TOW #7: Let Them Eat Crack by Banksy

The unknown British street artist who goes by the pseudonym Banksy has created myriads of subversive graffiti that contains his commentary on the political and social concerns of the world. In an attempt to expose the crude reality of the corruption and injustice that is internationally prevalent, Banksy has displayed his street art in publicly visible surfaces, including the 2008 “Let Them Eat Crack” graffiti featured on a building in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. Many of his works are exhibited in largely populated areas in order to bring light to the issues towards an audience that may know about the dilemmas but chooses to turn a blind eye. His explicit depiction and openness towards the difficulties speaks volumes about his morale and values.

            This graffito depicts a rat clothed in a stereotypical Wall Street businessmen attire, paws red with what seems like blood. The rat turns back to observe what he wrote, which reads in the same red liquid, “LET THEM EAT CRACK.” This phrase is a play-off of the quote Marie Antoinette is best known for, “Let them eat cake.” The background behind Antoinette’s saying represents the ignorance of the upper class on the hardships and poverty that peasants face when Marie demanded the peasants to eat brioche, “cake,” when she learned that they had no bread to eat. By creating a parody of her quote on his street art, Banksy was able to effectively deliver the corruption and amoral attitude of Wall Street and their constant hunger for money and power.

            The controversies that relate back to Banksy’s street work grasped my attention, encouraging my desire to analyze his graffiti. Many of his drawings invoke public outrage, but I believe that this piece was widely accepted by many in the public as the majority of the American population are under the 1% regarding financial stability. 

TOW #6: Bop by Langston Hughes

            Well known for his African American themes that are highly prevalent in his works, Langston Hughes is an American poet, novelist, and playwright that has made significant contributions to the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. One of his early pieces, Bop, is a dialectic exchange between two characters who discuss the emotional and cultural significance of bop music. This short essay delves deep into the racial contrast on how the traditionally African-American music is delivered depending on the singer’s skin tone. This is due to the difference in experiences that blacks and whites have encountered based on the prejudice behind their races. The crucial argument that Simple, the narrator’s teacher, makes is that be-bop traces back to the abuse and discrimination that African Americans had faced and therefore is more than just nonsense syllables.

Mentions Dizzy Gillespie, a famous jazz trumpeter

            Hughes’ intention to highlight the racial issues in the American culture is successfully delivered to the public who is predominantly unaware of the struggles behind black discrimination through the direct conversation between the two characters, Simple and the narrator. When the narrator deplores Simple for his taste in “nonsense music,” Simple explains that white folks do not understand how to successfully perform be-bop due to their inexperience of the struggles that black people endeavored. Simple continues to state that “White folks do not get their heads beat just for being white. But me—a cop is liable to grab me almost any time and beat my head—just for being colored" (Hughes, 191). This portion is major in his rationale for the difference in the meaning of be-bop between colored people and white people. The contrast in treatment based on race reinforces the notion that white people are unable to fully comprehend bop music because they haven’t experienced the same hardship as African Americans.

            The author sheds light onto the injustice the blacks faced through the perspective of Simple to build credibility without having the audience question the character’s connection to the African-American identity. In a time period where blacks were deemed inferior in comparison to whites, Hughes’ revolutionary essay greatly influenced the perception of minorities in the Harlem Renaissance. 

TOW #5: The Figure a Poem Makes by Robert Frost

                        Written in 1939, The Figure a Poem Makes exemplifies Robert Frost’s reveals of his own perceptions on the aspects a poem should encompass and how those qualities should be viewed by the readers. Backed up by his acknowledged background as a renowned poet in his time, Frost is able to convey many of his opinions: a poem should differentiate itself in the midst of other works, invoke not only entertainment but wisdom that the readers can benefit from, and deliver the parallelism between the writer’s emotions upon writing the poem and the reader’s emotions upon reading it. By methodically listing out his criteria with the use of aphorism, Frost is successful in the delivery of his purpose to his fellow authors.

Frost’s ambitions to educate the audience through his own philosophy is embedded throughout his writing through his uses of aphorism. Utilizing his didactic tone in his belief of the parallel relationship of the reader and the writer, Frost states, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader” (Frost, 177). His short, terse assertion in this aphorism indicates the sheer emphasis of the author’s responsibility to feel the emotion of his writing before expecting the same from his audience. This intimate connection between the one writing and the one reading signifies the importance of the process of understanding what the author is trying to convey. Frost’s decision to use aphorism to deliver his ideas further supports his argument by providing the audience with accepted truths.

All in all, Frost’s educational literary piece on the attributes of a poem is portrayed seamlessly through his use of aphorism and his acclaim in the 1930’s. Frost’s ideas of what a poem should embody as a major poet himself is an indication of his influence on the literature to this day. 

TOW #4: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

            While reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, I have experienced an existential crisis, the realization of humanity’s neglect of the environment, and an urge to go out and just do something to prevent the slow deterioration of nature, all in the first half of her book. Once a marine scientist who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington DC, the deceased ecologist is recognized as the revolutionist who initiated the contemporary environmental movement. Rachel Carson utilizes powerful diction with negative connotation to conjure up an appeal to the audience’s pathos. She always follows up her bold claims with scientific proof coming from credible resources to confirm herself as a plausible writer.

            Devoted to exposing environmental degradation, Carson focuses on an environmental problem and then builds the intensity of man’s impact on that specific detail. On a chapter dedicated to the strange disappearance of birds and their songs, she writes, “This sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of the color and beauty and interest they lend to our world have come about swiftly, insidiously, and unnoticed by those whose communities are as yet unaffected” (Carson 103). Using “obliteration” exemplifies the amplification of its negative connotation to invoke a stronger emotion towards the loss of “color and beauty and interest.” This conjoining of two unlike things accentuates the contrast between humanity’s eradication of the environment and nature’s endeavor to survive through the adversities.

10 out of 10 would recommend.

Continuing on, Carson supports her claim by citing a credible source which states, “…in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama the Field Notes published quarterly by the Nation Audubon Society and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service noted the striking phenomenon of ‘blank spots weirdly empty of virtually all bird life” (Carson 104). She does not stop there as she proves the credibility of her source, saying, “The Field Notes are a compilation of the reports of seasoned observers who have spent many years afield in their particular areas and have unparalleled knowledge of the normal bird life of the region” (Carson 104). Carson does this to extinguish any doubts or suspicion of the reliability of her words and to further establish her position as an author as well as a marine scientist.

Although I am only half-way finished, I cannot wait to continue reading. The information on the decay of the habitat the humans occupy is jam-packed into a single binding that is acknowledged all over the world. I will definitely return to complete my full-book review on Silent Spring by the one-and-only Rachel Carson.