Author: Lauren Bieniek

When I signed up for this course, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I registered because the course fulfilled multiple general education requirements and the fact that it’s not often I get to take an English course with my majors. After I had finished registering for all of my classes and the stress died down, I turned back to the ENGL 111 course description and learned that it is actually self-graded, and then I really didn’t know what to expect. I will admit that I assumed this class would be much more similar to my INTD 105 class I took during the fall of my freshman year. Meaning, I thought it would be a bit more lecture heavy and nit-picky on our individual writing. I was both excited and nervous when I realized this course was going to focus a lot more on our personal growth and working to connect multiple different texts revolving around the 2008 housing crisis. I have learned so much about how fluid language can be and how using the same words in multiple different contexts can totally change the meaning. Introducing our course concepts in the beginning of the semester and working to incorporate them with each piece of literature we read truly helped me to improve my critical thinking skills and I am grateful for challenging myself in this class.

We took the time to read four pieces of literature throughout the semester. First, Shakespeare’s King Lear, then The Big Short by Michael Lewis, A Mercy by Toni Morrison, and finally Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. We looked at all of these novels through the lens of the 2008 housing crisis and made connections between the texts that I never would think to make on my own. Three out of four of those texts were written years before the crisis, yet we were still able to use our course concepts and the reality of what happened in 2008 to find connections between all four. In 2008, there were greedy companies who wanted to continue making risky financial decisions and almost treated it like gambling. For example, page 256 of The Big Short says, “The line between gambling and investing is artificial and thin.” The risk of credit default swaps, which Investopedia defines as “… a financial derivative that allows an investor to swap or offset their credit risk with that of another investor. To swap the risk of default, the lender buys a CDS from another investor who agrees to reimburse them if the borrower defaults” was greatly underestimated and was a big cause for the crisis. The banks were giving out easy loans which inflated the prices of houses and created a housing bubble. When the bubble burst, prices dropped again and people were not able to pay back their loans. Credit default swaps greatly amplified the 2008 financial crisis and essentially led to foreclosures, expelling people from their homes. It didn’t matter how they made money, all that mattered was that they were getting rich. For example, page 257 of The Big Short states, “What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions–if they can get rich making dumb decisions?” If the mortgageg companies were making good money, they didn’t care how or who got expelled from their homes. When reading all four texts, I was able to keep the idea of expulsion in the back of my mind and look for examples of that, as well as other course concepts, in each book.

Most recently, we read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. This novel is about a post-apocalyptic world where no one, except the absolute elites, can afford to live safely and healthily. It follows a teenage girl named Lauren who is the daughter of a preacher and is lucky enough to live in a nice, gated community. However, there is a ton of crime and mass poverty outside of her community’s walls. The intense crime gets so bad outside those walls that thieves and drug addicts eventually break in and start setting the community on fire and robbing everyone’s homes. Families get killed or separated from each other and the survivors finally realize that they need to get out. I have actually read this book before for my INTD 105 course last fall, but we read it with the focus of addiction and the drugs used throughout the book, so I was interested to read it with a different focus and think about how important expulsion is in the novel. Of course, the first time I read this book, I understood how prominent expulsion was as mass amounts of people were forced out of their homes. Since the setting of this book is a sort of dystopian society, there is barely any enforcement from the government or landlords, so there isn’t a direct person/company forcing people out, but rather the horrible living conditions in Southern California. While there is a difference in what directly caused these expulsions, there is still the same result of people tragically being forced to move because of the lack of money. As I read Parable of the Sower for the second time, I realized how much more related it is to the 2008 financial and housing crisis than I originally thought.

