Moretti and Graphs

Franco Moretti proposes a new way of studying literature. Instead analyzing specific books and relating them to their time period through personal interpretation, Moretti compiles together graphs from historical facts and data on novels. By analyzing these graphs he is able to see certain patterns and trends literary periods take and speculate on why they happened. This method of analyzing literature would provide less room for bias since it involves analyzing data rather than giving personal opinions about a novel. Graphs make it easier to see how literature has evolved over the years and how it is strongly related to what is going on in society. However this method of analyzing literature is also very broad and generalized. The graphs are easy to look at but many exceptions are looked over.

If data on the literacy rates from the early 1700s to the late 1800s were compiled into a graph, it could be compared to the rise of the novel graph and help predict whether the amount of books published was affected by how many people could read. This can go a step further by splitting the literacy rates to literacy rates of men and women. We can then compare this graph with the gender breakdown new novels graph and see if the rise of novels written by women corresponds to periods where women literacy was higher. We can place inventions and discoveries in science on a graph to see which time period sparked the rise of the genre science fiction.

We can place SSTLS in this scheme of looking at literature by placing its value on literature as a whole. Instead of analyzing the text we can look at where it stands on the different graphs Moretti has created. We can look at what genre it falls under and with what other genres it erupted with to see what generation of readers might be interested in it, or we can look at what genre came before it and speculate why that genre was replaced by SSTLS’s.

M. Butterfly

M. Butterfly puts a twist on the expected gender roles of our current society. Madame Butterfly made a very critical point on Western glorification of not only a male hero, but a Caucasian male hero in a story. This play puts emphasis on why it is acceptable for Asian women to commit suicide for a Caucasian man who does not deserve her love; however, there is no sympathy for a story with a Caucasian woman committing suicide for her Asian male lover. This is because Westerners view themselves as dominant over Asian countries. An Asian woman who slaves herself for a white man makes a romantic story only because the white man wins, but this time, David Henry Hwang switches the roles and places the white man as Madame Butterfly almost as a way of humiliating Westerners.

Hwang made Madame Butterfly a man as a way to show how far gender roles are created by a dominant male society. Madame Butterfly was able to seduce Gallimard so well because he was a man, and men are the ones who really know how woman should act. Madame Butterfly, as a man, used his knowledge of what men want to get Gallimard to fall in love with him. This shows that men give a specific framework for how woman are expected to act.

When Gallimard kills himself at the end, we are not moved to tears by a tragic love story, rather I felt the tone of humiliation towards the Western people. It felt as if Hwang is saying to the Westerners, it is the flaws of your Western expectations of woman and Asian cultures that this was possible. This hurts the pride of Westerners because this time, the Asian woman was able to slave a white man and use deception to access political information. This leads to Hwang’s main point that Westerners should not underestimate other cultures, nor should woman be subject to being an obedient house wife.

This is a super sad true love story

One of many reasons why many relationships do not work out is because people are ridiculously self-conscious about how other people view them. This is the reason why Gary Shteyngart’s protagonists Leonard Abramov and Eunice Park in his novel Super Sad True Love Story are so insecure. Lenny, Eunice, and their whole dystopian world are so self absorbed and superficial that they have no empathy towards each other resulting in unhealthy relationships.

Shteyngart believes our world will become so shallow, there will be a program called RateMe Plus where everyone with an apparat can FAC each other. Everything is based on first impressions. When Lenny’s friends Noah and Vishnu first teach Lenny how to use this application it gives him numerical readings on how interested he is in her based on his already set profile (90). At first it was hard to see this ever coming true until I thought of all those online dating services that have recently become popular and use logarithms for capability. We are already flipping through profiles and rooting out who could be a possible match for us; it will not be long until we start ranking everyone’s “hotness” in public. This limits us on developing possible relationships because no one looks deeper than what is on the surface of the people around them.

Eunice is extremely insecure about herself even in the presence of Lenny, who according to society is far below her league. She dreads meeting Lenny’s Media friends because she thinks they are too smart for her and that Lenny “thinks [she’s] and idiot behind [her] back” when Lenny loves showing her off because he thinks she’s too good for him (144). One partner always feels that they are not good enough for the other because they are so full of themselves they cannot see how the other really feels. The reason they feel alone all the time is because they are afraid of losing each other and are constantly trying to better themselves in order to stay in a relationship.

Another superficial relationship is Eunice’s friend Precious Pony and her unfaithful boyfriend Gopher. She catches him cheating on her and uses the most immature way of retaliating. She remarks that sending him videos of her also cheating on him is “the only way he’s ever going to respect me” (147). This shows that their relationship is all about sex and there is no longer any warmth between two people who supposedly love each other.