. Over one hundred years ago, Donnelly is able to accurately define the subway system that is used today.

Another prediction that Donnelly is accurately able to make is the Prohibition Era which actually took place between 1920 and 1933 in the United States. In the novel, Donnelly writes: “Our poor ignorant ancestors of a hundred years ago drank alcohol in various forms, in quantities which the system could not consume or assimilate, and it destroyed their organs and shortened their lives. Great agitations arose until the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited over nearly all the world.” I’m not sure as to why Donnelly makes this prediction in his novel, but one can argue that he simply expanded on this idea of no alcohol which actually dates back to the Xia Dynasty (ca. 2070 BC – ca. 1600 BC) in China when Yu the Great prohibited alcohol throughout the kingdom. A possible reason for this concept to be included could stem from the “wonderful” image Donnelly is trying to paint of New York. A picture in which all is glorious and nothing negative exists, possibly to set up something crucially contradicting that eventually challenges our thinking and makes us question this concept of a “wonderful” New York.

“I shall sit down in a chair; there is an electric magazine in the seat of it.” Here, Donnelly is clearly describing what we now identify today as a tablet. Tablets allow us to read books, magazines, articles published on the internet, and even this blog I’m currently writing. I’m not sure where Donnelly drew inspiration from for the “electric magazine,” but maybe we now know where Steve Jobs drew his inspiration from for the first iPad and iPhone.

New York City Prostitutes

Hello! And welcome to my blog. My name is Sunny and I’m currently a student at LaGuardia Community College. This semester, I am enrolled in a class known at this college as: ENN195.0962: Violence in American Art and Culture, taught by Dr. Justin Rogers-Cooper.

Currently, we are reading a novel entitled: The Destruction of Gotham written by Joaquin Miller.

No connection to the new hit TV show Gotham. This novel was actually written in 1886 and flaunts issues present at the time in New York City. One such concern that has the city seemingly injected into a massive void of chaos is the topic of prostitution. To help unravel this concept, I would like to present a couple of passages that strongly highlight clear evidence that at one point in time, New York City was plagued by prostitution to the extent in which society considered it destructive to the city’s very existence. 

An excerpt located on page 17: 

It is estimated that every day hundreds of young women enter New York never to return. More than as many young men, also strangers, young, eager, ambitious, pour in upon the wonderful city from the South, the East, the West-from the four parts of the world. 

The girls are mostly good girls. The men are honest and industrious in the main. They have left poverty, obscurity, ignorance-all that is intolerable to pride and spirit and enterprise-behind them. This is the temple of fortune, where all may enter and implore their goddess.

To help deconstruct this passage, we must begin by analyzing keywords that will allow us to dig deeper into the surface material presented. Usually, the term “goddess” is used to describe a female god. However, in this text, it is used refer to a woman whose great charm or beauty arouses adoration. In this sense, we can assume that the term “goddess” is identifying the hundreds of young women entering New York as previously mentioned. If we look through the lens of a male perspective, we can probably envision in our minds hundreds of young men flooding the city in search of these beautiful and young women. From a female standpoint, however, we can also surmise that hundreds of women are invading the city to parade their beauty and establish intimate connections with the hundreds of young men that cannot avoid feelings of adoration for these women. So basically, both young men and women are pouring into the city attracted by the lure of fortune. The men have money and are willing to invest said money into young women for the small, but fair exchange of sexual endeavors. 

To further prove that this theme of prostitution exists throughout the rest of the novel, we can examine another bit of text found on page 31:

Ah! you hate, abhor this monster! Stop! Abhor and hate handsome, gay, dissolute men of this wonderful city who make her trade, and the growing trade of those like her, profitable. Look at the great gamblers, the big, red-faced men, with their big, red fists clutching tight and close to their millions upon millions. These are the men who maintain her in her trade-great spiders, in their webs of wire and railroad tracks, waiting to devour the body and soul she brings. Destroy these, and you destroy her. Hers is a hard business at best, full of peril and unpleasant work. She earns money.

To destroy this new and growing traffic, this dire fungus growing out of the unexampled opulence of this city, this more than Roman revelry and recklessness, you must know this woman, know these men. Hence these pages.

New York City is a thriving economic city. A city in which both men and women can create a little bit of success and live a lifestyle more desired than other region of the country. The lines above clearly explains how women are dependent on these working men to fuel their lifestyle. They offer their bodies in an unpleasant line of work in order to obtain some amount of money just to pay for the life they want. A life of materialistic pleasures.