A Beard at BYU

(At the BYU library, it is 1:53 on a Friday afternoon. Several students, eager to tackle their assignments, enter the computer lab and sit down at various computer stations. BEARD occupies a computer, busily typing an inquiry project, a euphemism for a research paper. There is a constant sound of clicking keyboards. RANDON STUDENT enters the lab and takes a seat next to BEARD at a computer. RANDOM STUDENT is a tall, clean-shaven male wearing a collared Polo shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes.)

RANDON STUDENT: What’s up, Beard?
BEARD: (Guardedly.) Hey.
RANDOM STUDENT: I see you around campus all the time.
BEARD: Oh.

I wish people at BYU wouldn’t reduce my identity to my facial hair. There’s so much more to me. Like my bald head.

Joshisms

Concurring with Mommy: “Oh, yeah.”

“Daddy. Doing?” Inquiring what on earth his father is making for dinner.

Running around the house, dripping and exposed, after his bath, “Naked bum! Naked bum!”

Joshua: Touch, tomatoes?
Daddy: No.
Joshua: Touch, cheese?
Mommy: No, Josh.
Joshua: Touch, beans?
Daddy: Josh, we don’t touch the food on the table we don’t intend to eat.
Joshua: Touch, beans, please?

“Oh, oh, oh. Alligator coming,” as the reptilian taco sneaks into his mouth.

“Poke Jesus' eyes.”

“My do it!” anytime Mommy or Daddy benevolently offer their help.

Sipping Dr. Pepper for the first time, smiling widely, “Yummy. More.”

Jackson Gregory

We’re expecting again. We plan on naming him Jackson Gregory. We would rather just call him Jack but it doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue when coupled with Gregory, my father-in-law’s first name. Jack Gregory sounds too terse. So we’re adding the son to create resonance. Naming a child is tough; names seem to catch the essence of character, some suppose. I think we’ve all heard someone say, “Well, that makes sense; you look like a….” Whatever that means. What does a Blake look like, anyway? I wish I had the courage to name my children something creative and original, but I don’t (or maybe I know my wife won’t let me and it’s not a battle I’m willing to fight). Sometimes I feel bad for the children whose parents had such courage. I don’t think my children’s identity is an appropriate medium for my creativity; if they want to be eccentric, that’s their prerogative. So I'll stick with tradition for my kid’s sake.

Me and My companion

During my first zone conference in the Scotland, Edinburgh Mission, I sat in a pew at the Dundee chapel listening to my fellow missionaries offer their testimonies. There was something odd about the meeting, however: several missionaries, in mid-story, interrupted their narratives to correct their grammar. It was always the same mistake, too: “Me and my companion were tracking when—oh...uhh...sorry, President Vriens—My companion and I were tracting when….” Realizing their minor grammatical blunder, invariably the missionaries would publicly correct themselves while sheepishly addressing President Vriens. Sitting in my pew, I thought perhaps my mission president had a pronoun case agreement complex—everyone is entitled to at least one grammatical pet peeve, right?—and I made a mental note to never make this mistake in his presence. After the meeting I had an interview with President Vriens. Forgetting my pronoun promise, however, I slipped up; I said, me and my companion.

With his piercing voice, powerful and terrifying, President Vriens interrupted me midsentence: “Elder Bockholt, we never say, ‘Me and my companion.’ We say, ‘My companion and I.’” I knew then why the other missionaries corrected themselves. But why was he emphasizing the subject before the conjunction and not the misemployed pronoun? He went on, “If you put yourself before your companion, it means you’re selfish, Elder Bockholt.” So his grammar rant had nothing to do with pronoun agreement and everything to do with morality. And stop calling me Elder Bockholt, I thought. “You need to learn to put others first. Put your companion before yourself. Put your investigators before yourself. Put the Lord before yourself, Elder Bockholt. Go on, Elder Bockholt, ‘My companion and I—.’”