I believe that it is very important to not only educate ourselves about the past to make sure history does not repeat itself, but to also read novels like Parable of the Sower that explore what our world could look like. Like I said before, I read this novel just last year, but reading it for a second time in 2024, after the recent election, made it feel more real than I’d like to admit. Before this course, I didn’t know much at all about the 2008 housing crisis. I knew that it happened, but I never truly understood how or why it was able to get so bad. Reading Parable of the Sower amplifies issues that we currently face in our world and I think that the reader should feel a little scared while reading it. During the 2008 crisis, people had to leave their homes because of financial factors, and while poverty is still a huge issue in Parable, climate change is also very prominent and something I would say is more relatable to our world right now. For Lauren’s family specifically, both of her parents have respected jobs as her father is a preacher and her stepmom teaches people to read and write, which many don’t know how to do anymore. As unfair as it is, socioeconomic status is different for everyone, and especially in the setting of Parable, there is a clear divide between the rich and the poor. The rich are still able to hold on to a somewhat sustainable life as they can afford electricity and clean water, but the poor won’t have access to these things unless they steal. However, I believe that climate change is an issue that affects everyone equally. Something everyone on Earth has in common is the fact that we simply all live on Earth, and if our climate becomes so polluted that we can’t breathe healthily, or go outside because it’s too hot, everyone’s health is equally impacted. At the very beginning of chapter five of Parable of the Sower, there is finally a rainfall and Lauren writes in her journal, “That’s all there has been for six years”. I can’t even imagine what a six year drought would feel like, and I don’t think we should ever have to worry about that happening. Parable of the Sower should almost cause readers to “wake up” and do what they can to keep our Earth from ever getting to this extreme of a state. We must do everything we can so people aren’t expelled from their homes because of extreme heat, rising sea levels and floods, or any other climate related issue. 

With Geneseo’s Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education (GLOBE) it is important that students are able to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time”. I believe that this is important in both the context of Parable of the Sower and as a student in general. As I said before, we should read Parable with an open mind rather than thinking there’s no way this could be our reality. While I do agree that the lives people live in the novel are a bit extreme, I don’t think they are completely out of touch with what could happen in years to come. We must reflect on and learn from history and the struggles we have had in the past, such as the 2008 crisis, and do what we can to keep settings like Parable of the Sower from occurring in the future. No one should be without a comfortable place to live. No matter their financial circumstances or what’s going on outside, every human deserves to have a place they can call home.  As for reflecting on changes in learning as a college student in general, I believe that not only Parable of the Sower but this class as a whole has allowed me to grow as a learner. As I said above, I expected this English class to be more similar to classes I have taken in the past where the teacher is much more critical about our writing. Where a lot of our ideas are either right or wrong and we are docked points for grammar. I was very pleased to realize how that wasn’t the true focus in this class and we instead were encouraged to think and make connections anyway we could. Of course, we were still expected to be able to back up our claims with evidence to show we were acting in good faith and truly responsible for our own ideas. I have never taken a self graded course, and I honestly really enjoyed this class structure. I feel it forced me to really hold myself accountable and prove that I am a student who truly cares about my own learning. Instead of getting the satisfaction of a good number grade after each assignment or putting more care into only the assignments worth the most of my grade, I had to work hard and show up to each class with the same preparation and care. I did my best over the course to improve my learning and I really hope that showed. I worked hard in group discussions, but especially small groups, and I think I made adjustments throughout the semester to really step up my game. For example, after our first care check ins I realized I wasn’t taking advantage of the class notes like I should have been, so from that point on I made a big effort to read every single class note and I think it helped me to be even better prepared. Over the semester, I was able to get away from my idea of a “typical” English class and worked hard to adjust my learning style just like GLOBE encourages. I am grateful for taking this course!

Lauren Bieniek, Samantha Kim, Lily Scobbo, Cole Kominiarek, Nathan Walz, Jayden Prashad

In class, we have been working with A Mercy, a historical fiction novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel takes place in the 1680s and is told from the perspective of multiple characters, but primarily is told from the main character, Florens. Florens is an enslaved teenage girl who can mainly speak Portuguese and only a little English, which makes it difficult for her since many other characters speak English. One of the first points that Beth made to us about this novel is that it is about reading and interpretation. For many of us readers, that was quickly made clear as the text is very fluid and difficult to follow along. For example, there are no chapter titles, there are no quotation marks when characters are having a conversation, and chapters are told from different perspectives without any warning. We discussed how this is purposeful, and almost puts the reader in the same position as Florens. Meaning we had to work hard to be very observant and pay close attention to details, even though we weren’t given all of the information at once. This could be related to Florens as she is a keen observer, but since she isn’t given all of the information or resources to make sense of her observations, she is often left confused or making unrelated assumptions. Multiple factors play into this, such as Florens’ language barrier, the fact that she’s a slave and others might not feel a need to keep her in-the-know, or even because of her past and recurring traumas. Throughout the story, Florens is expelled from her living spaces and swapped around from place to place a total of three times. One of our course concepts we have been discussing is “diaspora” which we defined in class as “a force pushing people out of their homes.” From that definition alone, we could use the term to describe Florens’ expulsions throughout the novel. However, according to the first definition on Google, diaspora is, “the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland.” This definition more clearly shows what the word diaspora means as it refers to large groups of people who are typically being pushed away from not only their home but their homeLAND. While knowing that Florens is a slave, this makes it much more clear that along with the three expulsions that occur throughout the novel, the true origin, root/cause, of Florens’ reality is the slave trade. Because of the fact that Florens’ family was sold and forced to leave their original home country, multiple expulsions and other effects take place in the rest of the novel. All of these factors play into why although Florens is a keen observer, she has a difficult time making sense of everything that’s truly going on around her.

