Daniel Lehman

In David Foster Wallace’s column about the Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace delves into the many aspects of the festival. A main topic of his is one that we have pondered: the subjectivity of space, specifically touching on the touristy aspect of the festival. While for the tourists, the festival epitomizes Maine, many residents of the area are either disinterested with the festival or even contemptuous of it. While these two groups may occupy the same space at the same time, the meanings that they themselves impress upon this space differ widely.

Another compelling topic that he talks about is about the humanity of killing a lobster, which he uses to make an interesting argument about empathy. Because the thought of boiling a live animal seems inhumane to some, many have tried to find a more “humane” way to  kill the lobster. One alternative is to slit the neck, where a bundle of nerves that is like a brain resides. However, the lobster has many of these bundles throughout his body, and the slit to the neck is not always fatal. Even though these people were trying to be more “humane” about killing an animal, they end up making the death more painful. In this example, Wallace exposes the different rationalizations that allow people to continue being immoral for their own pleasure.

The Daniels and Cosgrove article connected Andrew and Betsy Wyeth for me. The line, “A landscape is a cultural image” (Daniels & Cosgrove,1) shows that both Wyeth’s are interested in creating cultural images. However, Betsy uses the physical landscape as her medium while Andrew uses the canvas. Both seem to have ideas not only about the physical landscapes and the larger historical significance that landscape holds. This means that their own cultural understandings are embedded in their work. While this allows them to create evocative images of landscape, for Betsy, it physicalizes her cultural understanding of the landscape, in this case, nature, the Mid-Maine coast and Allen and Benner Island themselves. While humans have a long history of viewing paintings critically, we do not have a history of looking at the cultural implications of landscape as someone’s vision. This gives Betsy and her vision power because she is modifying and creating a piece of art that is not looked at as art or construction as much. She is able to present her vision of natural beauty which is counterintuitive to our conception of nature. On the other hand, there are few places in nature that have never been touched or effected by humans. This means that her work calls into question how we conceive and perceive nature by, purposefully or inadvertently, showing the subjective nature of the natural world.

This reminded me of our space v. place discussion as well as the reading that argued that place is culture. Although maps are usually seen as unchanging and concrete, because place is so entangled with our culture and therefore our worldview, these biases and assumptions come out in the portrayal of our world. Much like we have been talking about Betsy and her desire to present the island in a certain way, maps, too, are meant to convey a certain message about the place being mapped. While the map of Maine may look like an absolute and unchanging visual description of a space, the cartographer’s decision on what to color and how they construct the map in other ways show how representing space and place are directly effected by where we are from. Borders themselves are social constructions, which also shows how the essence of a map is culturally influenced. Maps also have a myriad of uses which affects how different cartographers map what they see.

The four maps that we were given have stark differences. The map of Maine not only has major roads, but also shows the topography of Maine, which gives some natural sense what Maine looks like. However, in the map of the islands, the coast of Maine is largely untouched, and the islands are the only detailed part of that map. The map of Monhegan has no roads or labels, and is a more artistic rendition that still gives a sense of place. The town center plans are geared toward just that, so the maps are organized in a way that would seem to help contractors get a sense of how the center will look like. Because maps are generally seen as concrete representations of our world, it is easy to think of them as cultureless entities that are as concrete as the laws of physics. However, cartographers are greatly affected by the space and place that they live or grew up in, which affects how they create their visions of a space or landscape.

King’s constant referral to the past using italics creates the world that Stella lives in.  Stella does not just live in the space that is Goat Island, the space is representative of all of her experiences throughout her life. Since she has only been in one confined and defined space, time is compressed for her. She is constantly living in memories from the past because that is the width of her experience as a human. She has grown up as the island, so her beliefs and psyche come solely from what she has seen occur in this isolated space. She relates her emotions through her experiences on the island, which makes those events present even though they are far in the past. The ghosts that inhabit the island and talk to Stella show how time is not real for her. Those people are very much alive in her eyes because time does not exist for her.