My encounter with President Vriens forced me to acknowledge the existence of “linguistic etiquette.” I was forced to admit, alongside grammarian Patrick Hartwell, that deviating from Proper English may have social consequences—if a person breaks the rules of Proper English he or she may be thought uneducated, unworthy, and, in my case, possibly immoral (109). Some people sincerely believe that grammatical correctness provides a legitimate measure of a person’s character. If I had said, “My companion and I spent six hours helping an elderly woman address her neglected garden,” my mission president would have believed I was a selfless, moral person. However, if I had told him, “Me and my companion spent six hours helping an elderly woman address her neglected garden,” he would have thought of me as self-interested and debased. But why? The only difference is that the first report was grammatically correct and the latter incorrect. Is grammar usage an outward manifestation of internal morality? I don’t think so—but some do. In 1757 Thomas Sheridan wrote, “A revival of the art of speaking, and the study of our language, might contribute, in a great measure, to the cure of the evils of immorality, ignorance and false taste” (qtd. in Nunan 270). Evidently, Sheridan and President Vriens would agree that my saying of my companion and I would prescriptively cure my evil dispositions. Grammar: the savior of world. Maybe that’s what John meant when he said, “In the beginning was the Word,… and the Word was God” (St. John 1.1).

What’s so wrong with saying, Me and my companion were tracting? For starters, me is an objective case pronoun of the speaker—meaning it is the receiver (object) of the action. But me isn’t receiving the tracking; me is doing the tracting. Me (alongside his or her companion, of course) is the subject of the sentence, not the object. For the sentence to be correct, I—the subject case pronoun of the speaker—must replace me. The sentence should read: I and my companion were tracting. But President Vriens would still not be satisfied with this sentence because he, like Rebecca Elliott, author of an easy-to-understand grammar book, believes “it is polite to put yourself second” (20). I and my companion were tracting is correct but not polite. My companion and I is considered both correct and polite.

Maybe, however, if correctness and politeness weren’t so intertwined, people would be more inclined to select the correct pronoun for every situation. With conjoined subjects (two subjects with and or or in the middle) some people, even highly educated people, use object forms. For instance, the sentence, Mom gave the cookie to Jim and I, is incorrect because the speaker is using the subject case personal pronoun when the speaker is the object of the sentence. If the speaker wasn’t so concerned about putting others first, he or she probably would have said, Mom gave the cookie to me and Jim, which is grammatically correct but impolite (remember your English teacher telling you that if you dropped the other person, you’ll “know” which pronoun to use; the same principle applies when you put yourself first). But the speaker has done what most of us have done: internalized the notion that it is always better to use subject pronouns—probably because our English teachers, or mission presidents, have corrected us a thousand times whenever we said, me and Jim. I can hear them now: "It's Jim and I!" For fear looking intelligently inferior, or morally decadent, we do what Barbra Birch calls “hypercorrect” our grammar; we “misapply a usage rule to instances it should not cover” (144). Maybe, if we were more selfish, hypercorrection wouldn’t concern you and I. Or maybe we shouldn’t equate grammar with morality. But I and my mission president never saw eye to eye.


Birch, Barbra. Learning and teaching English Grammar, K-12. Columbus: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall, 2005. Print.

Elliot, Rebecca. Painless Grammar. New York: Barron’s, 1997. Print.

Hartwell, Patrick. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar.” College English Feb. 1985: 105-27. Print.

Nunan, Susan. “Forgiving Ourselves and Forging Ahead: Teaching Grammar in a New Millennium.” English Journal Mar. 2005: 70-5. Print.

Regret

Last week I gave a talk in church about prioritizing. I first established my credibility on the subject by letting everyone know that I had no idea what I was talking about. I referred to last summer when I was so preoccupied with school that I completely neglected my family. One morning I looked in my planner to find a note written in my to-do list by Allison: “Spend time with your wife.” I juxtaposed that story with the time when I was reading for one of my classes when my son, Joshua, anxious to play with his daddy, ran into my arms and sat between my book and me. We laughed and we giggled, we tickled and we played. I was a father and he my son. Preparing my talk allowed me to reflect about what is most important in my life.

But this week I failed to live up to my ideals—I found myself a hypocrite. Wednesday morning came too soon, too abrupt: my son, gagging in his own vomit, woke my wife and me up at 2:00am. In the comfort of my bed, I pretended everything was fine while I listened to my son, tired and confused, as he cried in pain between episodes of violent heaving while my wife soothed his tiny body and cleaned the mess. I slept. Or I tried to, at least. I convinced myself, I have so much to do—I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for my sick son? Later, I got up to find Joshua burrowed in the caring arms of his mother as they slept peacefully on the couch, an acidic tang hanging in the air. I should have helped. It’s funny, what you regret. I regret not holding my son’s contorting body, his face buried in the toilet, his stomach wringing out his insides like a dirty wet rag.