The course concepts of origin, good faith and bad faith relates heavily to Florens’ struggle in A Mercy to read and interpret things. In chapter two Jacob Vaark goes to D’Ortega’s house and ends up taking Florens as payment for a debt. This took place when Jacob wanted to take Florence’s mother who was the head cook at Ortega’s plantation. However as Jacob and D’Ortega were arguing Florens’ mother speaks up “Please,  Senhor. Not me. Take her. Take my daughter.” This is when Florens’ first expulsion takes place. This is arguably the origin of the book. There is also an origin to the crisis that caused the expulsion. The origin of the crisis is the ownership of people, or better known as slavery. Google defines origin as; the point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived. So the origin of the crisis begins or arises when there is the owning of something that is really someone else’s. An example of this is shown in chapter 4. “The traveler laughs at the beauty saying,” This is perfect, this is mine” and the word swells, booming like thunder, into valleys, over acres of primrose and mallow. Creatures come out of caves wondering what it means, Mine. Mine. Mine.” After this there is a crisis and an eagle is shot and falls while her eggs sit there alone.

The housing crisis of 2008 also started with ownership of really terrible mortgage bonds and really risky mortgages. Before the housing crisis there was a real estate boom where everything was increasing in value. This made everyone want to get in on the action and own a house/land. Some people had really bad credit and still wanted to own their own real estate. So the adjustable rate mortgage was made to make it possible for people to buy a home when they usually wouldn’t be able to. Because of this these mortgages had a higher chance of failing because a lot of these people really couldn’t afford to get a house. Also there were rates called teaser rates that contributed to these mortgages. The teaser rates would keep the interest rate very low at first, but after a few years the interest rate would skyrocket causing many mortgages to fail. On the other end of these mortgages were banks. Banks bought things called CDO’s from mortgage lenders. CDO’s are collateralized debt obligations. They are people’s mortgages that you can buy. One would think that banks wouldn’t buy such risky mortgages however the banks didn’t know that they were risky. There were CDO rating agencies that rated the CDO’s based on how risky they were. At the time these agencies were compiling all of these risky CDO’s together and rating them AAA which means they aren’t risky.So the banks thought they were buying really great and stable mortgages when they were buying horrible risky mortgages. The origin of the housing crisis was based on owning things. This goes right along with A Mercy where the origin of the crisis was the owning of people.

To Florens, getting expelled by her mom was a sign that she wasn’t wanted or loved. Florens thought that if she was loved by her mom then she would have fought to stay with her daughter instead of what looks to be a sacrifice to save herself from being taken. Florens thought this expulsion was simply an act of bad faith by her mom. Google defines bad faith as the intent to deceive. Florens thought that her mom wanted to make her think that she was loved only to get rid of her when given an opportunity. Although Florens does remember that her brother was the favorite, “The first time it is me peering around my mothers dress hoping for her hand that is only her little boy.”(160) However she only thinks about this now that she has been expelled.It was later found out Florens didn’t read/ interpret the situation in the same light that her mom did. Her mom saw Florence’s so-called expulsion as more of an act done in good faith. Google defines good faith as honesty or sincerity of intention. Like Florens, Florence’s mom was a very keen observer and noticed Florens’ body changing. “Breasts provide pleasure more than simpler things. Yours are rising too soon and are becoming irritated by the cloth covering your little girl chest”(190) Florenses mother was trying to protect her from D’Ortega because she was worried about what would happen when he started to notice Florens. Another example of Florence’s mother worrying about Florens’ appearance is when she tells her why she can wear high heels “Only bad women wear high heels.”(4) Even though Florens’ mother didn’t directly state that she was worried about Florens being noticed by D’Ortega,she definitely was. So the reality of the situation with Florens’ first expulsion was that Florens’ mother was only looking out for her out of love. Florens saw it as expulsion and her mom saw it as an act of care and love.

