We’re continuing our two-week discussion focusing intently analyzing some characters (Character Analysis), and looking at our first sample paper (Sample Paper I), which is attached here. Let’s go!
1.Character Analysis
As we are moving through Ghettoside and Twilight preparing to write from our texts for our future papers, it might be helpful to think about who your “favorite” character (from either text) is and why. “Favorite” might not mean the one you would like to bring home to meet the folks but can mean the one who has the greatest impact, the one you remember after you’ve gone on to new chapters. Who would you most like to see performed if the text were made into a film or series? Who struck you at the deepest level, perhaps for their honesty, their hypocrisy, their suffering or lack thereof? What about this character, their words, actions or circumstance, made you remember them? Share that with us here.
Remember that the goal here is to think critically and that means digging beneath the surface for what is not obvious. We aren’t cataloging every thought about a character. We are inferring a thesis about that character’s character (and that thesis may prove useful to us in our later papers). You can do it!
2.The Monster continues
This conversation about Ghettoside is continued from last week. Here’s last week’s prompt:
If the question is: why are black-on-black murders so prevalent? Or, why are homicide cases with black victims so often unsolved? Leovy has one answer, “Where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent injury and death, homicide becomes endemic.” It’s circular. The cases aren’t solved (“the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously”) and so, there are more murders to solve (“homicide becomes endemic”). In other words, much as she discusses, in the absence of a reliable justice system in any community, shadow justice prevails.
What do you think about Leovy’s thesis? How does this impact your understanding of L.A.’s segregation? How does it relate to the research from Week Three about the violent episodes in L.A.’s history?
Be sure to specifically reference Ghettoside (at least from the first half of the text) in your response.
Some new thoughts to aid this week’s discussion: might I suggest a Venn Diagram (math majors, help me out)? The diagram I see has overlapping shadow justice systems, starting with the one that is Leovy’s focus, adding the one that (we can argue) allows for a great deal of police violence with no official ramification, which is to say, the police are their own form of shadow justice, and adding the “vigilante” justice group Anonymous and groups like them. Anyone not familiar with Anonymous can Google it easily though Anonymous’ outrage with regard to the Sandra Bland case is particularly relevant to my Venn Diagram idea and to our class, here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0F-MhNLyDo