I should have been there.

For Me, Writing Is....

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog. One of my professors told me that because I’m going to be an English teacher, I need to make a habit of writing. HA! And what have I been doing with the last four years of my life? Certainly not writing. However, I understand her point: I need to make a habit of writing for writing’s sake, not because an assignment compels me to.

I wrote this next piece for one of my classes. I thought I would share it. My class was asked to write about writing, make a collage about writing, and then rewrite the first prompt after establishing a metaphor for writing (did you follow that?). Anyway, despite its unorthodoxy, here is my final product:

For me, sometimes writing is like going to the toilet. Feeling the pressure build up inside me, I walk into the bathroom, unbuckle my pants, and assemble myself on the toilet. After fifteen minutes of pushing and grunting, however, I have nothing to show for my effort. Frustrated—and still not relieved—I stand up, pull up my britches, and, despite the lack of a deposit, flush the toilet. After about an hour or so, when I feel like success is attainable, I head back to the bathroom and try again: ten minutes of struggle bring only two small plops of water. I need help. I open the medicine cabinet, pull out the white plastic bottle with the purple lid, and toss back two capsules of Metamucil. “That’ll do the trick,” I think. I few hours later, with a groan of relief, I flush the toilet; my system is free from all that has been building up inside of me. Writing isn’t much different. I sit in front of a blank computer screen while thoughts and ideas overload my system—but I can’t seem to get them out. I type a few lines, read them, and then delete them. The abstract notions in my mind seem to lose their profundity as they stare back at me from the screen. Frustrated with my wanting prose and absence of progress, I abandon my work. I make another attempt later in the day but with little success. Finally I consult my muse—usually the threat of an encroaching deadline—for motivation. It seems to help because I can finally write. When I finish I’m content to be relieved, but there’s one reality I can’t avoid: my writing is shit.

From Asses to Angels: Mule Imagery in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is richly dense in meaning and purpose using poetic language and folkloric imagery to convey its messages. One dominating motif in the first half of the novel is that of the mule. Four times it appears: Nanny explains that “ de nigger woman is de mule uh de world;” Logan buys a second mule so Janie can help with the plowing; Matt Bonner’s overworked and underfed mule runs away and becomes the butt of the town joke; and the same, but newly emancipated, mule is dragged out after its death for a ceremonial funeral. At last, Huston’s freed and heaven-bound mule inverts the terms of accepted hierarchies, namely white over black, and male over female, liberating, if but momentarily, black women from these unquestioned social paradigms.

Historically, Western ideas of hierarchy have fostered racism by placing black people below white people simply because blacks supposedly lack the human ability to reason. For example, Hume and Kant proposed that blacks, because of their significantly lower intellectual abilities, were "naturally inferior" to whites and cited the lack of “arts” and “sciences” among blacks as evidence for their atrocious claim. Africans and African Americans have subsequently been put to the plows like mules. However, subordinate to their male counterparts, black women are one rung lower on the social ladder. Nanny explains: “So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De niggerwoman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.”

Huston’s choice of animal to represent the oppression of black women is significant considering the mules’ conception and connotation. The mule is of mixed heritage: a male donkey and a female horse. Donkeys have aptly been characterized as stubborn, foolish and disagreeable, while horses are known for their strength, intelligence, and sociability. The description of mules reveals a striking parallel to Janie Crawford. Like a mule, she is the product mixed inheritance; Nanny, her grandmother was raped by her white slave owner and later, Leafy, her mother, was raped by her school teacher. Both the slave owner and the school teacher are the untamed jackasses in the mule lineage while the black women are the beautiful mares whose heritage is tainted from the rapes.

