One BRIEF (I mean it: BRIEF) comment on an aspect of Christ -- after the death of Geremio-- that has grabbed your attention. It doesn't need to be a major point, it can be a detail, a scene, or a quote.
NO DUPLICATIONS, PLEASE.
USE "REPLIES" to engage in a discussion in all the other topics or subtopics you could not address in your comment.
I thought it was ironic that non of these so called "Christians" would give the boy Paul food for him and his family when he went around the different shops.
ReplyDeleteI agree where was their generosity? I know times were hard for all them as well but I believe you get what you give.
DeleteRachel, and what about the priest? In all his abundace a piece of cake was all he can do for the boy?
DeleteIt was interesting to see however that whenever he went to the neighbors they always gave him to eat and it's not like he asked - i.e. by Gloria's house and by Louis and I am sure they didn't have much money themselves.
DeleteThat detail was very interesting. It also neatly set up the entire process by which Paul starts to move away from religion and towards establishing his own personal beliefs.
DeleteI agree. The scene with the priest can make your blood boil. There he was with all that food and he goes ahead and asks "How can I help?" as if he's oblivious. There's 8 children and their mother going hungry and probably getting malnourished and he hands him a piece of cake. I wonder how many vitamins were in that cake.
DeleteI found this ironic as well. But what I also found interesting was that even though Paul wasn't receiving help from the priest and other Christians, he still managed to maintain his faith in God for quite some time after that.
DeletePaul was opposite to his father. In the hardest time Geremio didnt lose faith in God, but Paul did.
DeleteOne aspect that grabbed my attention was the death of Nazone. He was lackadaisical that due due to the fact that he couldn't take it anymore and wanted a day of rest. Jones couldn't take the fact that he was moving slowly and inadvertently sent him to his death. Of all the horrible things that happened in this book, this is one that stuck with me the most, even though it was not as detailed as the others.
ReplyDeleteMoral of the story: if you feel like playing hooky, don't let your conscience interfere with your intuition.
DeleteNazone death also grabbed my attention, but in a different point of view. I found it almost mirroring the beginning of the book, When his Father died then at the beginning his God Father dies at toward the end of the book. Paul looses the fathering figures at these point triggered a change, after Geremio died he becomes the man of the house and after Nazone died he soon after dismisses his religious beliefs.
DeleteWhen Luigi was calculating how much money he made, trying to figure out how feed ten mouths with $27. This struck me hard I can't even imagine how he felt the burden he took on with his sister and her kids.
ReplyDeleteRachel, this made me so anxious too. I was almost trying to do the math with him.
Delete$27 in 1923 (the year the author's father had the accident assuming the novel is autobiographical) was the equivalent of today's $367.81. I wonder how often they got paid.
DeleteThe novel is indeed autobiographical. I think they got paid weekly, 6 days a week, 10 hours a day. However, the comparison cannot be made only in terms of inflation. Food used to be enormously more expensive and absorbed up to 70% of income (today it's about 20-25%). I am quoting these statistics from memory so I could be off by a few points. Also, energy, i.e. heat, was much more expensive than today. That is why we usually hear about 'cold and hungry' in the same breath. Women, by the way, were paid a fraction of what men got. Basically, the only jobs open to women were in sweatshops.
DeleteI noticed that food was super expensive back then when in "Son of Italy" Pascal was speaking about the price he paid for his soup and bread and when I did the math I thought to myself "that's a crazy amount of money for stale bread and rotten soup!"
DeleteOne detail that really interested me was when Paul was given various names through his work as a laborer. The passage on page 90 details that Paul was a number of names: Philippe, diapered one, still-high, apprentice-boyo, first-born masculine of the deceased, little master, half pint jerk-off, godson, and titty-drinker. The men working with Paul and/or ordering him around do not know his real name, or refuse to give him his real name. I believe this is used to dehumanize Paul and to make him a machine-like laborer. These fake names also allow Paul's fellow workers and the foremen to rid their minds of the immorality of having to work next to a teenage boy. Instead of associating Paul with the little boy who is providing for his family, they associate Paul with these invented names to rid themselves of the guilt in having him work for extremely low wages (possibly getting killed too!).
ReplyDeleteIn addition to what you wrote and the Professor said, since the book is written in multiple POV's and we are witness to streams of consciousness as well as dialogue to a certain extent I wonder how many were really nicknames vs. name calling or random cursing out. In such a situation where they were under harsh conditions and terrible pressure I am sure everyone called each other ridiculous foul mouthed things when they got pissed off yet because it was from his POV we see the things they said to him.
