Assignment Four: The Respectful Prostitute by Jean-Paul Sartre

     The respectful prostitute is set in a 1930’s small town in the American South.  Its themes include lack of freedom and systematic racism and sexism.  Before the play began, Lizzie witnessed four drunk men attempt to throw two African Americans from a train.  When they defended themselves one of the attackers, Thomas, pulled a gun and killed one of the men.  The other victim managed to escape but was being perused because the men claimed that he had raped Lizzie and they were merely defending her.  These men held high esteem in town and were either related to or friends with every man of power presented in the play.  In Scene One police make their way into Lizzie’s apartment with no warrant. The prostitute promises to remain truthful as they attempt to get her to sign their false statement.  In the last part of this scene they bring in the uncle of the murderer, the Senator, to pressure her more.  He first pretends that he understands her and will leave her be, but he is truly manipulative.  He pumps her with patriotic images of Uncle Sam and Thomas’ sad white haired mother. She finds herself sympathetic to the image of this woman and hopes to seek her approval by freeing her son.

THE SENATOR: Look at me, Lizzie. Do you have confidence in me?
LIZZIE: Yes, Senator.
THE SENATOR: Do you believe that I would urge you to do any-thing wrong?
LIZZIE: No, Senator.
THE SENATOR: Then I urge you to sign. Here is my pen.
LIZZIE: You think she'll be pleased with me?
THE SENATOR: Who?
LIZZIE: Your sister.
THE SENATOR: She will love you, from a distance, as her very own child.
LIZZIE: Perhaps she'll send me some flowers?
THE SENATOR: Very likely.
LIZZIE: Or her picture with an inscription.
THE SENATOR: It's quite possible.
LIZZIE: I'd hang it on the wall. [A pause. She walks up and down, much agitated.] What a mess! [Coming up to THE SENATOR again] What will you do to the nigger if I sign?
THE SENATOR: To the nigger? Pooh! [He takes her by the shoulders.] If you sign, the whole town will adopt you. The whole town. All the mothers in it. 
LIZZIE: But — 
THE SENATOR: Do you suppose that a whole town could be mistaken? A whole town, with its ministers and its priests, its doctors, its lawyers, its artists, its mayor and his aides, with all its charities? Do you think that could happen? 
LIZZIE: No, no, no. 
THE SENATOR. Give me your hand. [He forces her to sign.] So now it's done. I thank you in the name of my sister and my nephew, in the name of the seventeen thousand white in-habitants of our town, in the name of the American people, whom I represent in these parts. Give me your forehead, my child. [He kisses her on the forehead.] Come along, boys. [To LIZZE] I shall see you later in the evening; we still have something to talk about. [He goes out.] 
LIZZIE: Good-by. [They all go out. She stands there overwhelmed, then rushes to the door.] Senator! Senator! I don't want to sign! Tear up the paper! Senator! [She comes back to the front of the stage and mechanically takes hold of the vacuum cleaner.] Uncle Sam! [She turns on the sweeper.] Something tells me I've been had—but good! [She pushes the vacuum cleaner furiously.] 

CURTAIN

     This scene shows how deeply racism is ingrained into this society.  With a “fifty million Elvis fans can’t be wrong” stance, The Senator justifies the community’s blood lust and brushes off the innocent man’s fate. The Senator is able to make Lizzie doubt her own witness testimony by saying more people speculate that something else happened.  He manipulates her thoughts and her actions to benefit his family based on bigoted assumptions of superiority over her as a female and the victims on the train.  After she is ambushed and taken advantage of, her freedom signed away by her guided hand she’s left in shock.  She renounces the statement to deaf ears.  She has been accosted by several men without warning and now feels powerless over her own actions.  Turning to her vacuum cleaner after this traumatic experience plays on the theme of systematic sexism.  In this time women were to stay in the home, to cook and clean.  That is exactly were Lizzie finds comfort, in doing what those men would have told her to if they weren’t concerned with oppressing someone else.


     This is the second play I have read by Sartre, the first being No Exit but I couldn't write about No Exit 'cause Merrick just dissed it in his blog post.

Entry Four: Siddhartha

"Listen, Kamala, when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom of the water. It is the same when Siddhartha has an aim, a goal.  Siddhartha does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he goes through the affairs of the world like the stone through the water, without doing anything, without bestirring himself; he is drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his mind which opposes his goal. That is what Siddhartha learned from the samanas... Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast."

Kamala listened to him.  She loved his voice, she loved the look in his eyes. 

Page fifty

I really like this metaphor of conducting ones self as a stone in water.  Siddhartha is very goal driven. When his father first denied him permission to join the samanas he stood still, as night came and went, until his father complied.  Doing nothing leads him to his goal because he doesn't even imagine failure could occur. Suddenly his goal is to learn about love from Kamala.  She demands he acquires fancy clothes and a purse full of cash before he can be her friend so thats what he is setting out to do next. He will use his iron will to become a successful merchant and I'm scared.

Entry Three: Siddhartha

     "Truly, nothing in the world has occupied my thoughts as much as the Self, this riddle, that I live, that I am one and am separated and different from everybody else, that I am Siddhartha; and about nothing in the world do I know less than about myself, about Siddhartha.

     "The thinker, slowly going on his way, suddenly stood still, gripped by thought, and another thought immediately arose from this one.  It was: The reason why I did not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing-I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself...a smile crept over his face, and a strong feeling of awakening from a long dream spread right through his being"

Page 31

My question from the last entry was answered within a few pages today.  I was having trouble understanding how Siddhartha could accept himself as a gift from the Buddha when he practiced losing his Self for years to attain enlightenment.  Siddhartha now sees his initial path was one based on fear but does not curse the time he spent traveling it.  He is wise and acceptes that there is no fast way to enlightenment.  Once again he feels awakened as he sets off on a new journey with a completely different plan to become his own instrument in discovery.

Entry Two: Siddhartha

"The Buddha has robbed me, thought Siddhartha.  He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value.  He has robbed me of my friend, who believed in me and who now believes in him; he was my shadow and is now Gotama's shadow.  But he has given to me Siddhartha, myself"

Page 29

In this chapter Siddhartha gathers with many followers to hear the Buddha speak.  As he listens to  Gotama's teachings he realizes he must take his own path to enlightenment, no one can teach him the way.  He feels as if he is woken up when he realizes this and decides to leave his friend with the Buddha.  I find it slightly confusing that he has been trying to lose his Self for all this time but he now sees it as a gift given to him.

Entry One: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Passage from the Text:

Siddhartha said: "...What I have so far learned from the Samanas, I could have learned more quickly and easily in every inn in a prostitute's quarter, amongst the carriers and dice players."...Siddhartha said softly, as if to himself: "What is mediation? What is abandonment of the body? What is fasting? What is the holding of the breath? It is a flight from Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life. The driver of the oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or cocoanut milk in the inn. He then no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences temporary escape."

Page 13

Comments:
Siddhartha travels with the Samanas, or wondering monks, for three years.  He practices meditation in an attempt to kill his senses,  to loose his Self, to achieve enlightenment. In this thoughtful conversation he considers leaving the monks in order to find his own path. He has found the self-denial he pledges to be a cycle that always leads back to its beginning.  He makes the comparison between meditation and the drinking of rice wine to show that both acts are only temporary solutions.  Siddhartha has left his life at home in an attempt to escape a cycle only to find himself going in circles once more. This feeling of a lack of control in the direction of ones life is also a characteristic of someone who would use alcohol in an attempt to escape life's predicaments.

Hey There

Hey there, It's Dana Ruffalo and I'm gonna spew some AP Summer reading all over your comuter screen.