It is in this context, then, that makes it easy for the reader to understand why Janie feels empathy for Matt Bonner’s mule when some of the townsmen decide to torment the animal. After seeing Janie’s disapproval of the mule’s mistreatment, in an act that is deemed as honorable as Lincoln’s liberation of the slaves, Jody buys the mule for five dollars so the “poor brute beast” can rest. The town’s comparison of black slaves to the mule further demonstrates that even black people have accepted the social paradigm of white above black. Furthermore, Janie’s empathy for the animal is indicative of the binary symbolism of the animal. She feels for the mule not only because she identifies with the mule as a member of the black race, but, more specifically, she identifies with the mule because she is the lowest of the low—she is a black woman.

However, the imagery of the white man driving the black, female mule “tuh death” is reversed when the recently-freed mule dies and ascends to “mule-heaven.” The entire town, everyone except Janie that is, gathers just outside of the community to give their good-humored respect to the deceased animal. In true preacher fashion, Sam Watson employs the belly of the beast as a pulpit and speaks of the joys of “mule-heaven.” Among miles of corn, cool water, and a river of molasses, “Up there, mule-angels would have people to ride on.” The image of mules riding on the backs of men suggests a new hierarchy for Hurston, a new hierarchy that challenges the old, a new hierarchy with black women at the top.

Go Up, Thou Bald Head

Last night, May 15, 2010, was perhaps the most barren night of my life. It started when I woke up late and I didn’t have time to shave both my face and my head before church. I shaved just my face. I went the day thinking I looked devilishly dashing—like Handsome Rob in The Italian Job—but, after taking a closer look, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not my lot to be handsome like Rob; it’s my lot to be bald like Elisha and have children mock me. Just last Wednesday, my sweet little cousin put a coon-skinned hat on my head and laughed: “Now you have hair!” That started all the other kids laughing. Dear God: where were the hungry she bears(1) when I needed them? But this isn’t about my bad day Wednesday; this is about my bad night last night. I went to get ready for bed and I looked in the mirror. I craned my neck to view the back of my skull but to no avail. I needed two mirrors. I went into the bedroom and pulled the dressing mirror off the wall for a better look. But it wasn’t any better. Instead of shining with beautiful golden-brown locks, my head shined translucent like butter-fried shrimp. For nearly an hour, I tried to get a better angle. But the more I looked the less I saw. In my mourning, I say to my departed friends: you are numbered among God and you are numbered among me. In the dawn of the Millennium, you and I will meet again to be reunited for eternity. Until that marvelous morning: go your way unto all the earth, from “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return(2)”.

1 2 Kings 2:23-25
2 Genesis 3:19

Grades

My elephant paper pulled my grade up from a B+ to an A-. Sweet.

God in Literature

I really enjoyed writing this paper. It was only for a 200 level course so I didn't support the premise of my argument with scholarly research; it wasn't required. However, I'm thinking about delving into the research and developing my paper further so I can submit it to a religious conference here on campus.


Redemption from Nihilism: Christian Imagery in Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”

“God is dead…. And we have killed him.” Nietzsche’s death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any cosmic order since they no longer recognize it. When society has given up the Christian faith, Nietzsche claims, society pulls the right to Christian morality out from under its feet. The death of God and the abandonment of Christian morals run rampant in modern literature: Virginia Woolf writes that her “Jew[ish husband] has more religion in one toe nail—more human love, in one hair” than all of Christianity combined; Joseph Conrad describes “The horror! The horror!” of a chaotic and bloody world in Heart of Darkness; and James Joyce depicts an artist as a prophet as he gradually grows into artistic self-consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Simply put: modern literature has written God out of the text and subsequently out of our lives. However, despite the pending nihilism of the 20th Century, God is not dead. George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” illustrates clearly how common motifs in modern writing: violence, chaos, and oppression, can transcend a morally-devoid world and offer peace, order, and redemption. In what could easily be read as a negation of the more meaningful aspects of life, “Shooting an Elephant,” triumphantly overcomes its inherent nihilism by presenting a Christology that redeems Christianity in literature in an ever-growing pessimistic world.

Traditionally, “Shooting an Elephant” reads as a short story depicting the evils of imperialism: the mad elephant symbolizing the powerful British Empire that raids and crushes the black Dravidian coolie, a symbol of the downtrodden Burmese. If the symbolism is inverted, however, which a closer reading of the text justifies, the elephant, instead of representing an oppressive, tyrannical force, becomes a liberating Christ figure. When the narrator sees the “sea of yellow faces” fixated on him and feels “their two thousand wills pressing [him] forward,” he understands that, despite his reluctance, he will “have to shoot the elephant.” This scene is reminiscent of Jesus’ trail and condemnation in the New Testament when Pilate, the reluctant Roman authority, does not want to execute Jesus.