DeleteAs a side point - I think a real issue is that many Italians name their children after the grandparents and then when those names run out after the godmother and godfather and so imagine what a mess you have when trying to discuss other people - you need to make up nicknames in order to figure out who is who! Fo example, my aunt is Lele, my older cousin is Little Lele, and I am Lele Bird – even though all of us are really named Leora but it’s too confusing since that’s my grandmother’s name. (And of course there is a story behind my nickname - when I was a little kid I was skinny and I used to put on my mother’s heels and walk around in them which according to my older siblings made me look like a struggling bird ... I don't even recall ever doing this but this is a family legend that goes back over 25 years and I will forever be stuck with this name whether I like it or not.)
Great insight. The tradition to call children with grandparents names must have a lot to do with nick names. Remember "Good Fellas" where everybody was called "Paul" or "Pauli?'
DeleteYes, lots of Paulie's. Great movie. Love the narration. Also that movie always makes me hungry with those food scenes.
DeleteInteresting analysis and I certainly worthy of consideration.
ReplyDeleteMay I also suggest the possibility that this is a very common aspect of Italian sub-cultures (this is technical, sociological term, not an offense.) If you look at Mafia, everyone has a nick name. If you go to Italian villages every family has a nick name (or at least it was so in the olden days.) This tradition of giving nick names also explains why in Italy there are so many last names -- I believe it is the country with the highest number of different last names in the world. My family from my mother side, up to my her generation, was known as "i Bramin". Nothing to do with the Indian high cast Brahmin. Rather, it comes from "Abramo" which both identified an ancestor and the fact that they were of Jewish descent (the only family in town.)
I find it very interesting that Nanzone adopts Paul as his apprentice and godson. Nanzone essentially takes Paul under his wing and exclaims how he will be a great builder since his father was also a great builder, while the others feel being a brick-layer is a curse.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the things that I really liked about the book. It shows how, even though they were not blood relatives, Nazone basically gets incorporated into the family by taking Paul as his godson. The whole situation just enhances the notion of the ItAm famiglia. It shows us a good and happy situation, for a change.
DeleteYes, you guys said it. I found the explanation of a Godfather very funny as well. The importance of a father is so great that the Godfather is to look over the child as well.
DeleteI too found this to be interesting along with Paul's repetition of the phrase, "I am a bricklayer." It was almost as if he felt that by repeating this constantly, it would really make him become good at the job his father used to do.
DeleteOn P. 224 Di Donato writes "Through shadowy religion of night she danced." This to me sums up Annunziata who just like those who are bitten by the tarantula use the tarantella to ward off death, so too those who are stricken by oppression turn to religion to trudge thru their hardships.
ReplyDeleteBut even faith / religiosity has its limits: Annunziata and Paul find some relief from their grief only with the help of the Cripple. She offers the only concrete, tangible connection between this world and the Afterlife. She performs functions of grief counseling that today we would associate with psychotherapy. BTW, the first visit to the Cripple is one of my favorite chapters in the entire book: I have the impression that Di Donato for the first and only time in the book lost control of the narrative and that the story wrote itself.
DeleteI base my opinion on the fact that at the beginning he describes an environment of total physical debasement, filthy and cruddy, suggestive of moral debasement and callousness. A reader would expect the Cripple to be a blood sucking liar who exploits people's weaknesses. Yet, at the end, she ends up offering tea and true empathy to Annunziata and Paul. I don't think this is what Di Donato intended to write when he started. The story developed its own life and he simply recorded it.
The description of working high steel construction in chapter nine was very good. The way DiDonato depicted the activity on the job site, the technical detail and the description of the accident really grabbed my attention. It was probably my favorite section of the entire book. It also made me think a lot about the architecture of midtown Manhattan- and the sheer number of laborers that struggled to build it.
ReplyDeleteThe wedding ceremony of Ci Luigi and Cola was exquisite! I was salivating with every course, I could smell the aroma of the garlic sizzling as the sauce was being made. The importance of the "fiesta" still holds true today!
ReplyDeleteJames, I really enjoyed this scene as well. To me it was important because it was the first time in the book that the family had an abundance of food. I think the food symbolizes happiness, and represents the interesting way Italian Americans view food.
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DeleteI also loved this scene because it showed how all the family and friends were so tight-knit that they gathered together in Annunziata's teeny flat and were able to put their troubles behind them and really just to celebrate as one. It seemed like everyone was so happy and free spirited and were even being silly the way you would only be around your closest friends. The togetherness and the warmth and the sharing no matter how hard times are, is something that none of the cartoons portrayed but for me this really symbolizes ItAms. It reminded me of the people I saw in "The Way They Lived" - the pictures showed honest and hard working people just going about their life and often staying close with one another whether in brotherhood or labor or families sitting or standing close together keeping warm, always maintaining a dignified and proud stance with an upright posture or just relaxing and letting loose, never slumping over in defeat.
