Crater

I think the imagery of Room as a crater in the last line of the book is perfect. It the statement, it is very simple: Jack says, "It's like a crater, a hole where something happened." However, it is impossible to understand the full meaning of this word for Jack without reading this book. He learns the word "crater" from ma while putting chocolates on his cake in the first chapter.

“Look,” I show her, “there’s holes in my cake where the chocolates were till just now.”
“Like craters,” she says. She puts her fingertop in one.
“What’s craters?”
“Holes where something happened. Like a volcano or an explosion or something.”

Clearly, Ma's words stuck with Jack, as he echoes her definition in the last line of the novel.  In this case, the meaning of crater is simply the physical mark left in the absence of the chocolates.  This is also part of Jack's meaning in the last line, as many of the the items in Room are gone.  However, I think that he is thinking about much more than the missing items when he makes this powerful statement.

We can learn a little more about what Jack thinks about from how he uses it in this conversation with Ma.

“You know your heart, Jack?” “Bam bam.” I show her on my chest.
“No, but your feeling bit, where you’re sad or scared or laughing or stuff?”
That’s lower down, I think it’s in my tummy. “Well, he hasn’t got one.”
“A tummy?”
“A feeling bit,” says Ma.
I’m looking at my tummy. “What does he have instead?”
She shrugs. “Just a gap.”
Like a crater? But that’s a hole where something happened. What happened?

In this case the imagery of a crater is used to represent something more abstract: the lack of Old Nick's capacity for feeling.  Despite the fact that he instinctively associates the word "crater" with this idea, Jack doesn't seem to be totally sure that this is a proper use of the word.

By the end of the novel, Jack has a much better sense of how the world works, and is much more confident with his use of the word "crater."  I believe that in addition to the missing items in Room, he is referring to it as a mark left by the events of the past 7+ years, starting with Old Nick building Room, and ending with their eventual escape.  This really works well as simile, portraying Room as an empty shell where something significant happened, but is no longer relevant.  By comparing Room to a crater, Jack acknowledges that he and Ma have moved on for good, and there is nothing left for them in Room.

Room as a Hero's Journey

Room is very different from the other books we have read so far this semester, but since this is a hero's journey class, there must be some classic heroic journey aspect to the book. At the point we are at in the book, it does not really seem to fit the classic, campbellian hero's journey.  I think either Jack or Ma could be considered a hero, and will make a case for how each of these characters makes a journey.  

For Ma this journey is fairly clear, but her life before what we see in the book must be taken into account.  The "ordinary world" at the beginning of her is the normal world outside, with no Old Nick or Room.  Then, she is kidnapped and everything changes.  In a way, this kidnapping functions as a "call to adventure" in that it starts the heroic ordeal of living in Room.  Also, Ma's attempts to escape from Old Nick can be seen as a classic "refusal of the call."  There has been no shortage of heroic challenges so far in Ma's "journey," and we have yet to read how this journey concludes.

Jack undergoes a very different kind of hero's journey.  He is born into Room and it is all he knows, so the world view he has at the beginning of this novel can be seen as his starting point, or "ordinary world."  His heroic task is then to break free of this mindset and to break free of Room itself.   In Jack's case, I think the call to adventure comes from Ma starting the process of "unlying" and starting to make Jack understand just how small his world is.  When Ma first tries to explain this to Jack, he resists her explanation, refusing to acknowledge that there is more to the world than his mother and him.  However, at this point in the novel, he is on his way towards escaping his narrow worldview, and perhaps even Room.  

Perhaps these characters do not fit the paradigm of the hero's journey perfectly yet, but there is still a lot of development left in the novel.  Do you think that Room would be correctly called a hero's journey narrative? Which of these characters is closest to the idea of a campbellian hero?

The Advantages of a Graphic Novel

Usually when we think of graphic novels the first things that come to mind are light-hearted kids' books without a deep story.  Perhaps this is because there is much less text than in a traditional novel.  However Persepolis is not like this.  The format of a graphic novel works to emphasize and augment the concise words of the story with powerful images.