According to the canonical Christian Gospels, Pilate presides at the trial of Jesus and, despite stating that he personally finds him not guilty of a crime meriting death, hands him over to crucifixion. The Sanhedrin, whom find him guilty of blasphemy under Mosaic law (which would never warrant capital punishment under Roman law), take Jesus before Pilate and accuse him of trumped-up charges: sedition against Caesar for opposing taxes and calling himself a king. Concerned more with the latter accusation, Pilate’s main question to Jesus is whether he considers himself the King of the Jews—thus rendering him a political threat to Rome. Pilate, nonetheless, finds him harmless. The crowd, however, want him executed. Coached by the Pharisees and Sadducees, they cry out, “Crucify him” (Mark 15. 13). Jewish leaders then explain to Pilate that Jesus presents a threat to Roman occupation through his claim to the throne of King David. Left without options, Pilate washes his hands before the crowd and unwillingly condemns Jesus to death, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; you will see" (Matt. 27.24).

Likewise, in Orwell’s short fiction, the narrator faces the trial and execution of a criminal whose allegations carry a political threat. Like Jesus, who is passed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the offending elephant is passed between the jurisdictions of its “mahout” it escapes, to the Burmans who are powerless to stop it, then finally to the British police who ultimately phone the narrator to take care of the matter. The British police parallel the Roman Empire while the narrator, the legal representative of England, parallels Pilate, the legal representative of Rome. While it is impossible for an elephant to hold any political office, except perhaps in an animal farm, the elephant is still a legal threat to the British. The narrator states that had he not shot the elephant, “[his] whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.” Walking away from the elephant suggests to the Burmans that for all their show and display of authority, the British are essentially powerless. Furthermore, in Eastern culture, elephants are loved and revered as symbols of royalty and religious divinity. Christ is both royal and divine. Like Jesus is to Pilate, the elephant is a king posing political danger to the narrator.

Despite its enormous size and strength, not to mention the physical harm it’s capable of, the protagonist knows with perfect certainty that he “ought not to shoot [the elephant].” He describes the elephant as “harmless,” walking around with a “preoccupied grandmotherly air.” The narrator determines that the best course of action is to watch the animal for a while to ensure it does not again turn savage, and then go home. However, reminiscent of the hostile crowd shouting “crucify him” in Pilate’s courtyard, the “sea of yellow faces” behind him is “shouting excitedly... shoot the elephant.” Realizing his options are exhausted, he decides to carry out their will. Figuratively washing his hands of what he describes as a “murder,” the narrator justifies his actions given that the elephant has in fact killed a coolie, putting him “legally in the right and [giving him] a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant.”

The most vivid metaphor of Christian divinity is the execution of the elephant. The narrator testifies, “I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim.... The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights.... I aimed [and] pulled the trigger.” The image of a cross superimposed on the elephant evokes the image of Christ crucified. Once at Golgotha, Jesus is stripped and nailed to the beam and hung between two convicted thieves. Pilate orders Roman soldiers to affix a sign above his head stating: King of the Jews—an ironic twist to his accusations. According to Mark's Gospel, he endures the torment for some six hours, until he “gives up the ghost” at the ninth hour (Mark 15.27). Eventually, a soldier pierces Jesus’ side with a spear to be certain of his death. Analogously, the narrator “pours shot after shot” into the animal with his elephant rifle. Although the bullets cause a violent and “mysterious, terrible change” upon the elephant’s countenance, “they seem to make no impression.” The elephant, like the God of the Christian faith, seems to have power over life and death, “giving up [his] ghost” according to his own will. Following his death, in true sacramental fashion, the Burmans congregate over the corpse of the animal and “strip his body almost to the bones” for meat. Jesus said unto his disciples, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6.53-54). In this sense then, the elephant becomes a Christ figure providing salvation through the offering of his life and the endowment of his flesh—thus, redeeming and “raising” modern literature from its characteristic nihilism and providing a foundation for Christian morality in an ever increasing Godless world.