Floren’s being a keen observer allowed her to notice tendencies and patterns that were occurring throughout her life. These instances and events often lead to Floren’s feeling of abandonment and expulsion. Her ability to notice these events relates to a concept called apophenia which is an ability to realize tendencies or patterns. The second time that Floren’s had noticed an expulsion brewing was when Jacob got smallpox. This was the start of her difficulty in understanding that there were forces in life that expel people from their current situation. This ties back to a course concept called toxins. Toxins in this case refer to a literal sense of poison or disease in the form of smallpox. This was an outside force that caused an expulsion and this had a big impact on Floren’s ability to grasp the concepts. Florens was unable to comprehend why she was constantly being affected by outside forces such as her mothers abandonment and the smallpox and this had a major impact on how she viewed relationships and trust. After Rebekka also gets sick, Florens is sent through the forest on her own to find the blacksmith. Another example of being forced to leave(expulsion), as she goes on her own. She notices the changes of light and quiet movement of the animals but lacks the knowledge to interpret those things. This observation of light comes into connection with apophenia because she perceives signs or meanings where there are possibly none to distinguish. This interpretation of her environment highlights her hopes, anxieties, and limited understanding of not just her world but her place in it. I would go as far as to say Florens apophenic lens on the world highlights one of Morrison’s themes which is the isolation of individuals, especially those like Floren who are already taken advantage of. She does not possess the understanding of her nature, so she covers up the holes with her own feelings and fear, sometimes searching for a deeper meaning when one might not actually exist. 

Floren’s final expulsion was being expelled from the blacksmith. This is another example of apophenia because it is a pattern of Florens continuously getting expelled from different people. Florens is desperate for affection from a person and the feeling of being chosen or wanted. Florens is naive and interpreted her relationship with the blacksmith in her own way that was one sided just to her. Florens’ lack of experience with being able to form long lasting emotional connections and relationships is a main factor in this. Florens thought that she and the blacksmith had a real deep connection and had genuine love for him with the idea that she created in her head. But in reality the blacksmith had no interest in Florens in the way she had thought and saw her just as an enslaved girl. Florens realizes this when she was rejected from the blacksmith. Florens had jealousy and resentment towards Malaik with him being cared for by the blacksmith and did not want Malaik to be chosen over her. The idea of Malaik being chosen over her brings back the idea of Florens’ little brother being picked over her when her mother decided to send Florens away and keep her little brother at home. Florens accidentally breaking Malaik’s arm causes the blacksmith to expel her. The blacksmith thought that Florens was acting in bad faith, breaking Malaik’s arm but that was not her intention; instead, she was trying to get Malaik to stop crying. Floren’s struggles with abandonment and self-worth are extremely affected and further damaged by this expulsion and rejection from the blacksmith. This led Florens to react and lash out, injuring the blacksmith due to her frustration. The path of Florens in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy demonstrates how having certain resources, or lack thereof, can impact people’s ability to interpret what’s going on around them. Morrison used Florens’ story to illustrate how power structures prevent people from understanding their own experiences, thereby isolating them emotionally as well as physically. This can be related to the 2008 housing crisis that we have been discussing in class. Economic systems, created by wealthy individuals, put profit above people and caused numerous individuals to lose their homes, jobs, and security during the 2008 crisis. When comparing A Mercy and the 2008 crisis, Florens is much like the consumers in 2008 because they were not given the proper information they needed to make smart financial decisions. As young students, it is important for us to gain the necessary knowledge and ability to make connections within our own society and world unlike Florens whose lack of knowledge contributed to how much she was taken advantage of. If we were to fall under the same circumstances history could repeat itself and we could become victims of the same crisis that occurred in 2008. This emphasizes the point about how important it is to give people the information and tools they need to comprehend and control their own situations so they are less susceptible to manipulation or expulsion from society where they could otherwise fit in.