I think the reason that this novel brings forth so many emotions is that it tells the story in these two separate ways, combining words that tell you the history with pictures that show you what words alone cannot.  A good example of this is the bottom panel of the first page in which all of the little girls are playing games with their veils.  In this frame we, as westerners, are instantly made aware of the fact that kids do the same things in Iran that they do everywhere.  Also, we see one of the Islamic government's policies through the eyes of these children.  Through the graphics, it is clearly evident that the kids do not see the veil as something of religious significance deserving of respect.

Another way the graphics in this novel are used is to emphasize the descriptions of what these people went through.  A great example of this is the frame depicting Marji processing the torture the political prisoners went through.  Because this is shown graphically, the torture seems much more intimate and terrible and the effect of this knowledge on Marji is very clear.  She hears of tortures such as whipping followed by the torturer urinating on the wounds, but the one that seems to stick with her the most is the iron.  She is shocked by the fact that the iron could be used for torture, and from the bottom frame on this page it seems like she will never look at an iron the same way again.  

These are just two examples of how the graphics contribute greatly to the reader's perception of the story.  I think that this format also makes it easier to process the difficult topics presented in the book and is certainly easier to read than a traditional text-based novel.  Do you like reading such a dark plot in this format?  Does the graphic novel format take away from the seriousness of the issues presented.  

Grant is the Hero

I think that Grant is the journeying hero in this novel, not Jefferson.  He is the one who is given the heroic task of  making Jefferson a man.  He takes the classic Campbell path of resisting the call at first, dragging his feet at every step when getting access to Jefferson.  However, he does accept the call eventually and starts to teach Jefferson despite the fact that he seems to be a little overwhelmed by the challenge.

"What do you plan on doing when you come up there —if I let you come up there?" Guidry asked me.
"I have no idea, sir," I told him.

This conversation shows how Grant does not really know what he is trying to teach to Jefferson, much less how he will go about teaching it.  He has an idea of what Ms. Emma wants, but does not seem very certain about why she wants him to spend time with Jefferson.  The fact that he continues on this journey despite this uncertainty is a sign of his heroism.

Grant is also the one who changes the most during this novel.  In the beginning, he is an educated but sort of naive man who doesn't recognize the cycle he helps to perpetuate.  However, because of the challenge that Jefferson presents him with, he comes to realize that the black community is trapped in a cycle of ignorance and oppression.  His part in the oppression becomes apparent to him when the superintendent visits his school and looks at all the children's teeth while they stand in perfect lines just like he taught them to.  

"Rise," Irene called to the class.
They came to their feet, their heads up, their arms clasped to their sides. But instead of feeling pride, I hated myself for drilling them as I had done.

This is when he starts to see how he himself is part of the power structure that has put Jefferson in prison on purely circumstantial evidence.  In the follow chapter he begins to see what his old teacher meant when he said that attempts to change the situation were futile.  Grant realizes just how continuous this cycle is while he watches his students chop wood for the winter.

And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all?  They are acting exactly as the old men id earlier.  They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives.  Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?

It is in this moment that he makes the transition from being a passive school teacher who plays along with the system to someone outside the system who sees it for what it is.  This is what sets him apart from the other characters in this book and what makes him a hero.

Anse's Role

One way to explain the plot in As I Lay Dying is to consider that the driving force behind the plot might be the reader's inevitable disgust with Anse.  He is just a bad human being.  First of all, he is lazy, and I find his excuse of dying if he sweats a little too convenient and unlikely.  He pretty much forces his wife and children to do all the work of running his farm, and just sits around on his porch all day rubbing his hands and trying to look pitiful.  At this early point in the novel, the reader must begin to dislike Anse, and one thing that keeps them reading is a search for more justification for this hate.  They don't have to wait long for more evidence.

The point of the journey he forces the family to take is supposedly to honor his wife's wish to be buried in her family plot, but for Anse this burial takes second priority to getting himself a pair of dentures.  In fact, nothing else seems remotely important to him.  In the process of getting his teeth, he harms all of his children.  First, Cash's leg is broken while he tries to get Anse's wagon across the river.  Then, because of Anse's cheapness and incompetence, Cash's leg is set in cement which takes several layers of skin with it upon removal.  Cash may never walk again. As the story progresses, the list of Anse's self-serving acts grows long and the damage to his family increases, driving the plot forward and keeping the reader wanting more.

