new Lenses for books

After learning about the different lenses that Great Gatsby had, I thought that they were very interesting and present refreshing analysis on a very symbolic book. Each different lens has a different view and sometimes they can contradict each other because each lens is focused entirely on that single viewpoint. Coming up with different lenses can be quite hard because the author cannot shift focus from one lens to another. Everything needs to be interpreted in a certain way. I tried to come up with some different lenses to read the Song of Soloman or MAUS that can give new interpretations of the symbols in those books.

For the Song of Soloman, I came up with 2 lenses that can be used to analyze the story. There could be a feminist way to view the story and also a civil rights way to view the story. The feminist way is pretty obvious. Every woman in the book is portrayed as having defects in either their appearance or personality. Ruth finds pleasure in breastfeeding her 4 years old son and she is constantly being controlled by Macon Dead (Milkman's father). Pilate does not have a belly button; her name symbolizes the killer of Christ, and she is a bootlegger and extremely poor. By using the feminist way of viewing the book, we can see by those depictions of women that Morrison is presenting the typical social status of women either poor or controlled by others. Another way that the story can be interpreted is the civil rights way. There are many instances in the book where the African Americans stereotype themselves and accept the social norms. When Macon bought the beach house in the white community, his first daughter said that black people don't like water. This shows that African Americans at the time are starting to have internalized racism. Another part when the people in the barbershop were talking about the killing of a black man, some people even joked about his death and did not pay much attention to that event. This viewpoint shows that Morrison wants people to go against the stereotypes instead of accepting them and allowing their own race to be humiliated. 

For MAUS, I thought it would be very interesting if I used a Marxist/Communist way to view the book because WW2 was deeply connected to the rise of the Soviet Union. In the book, the jews suffered from German attacks and imprisonments in concentration camps, and they were not saved until later by the Allies. If the reader of this book was a Communist, we would have blamed the democratic governments for this delayed attack on Germany. A Communist would have said that if there weren't different parties controlling the government, this tragedy could have been solved much earlier because there would not be any debate over whether a nation should join the war or not. 

Coming up with different lenses was really interesting. I had to search through the books to find evidence that can support a viewpoint. Even if those viewpoints do not have the same theme as the story overall, new information can be learned about the symbols that the author added into the book.