At the beginning of the semester, in the very first class, we learned about some of the course concepts for the year. Some of these were “Foreclosure,” “Bad Faith,” and “Liquidity,” but one of these course concepts mattered as much as “Expulsion,” which represented the core of what the course was about, people losing their lives as they knew it. This led me to understand early on what the course was expecting me to find in reading and how to connect it to the 2008 global financial crisis. It gave me insight into how Dr. McCoy set up the course and how I was supposed to navigate it. Over a short period of time I adjusted to the new way of thinking. This gave me great clarification on my job in the classroom.
When reading the title and description of the course, many would think that it is closer to a history class rather than an English class. This was the first sign to me that the class was more focused on the readings and what information we garnered from them rather than the specifics into the housing crisis. This outlook helped tremendously. During the collaborations in class, I was able to use my skills to connect quotes from the sources we were reading to the housing crisis. In the actual classroom I was not able to express my ideas to the class coherently, but I found that in small groups I was able to work with my classmates to expand on ideas about the subjects. This led to me being able to make leaps when connecting course concepts to books like “A Mercy” and “King Lear.” A direct example of this was me finding the quote “Both times are full of danger and I am expel.” (p.160) in “A Mercy,” which had a direct link to the course concept of expulsion, saying the word in the quote. Another example was connecting the course concept of toxicity to the house nicknamed “toxie” during the second mini-collaboration about housing in Florida.
One thing that stood out to me in “Parable of the Sower” was the lack of liquidity within the book. The drought that affected the land had a direct effect on its differences and connections to the 2008 financial crisis. While earlier in the semester there was an immense amount of focus on the connection between liquidity and the housing crisis, in “Parable of the Sower” it is quite the opposite. In “The Big Short” and “The Old Man and the Storm,” liquidity was seen more as a cause of the expulsion, with flooding the tower and Hurricane Katrina, but in “Parable of the Sower” it is the very lack of liquidity that affects the situation they are in at the time. This is an interesting change because even though the flooding and liquidity is not there, the examples of expulsion are still there, showing the complete opposite of what we have seen all semester.
Examples of liquidity being connected to expulsion have been seen throughout almost all the media we’ve read. One example is stormy weather. In “King Lear,” stormy weather is meant to symbolize how far King Lear had fallen in his social standing, as he was stuck out in the rain with no shelter. “Old Man and the Storm” takes a look into the effects Hurricane Katrina had on an old man named Herbert Gettridge and his family. The Hurricane was the cause of him losing not only his home, but also his love for the city of New Orleans.
Another course concept that gains traction within “Parable of the Sower” is trust. Examples of not being able to trust people are seen throughout the novel. Not being able to trust your own family, like the father of Allie and Jill who pimped them out or Laurens brother Keith who left and became a criminal, is not an uncommon occurrence. Trust is abused by everyone in the dystopian world. This is similar to during the 2008 financial crisis, when people’s trust was abused by big banks in order for them to make a quick buck. Also, as read in “The Big Short,” Michael Burry’s investors began to lose faith in him, threatening to take their money out, but the people that trusted him got a large payout when the housing market eventually crashed, just as Burry predicted.
Trust is something that is important for us to have in the classroom as well. Trust that we all do the reading, know the course concepts, and read the class notes. When I learned that the class would be self-graded, I was skeptical. I was also worried, wondering what would happen if I somehow grade myself too high and get called out by the professor for not being a good student. All this comes back to trust, not only in your fellow students, but in yourself to do the work and earn the grade that you want to say you deserve. I believe that I did just that, giving myself a grade that is not too high, even though I put in good effort.
During the subprime mortgage crisis, the loss of peoples homes was a direct result of bad faith actors on Wall Street. Bad Faith is something that is seen constantly in the world and in the media we read and watch. In “Parable of the Sower” there are multiple characters and groups who are seen as “bad faith” people, such as Keith. One connection that you can make between the two is the bad faith people, in one the group of criminals that take over Laurens town and in the other the groups on Wall Street who let the housing market crash. In both situations it is from direct cause that something bad happens.
Bad faith is something that has been taught and seen all through the course and it is something that I have strived to stay away from. Throughout the semester I’ve learned that practicing bad faith would be an impossible way to complete the course with an understanding of what it was about. Had you not read the readings or been in class while watching the other media we watched, you would not be able to follow the class. This is because the skills that the class learned while being there, seeing the course concepts on the board and connecting them to what we are talking about. After I missed one reading assignment, the first one, and after doing so I was lost in the class, not being able to connect dots that should have been connecting. This led me to not miss another for the rest of the semester, dedicating myself to recognizing the patterns in the class. After recognizing these patterns, I would sometimes
All in all, over the course of the semester, I have been able to change the way I have been thinking my entire life. My mind as a whole always worked to understand the historical context of the time it was written or made, but this class challenged me to think of how it could connect to other times.