Another result of Anse's stubbornness in crossing the river is that both of their mules are drowned, and Anse refuses to borrow the mules offered to him. To buy new ones, Anse trade's away all of Cash's money and Jewel's prized horse, as well as an insignificant amount of his own possessions.  By Cash's interpretation, this unfairness is what causes Darl to set the barn on fire as he sees it as making things more even.  So, indirectly, Anse is responsible for Darl being sent of to an institution as well.

Finally, when they get to Jefferson, Anse guilt-trips Dewey Dell into giving up the ten dollars she had received to pay for her abortion.  Having stolen from and hurt all his childern who made his journey possible, Anse buys his teeth, becoming the only Bundren to get what they wanted out of the trip.  Also, he takes a new wife just hours after burying Addie.  This conclusion of the novel caps off a buildup of increasingly disgusting things that Anse has done, and thus serves as a relatively satisfying conclusion of the book.

Do you think this interpretation of the plot makes sense?  Can we view this book as driven by hate of the central character?

Can We Trust Darl?

One issue that having so many different narrators creates is the conflicting points of view.  We as readers must decide which narrator is more trustworthy in each situation.  However, this is even more complicated when Darl narrates, as he seems to have some kind of omniscience or ESP.  How he knows about events happening while he is not present is not explained at this point in the novel, and probably won't be.  Therefore, as readers we must decide whether or not these seemingly clairvoyant sections are reliable or not.

The way that these sections are written it does not seem that he is retelling what he was told by someone else, someone who was present.  Instead, he seems to be observing the scene much the same as a third person omniscient narrator would.  The only difference is that his narration of what is happening far away is interspersed with bits of what his happening to himself, Jewel and the wagon.  I think that if we can trust what we hear from narrator in this book, we can trust Darl as well.  He seems to be Faulkner's way of putting an omniscient narrator into this book without disrupting the structure of narration by all the characters.  If this is true, then perhaps these clairvoyant passages are in fact Faulkner speaking directly to the reader without the intermediary step of a character narrator.

Regardless of whether or not this is Faulkner's direct narration, there is little reason to distrust Darl.  He seems to be one of the most objective of the narrators, and nothing he says about events when he is not present is incorrect, as far as we know.  He is certainly less opinionated than Cora, who narrates everything against Anse.  He and seems to be more reliable than Vardaman, who tells us his mother is a fish.  Which narrator do you trust most?  Is Darl's long-distance narration reliable?

Odysseus's Pride

It seems to me that if Odysseus had simply walked in to the city of Ithaca and announced his return to the suitors there would have been very little resistance.  The majority of the suitors lack the will or bravery to openly challenge such a renowned hero.   Even if the most ambitious suitors chose to fight against him, they would not be able to defeat Odysseus, for most of the city would be happy to see their hero and back him.   He could still punish the suitors as he saw fit, probably killing the ones who "deserved" it.  With this in mind, why then does Odysseus pursue this roundabout plan of disguising himself as a beggar in his own home?

He chooses this scheme partly because Athena wants him to take revenge in an aesthetically pleasing (and bloody) way.  But, I think that the main reason that he chooses this roundabout path is that he wants the suitors to have the "oh crap" moment as he reveals himself to be the beggar who they mistreated, and the suitors realize that they are about to die.  It is this feeling of absolutely dominating the suitors physically and psychologically that Odysseus craves, that his pride demands.  As a hero who is mostly praised for his tactics and wiliness, he cannot be satisfied by just driving the suitors away by revealing himself or taking them unawares and killing them in their sleep.   He seems quite vain at some points in this story, especially when he asks a bard to sing about his own deeds, so it makes sense that he wants this plot to be impressive and clever enough to be sung about by bards alongside his other exploits.

The idea that a person is only great if others recognize them as great seems to plague Odysseus throughout the epic.  It gets him into trouble with Polyphemus, first when he demands gifts after already taking many of the cyclops's possessions, then later when he cannot resist telling Polyphemus his real name and revealing how he tricked the cyclops.   Both of these actions have serious consequences for Odysseus and his men.  If he had followed his mens' advice, they could have taken what they wanted from the cyclops's home and left without trouble.  However, because of Odysseus's greed and need for glory, many of his men are eaten, and Odysseus barely escapes with his life.  However, he obviously does not learn from this since as soon as he is back on his ship and away from shore he taunts Polyphemus.  He needs the cyclops to know that it wasn't "nobody" who blinded him, it was the great hero Odysseus.  Because of his pride,  Polyphemus is able to throw boulders at the sound of his voice, narrowly missing their ship.   Furthermore, this whole encounter with Polyphemus angers Poseidon and is therefore the reason that Odysseus takes so long to reach home, which is why there is this issue with the suitors in the first place.