DeleteThis was a particularly great scene – a typical ItAm wedding!
DeleteWhat stood out to me was when Louis asked Paul to go to school with him the next day. It was mentioned quite a few times how smart Paul is and Louis tells Paul that his wonderful brain is his freedom not the job. They both started weeping with Annunziata as if grieving a great loss for him knowing he has to lay brick to support his family. I found this interesting as we read that Job had actually "arrested" workers.
ReplyDeleteOne scene that grabbed my attention was when Annunziata and Paul went to see the The Cripple. I find it ironic that Annunziata's character is described as devoutly religious, yet she went there to hear from the spirit world, which I believe is frowned upon in their religion. I also found it humorous how oblivious Annunziata and Paul were to the nonsense that The Cripple was feeding them. On page 112, The Cripple first mentions that the voice of a woman was trying to talk to them from the spirit world. However, because this didn't prompt some type of dramatic reaction from the duo, she immediately changed it to the voice of a man. Did they really not catch this and the fact that she was probably making all of this up? Just like in the other works that we've studied, Christ in Concrete shows how superstitious some Italian Americans were.
ReplyDeleteI loved this scene, but especially because of one other detail, which was the diversity of her clients. She wasn't just a psychic to Italian immigrants, but also to "a nervous dignified middle-aged man, a Negress, and a woman dressed in furs and silks." I was really impressed by the diversity of her clients, since this was the first time we really saw Italian immigrants interacting with people from other socio-economic backgrounds and the fact that they could all be duped by The Cripple.
DeleteOne other part of this section that made me physically cringe was when The Cripple said Geremio died painlessly. Knowing the horror at the beginning of the book with Geremio's death, it saddened me to see the pain he went through dismissed by a fortune teller.
DeleteI notice that as well. Geremio said that he was ready to die, but in the scene of his death he was begging God to save him and he wasn't ready to leave his family.
DeleteThe court scene grabbed my attention, the reason for this is Murdin's insincerity toward the dead and the grieving family. Murdin stated that it was Geremio own fault for his death and didn't seem to care that Germino family are struggling to live to see the next day. Murdin also pointed out that it's not the workers who are careless but the Italians are the one's who are not careful in their work, creating destruction for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading "1984" by George Orwell, and I was reminded of the following passage in it when I first read the scene where Paul wakes from his nightmare (before he is diagnosed with heart-strain):
ReplyDelete"It struck [Winston] that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body… And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth" (102).
Orwell's observation in tandem with this passage from "Christ in Concrete" made me think about how the constant trials Geremio's family faces after his death are, in a sense, against themselves: they are fighting off their starvation and their own deaths. To some degree, this is also paralleled in the Book of Job; Job laments his losses by wishing he himself was never born, but he is never angry with God (despite thinking he is suffering an injustice).
This is a very sophisticated critical analysis. I wonder if Paul's rejection of god at the end isn't the alternative to Job's acceptance and internalization of suffering. Maybe it's worth thinking about it. Paul transcends Job (and god) and liberates himself. Winston doesn't ("Do it to her!") maybe because he doesn't have a god to transcend, to get over. Sometimes we are told that acceptance is the only way out of internal conflicts. Other times it seems rebellion is the only way out. I was in Manhattan yesterday during Gay Pride Day and I thought how both operations were necessary for liberation: first, acceptance of self, then rebellion against the other 'acceptance,' and the rebellion.
DeleteThe fact that there were 8 kids in the house and throughout the book the author barely mentioned any of the kids. How was it possible to feed all of them back then? I still don't get that.
ReplyDeleteIt’s got to be pretty hard for families to feed 8 kids today. I can’t imagine what it was like back then, especially with what the family was going through.
Delete“’Mama do not cry-mama, do not cry-I-I shall be the father-‘A door was opening, a thin young door, and of his and hers… I shall be the father. “
ReplyDeleteThe line makes us realized that Paul had to become a provider for the family. He is so young yet he wants to take responsibility for his family. It may have foreshadowed how the story will shift to Paul’s struggle to provide for them. I think it’s a very mature of him to say this, his character is very responsible and he is a lot like Geremio.
On P. 16 as Geremio is dying and he is begging to be saved, I feel as though his faith is being tested. He is begging Jesus to show himself and save him. A few lines prior he is somewhat prepared for death but at the last minuet he regrets it.
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