The Real-Life Corporations of "The East": Directv

For the Grapes of Wrath action project, I decided to contact DirecTV. My parents and I had actually been having problems with our DirecTV bill for the past few months. So, by using them in the action project, I was hoping to possibly resolve our billing issue in the process of getting in touch with a high ranking official at the DirecTV office.

Back in December, Directv charged a subscription of Cinemax to our bill that we did not request. When my mother, who handles our bills and financial matters, called to ask why and how the extra fee was put on our bill, the Directv employee on the other end said that we simply "did not understand your billing statement". When she asked then if the employee on the phone could explain anything that she wouldn't have understood they did nothing except restate information that was clearly already understood by both parties. Since we did not pay for the Cinemax that was wrongly included on our bill, we received late fees on the monthly bills that followed, up until March. Right before the action project was introduced to me, my mother decided to simply “bite the bullet” and pay for the few months of Cinemax that Directv had charged us for. A few weeks ago, when I had the opportunity to take action, I decided to call the company once again.

Since my problem and issue was rooted in the billing department, I decided to call the number on one of the incorrect bills we had received in one of the months past. Similar to the experience that my mom had, I spoke (with great difficulty, because none of the phone operators spoke very good English) to a woman who merely kept repeating Directv’s billing statement and process to me. After further trying to explain my issue and asking if I could speak to someone who could help me more directly, my call was transferred. I then talked to a woman who I assumed to be in charge of the billing and that type of business. She had attitude with me right from the start and acted like she couldn’t have cared less about the issue with my bill. After a few minutes of back and forth discussion about my billing problem, she gave me a less than sufficient answer, almost her way of beating around the bush instead of coming right out and saying “Well I don’t know what you want me to do about it”, or something along those lines. Finally, before ending our conversation, she said the most they could do was “credit our account” for the late fees we paid on the Cinemax.

The incorrect charges on our bill were never fully resolved, and our account has yet to be “credited”. As a final step, I decided to go one step further. I looked up the name of the CEO of Directv on their very own website. While doing this, I also learned that the last woman I spoke to must have been Ellen Filipiak, the Senior VP of Customer Care. After getting the CEO's email address, I sent him an email describing all of the above issues. After spending much time, patience, and care on the email, I sent it out only to be promptly returned with a “postmaster delivery failure notice”. The email address of the CEO, Michael White, provided by the company itself is either incorrect or out of date. I googled Mr. White in hopes of finding more information and an alternate email address, but was unsuccessful. I did, however, find a discussion board of other unhappy Directv customers trying to email Mr. White as well! It seems that he doesn’t want to speak to the “average” people who are being inconvenienced by his poorly organized company.

On that note, this real life situation shows a striking resemblance to the Grapes of Wrath novel, with Mr. White being “the East”. Both seem to be unbothered by the unhappy and inconvenienced people that their actions, or lack thereof, are the result of. My situation specifically reminds me of the family in one of the early chapters of the novel who speak to the driver of the tractor who demolishes their house, just less severe. The tractor driver is simply doing his job, much like the phone operators at Directv that I first spoke to. I was obviously angry at them at first, but then realized that there is a much bigger entity to blame.

In conclusion, I now think I know why Mr. Currin assigned us this task. It was to get us to see that the issues that we are reading about in a fictional novel that was written several years ago are very much relevant to things that are still happening in society today. 

"An Image of Africa: Racism In Conrad's Heart of Darkness"

The article titled “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” written by Chinua Achebe criticizes the acclaimed novel written by Joseph Conrad for being a racist novel. From the point of view of an African Literature professor and native Nigerian, there are many examples from the text that cite said racism, some that might not normally be picked up by the untrained eye.

From the very beginning of the novel, Conrad portrays the continent of Africa and its inhabitants as prehistoric, inhuman, barbaric, and even ugly. He writes, singling out the natives, exclaiming that “the whites of their eyes can be seen glistening in the darkness”. Continuing the same description, Conrad describes their faces being “like grotesque masks” and “streaming with perspiration”. Dialogue is also a choice way for Conrad to subliminally and possibly subconsciously incorporate some discrimination against the Africans into the novel. Their speech is described as “incoherent babbles” and “short grunting phrases”.

I use the term subconsciously for a few reasons. The time period in which Conrad was born, and that which he lived through as well, was not aware of the rudeness and  disrespect that came about when being racists and discriminatory. This raises the question as to whether or not Conrad can be considered a racist, when he can’t really be blamed for the views of the time period in which he was raised.

On that note, a similar subject was addressed in our Socratic on Tuesday. It was brought up that a person can’t really be criticized or attacked based on their opinions and views, because they were most likely raised to believe those things. Had Conrad been born at a later time, and raised in a different country or family, would the subject of his novel even be under criticism? Likewise, it was brought up in the Socratic that racism, particularly white on black, was essentially a part of human nature at the time that the novel was written. That is one of the reasons that Heart of Darkness hasn’t gotten many criticisms from this aspect. 

The Awakening Article Analysis and Response

The article I chose to analyze for The Awakening was focused on the effect of painting, music, and the arts on Edna and how they are related to her “awakening”. A majority of the article, which I found myself agreeing with, was rather how the arts failed to help or save Edna, in the aspect of saving her life from the social restrictions of the time and herself.

Author Roberta White notes that it’s odd that the readers should naturally think that painting and music would save Edna, giving her an outlet for the things that she couldn’t express, but it does the opposite. There are several ways that Edna fails as an artist, which ultimately lead to her downfall. But before that part of the analysis is mentioned, White makes an ingenious point. Kate Chopin actually incorporates the visual arts into her literature, almost making up for the lack of art in Edna’s life in the story. The vivid descriptions and sensuous language used, especially when talking about the sea (which ties in wonderfully) create a whole new dimension of art for the readers. A very moving line from the article even reads “her suicide seems fated by the language”.

When it comes to Edna herself as an artist, she ultimately is responsible for her own “failure”. Living in New Orleans, there were so many real-life thing that she could have drawn or painted to express herself. By choosing to visually ignore the life around her, she missed out on so much. Relating back to the first point mentioned by Roberta White, the art of the novel itself is superior to the art created in the novel. A major downfall is that her passion and romantic ways distract from her painting rather than contributing to it. She should have harnessed the emotion she had to channel it into something good, but instead it weighed on her.

The arts had much to do with the shaping of the novel The Awakening, in the story line and the actual writing itself. In Edna’s case, the arts failed to save her in her most desperate time of need. Since it was noted that her romantic excursions distracted her from her painting, it is interesting that in the article it also said that Edna liked to get away to the sea with Robert and Arobin because it took her away from her obligations as a mother and to the Victorian social rules, if only for a moment. So though she enjoyed it, the arts is what eventually caused her to commit suicide.