Iterations Final Reflection Essay
African American Literature Studies
Iterations Essay
Throughout this semester and our readings we made many connections. During class discussions and small group discussion there was often a connection of texts happening. The two texts that I will be focusing on during this essay are Percival Everett’s, The Water Cure, and African Fractals, by Ron Eglash. I have decided to focus on the idea’s of recursion, iteration and infinity. What is recursion? According to Eglash, “recursion is the motor of fractal geometry; it is here that basic transformations- whether numerical of spatial – are spun into whole cloth, and the patterns that emerge often tell a story of their whirling birth”. He also defines iteration as, “only one transformation process, but each time the process creates an output, it uses this result as the input for the next iteration, as we’ve seen in generating fractals”. Finally, Eglash defines infinity as, “… it was a limit that one could tend toward, but it was not considered to be a legitimate object of mathematical inquiry in itself. Most Europeans stuck with this definition until Cantor set Europe’s first fractal, created the proper definition of an infinite set, thus allowing infinity itself to be considered.” There are different types of both recursion and iterations. There is cascade recursion which is a predetermined sequence of similar processes. The example that Eglash provided for this was, “there is a children’s story in which a man buys a christmas tree, but discovers it is too tall for his ceiling so he cuts off the top. His dogs find the discarded top, and put it in their doghouse, but they too discover it’s too tall, and cut off the top. Finally the mice drag this tiny top into their hole, where it fits just fine – the recursion “bottoms out.” – all of these were independent transformations; it is only by coincidence, so to speak, that they happened to be the same”. Another version of recursion is the numeric version of cascading recursion. Eglash defined this as, “we divide a number by 2 in each part of the sequence”. According to him this is not a very strong form of recursion because it requires we know the transformations ahead of time which is not always possible. Second, you have to know what transformation you are going to make ahead of time which is also not always possible. An important variation of iteration according to Eglash is “nesting”. This makes loops within loops. Nested loops are very common for computer programs. Percvial Everett’s novel, The Water Cure, is about a man who’s daughter was kidnapped and raped then brutelly murdered. He spends part of the story maybe or maybe not getting revenge on the man that did this horrible act. He may or may not have had the man in his basement. And he may or may not have shoved him in his trunk.
A form of recursion that is used in this text is self-reference recursion. This is when symbols/icons are used to represent or refer to something. The example that was used in the text, African Fractals, is “Kellogg’s corn flakes, for example, once came in a box that featured a family sitting down to breakfast. In this picture you could see that the family had a box of Kellogg’s corn flakes on their breakfast table, and you could see that this box showed the same picture of the family, with the same box on their table, and so on to infinity.” An example of self-reference recursion from Everett’s, The Water Cure, is, the man that he may or may not have kidnapped. This man is representing Everett’s anger and grief. He represents the fact that his daughter is gone and not coming back. Everett has to deal with this and learn how to grieve with this fact. That is why I believe the man that he may or may not have kidnapped is a symbol for these things. Recursion is all throughout this novel. Everett is breaking up events in his life to smaller events that all have cause and effect. For example, the murder of his daughter was the cause of Everett maybe or maybe not kidnapping the man who raped and murdered her. An example of this cause and effect relationship with recursion is when Everett is explaining how he used to feel when his daughter was around. For example, “I used to find serenity in the face of my daughter, but that state went missing as did she, turned up missing, as it was put, as if a person, a life, an idea can be discovered by the realization of its absence”. Clearly, there is a cause and effect relationship here. The cause was the kidnapping of his daughter and the effect was him not being able to find peace or happiness after his daughter went missing. Recursion is an important aspect of this novel. Without any cause there would be no effect… there would be no novel.
One example of iteration that I want to focus on is the drawings throughout the novel. As the novel continues the drawings develop more and more until they are completed. This is iteration because he is using each output to be the next input. Everett begins the text with a drawing. It is a singular line on a piece of paper and underneath it, it says, “…so we induce…” on the next page is the singular word “and”. On the page after that is the singular word “find”. It ends with “the arduous nowhere.” The drawing reappears about 25 pages into the text. This time Everett added another line. The picture is now made up of two small lines. This drawing keeps reappearing in the text until it is finally finished at the end of the text. For those of you curious… the drawing ended up being a cat’s head. This example of iteration I believe is to add an abstract component to his novel. The drawing does not necessarily mean anything or go along with anything that the text is about therefore, that is why I believe it is to add this abstract component. This whole novel of Everett’s is very abstract, as that was his goal. When looking at the term infinity and how it fits into this novel there are many examples. I decided to discuss the hatred that Everett feels because I feel that is a very common and never ending theme throughout the novel. Everett has hatred for many people and things. One person in particular is the man who he may or may not have kidnapped in revenge for killing his daughter. Another is president Bush. Everett used Bush as a comparison for many people. It was as though he was taking his hatred out for Bush on anyone he could. He wrote, “The stupid fuck was elected by stupid fucks and supported by stupid fucks and even occasionally fell out of favor with stupid fucks, but stupid fucks, being stupid fucks, either forgot or forgave and again loved the kind stupid fuck who loved war and money and butchering the language while chewing at the inside of his cheek, polluting the air with slogans like, If you can’t find your enemy, create one and When in doubt, fear and hate, though my favorite unused one is It’s Us against Them, too bad We’re not all Us.” This may seem like a weird example for something that I am saying is infinite. Is there infinity in the quote? Yes. The hatred that Everett is expressing so intensely I can almost feel how extreme it is myself is expressed throughout the text. When Everett expresses his hatred for someone it is in an intense way. He will make it clear who he does not like all throughout this novel.
This semester I learned a lot. I was/still am new to the English major. This class provided me with many different reading techniques and different ways of understanding texts. Another thing this class taught me to do was make strong connections. All year we have been making connections between texts which is something that was not so familiar with me. Before this class I would not have been able to connect African Fractals to a novel. I didn’t even know what African Fractals were. It is so important to be able to make these types of connections not just for the ability to write an essay like this but just to develop and strengthen your understanding of something as a whole. Sometimes it takes connecting a reading to something else to be able to truly understand it or at least develop some sort of theme you think goes along with it. Looking back at my first essay, Seed Shape Essay, I have noticed many changes. I feel that not only have I become a stronger writer I have also become a more independent writer. I remember with that essay I was very confused. I had never written an essay like that before and had no clue where to even start. Looking at that essay compared to this I feel I have made many improvements and I feel that I am able to make better/stronger connections between readings.