Is it right for Odysseus to kill all the suitors because of his pride?  Does he deserve respect for his exploits, or is his overdeveloped sense of pride the source of all the conflict in the Odyssey?

Xenia

The greek word "Xenia" does not translate perfectly.  Host to guest hospitality is part of the concept, but the ancient greeks placed an equal emphasis on how the guest treated the host.  Xenia is the concept of the proper host-guest relationship, characterized by respect, courtesy, and gift giving on both sides. Obviously, the host will usually have more to offer the guest, such as food, drink, a bath, and a place to sleep.  In return, it is considered very important that the guest do their best not to be a burden and to reciprocate in any way they can.  One reason the greeks placed such a high importance on Xenia is that they believed gods walked among them in disguise, and to mistreat such a guest could incur divine wrath and potentially vengeance.  This idea was deeply set in ancient greek culture, and thus we must read the Odyssey with the knowledge that Homer's audience would have been familiar with the concept of Xenia.

I think that with this background information in mind, Telemachus deserves more respect for his own actions that are not prompted by Athena.  He is beset by suitors who throw the idea of Xenia out the window, however when he sees a newly arrived stranger, who happens to be Athena, Telemachus immediately attends to the stranger's every need.  I think that the ancient greek audience would have responded very positively to his actions, especially in contrast to the actions of the suitors.  The suitors are a perfect example of bad Xenia.  They are a huge burden on the household of Odysseus, in fact it seems that they try to be a burden.  This direct clash with the concept of Xenia would be horrifying to ancient greek audiences, and certainly would make Telemachus seem better in contrast.

He also demonstrates this in the role of a guest when he visits King Nestor and King Menelaus in their homes.  He is very courteous to them, and fits into the role of a visiting prince surprisingly well, considering that he has never been prepared for this role.  He certainly demonstrates that he is deserving of respect for his Xenia, regardless of whether or not he should be respected for what he does carrying out Athena's plan.  Although Telemachus's journey is micromanaged by Athena, his exemplary Xenia is his own.

Free Will in Libra

I think that the question of whether or not Lee has free will is central to this book.  We go in to this book knowing that he killed President Kennedy, what see along the way is why he did it.  In the beginning Lee certainly seems to think he has free will because he is very conscious about his goal of becoming a historical figure.  He takes initiative towards the goal, reading Marx and doing everything he can to become the man he wants to be.  This action on his part suggests that he believes he has to do such things to reach his goals, not just sit back and let destiny take it's course.

However, David Ferrie, Lee's handler/friend, sees life very differently.  In New Orleans, Ferrie takes Lee to see a friend named Clay Shaw.  The first thing this man asks Lee is when he was born, and we find out that Lee was a Libra.  Through Shaw, we get DeLillo's interpretation of what it means to be a Libra.  

He said, "We have the positive Libran who has achieved self-mastery. He is well balanced, levelheaded, a sensible fellow respected by all.  We have the negative Libran who is, let's say, somewhat unsteady and impulsive.  Easily, easily influenced.  Poised to make the dangerous leap.  Either way, balance is the key." (315)

In this book Lee seems to fit much more cleanly into the second of these two types of Libran.  He is certainly unsteady and impulsive, as shown by his attempts to get out of the army, defection to the Soviet Union, and shooting of General Walker. Also, it seems that he is relatively easily influenced by De Mohrenschildt to shoot Walker and eventually by Ferrie to shoot Kennedy.  Finally, the "dangerous leap" he is poised to make is undoubtedly the assassination of the president.  However, it also seems that the "positive Libran" is what Lee wants to be, respected by everyone and in control of his life.  I think that Lee was certainly smart enough to recognize at least some of the parallels between what Shaw said and his own life.  Therefore, when Lee asks Ferrie "Do you believe in astrology?" a few minutes later, this indicates that Lee is seriously considering the notion of astrology and fate.

When David Ferrie attempts to convince Lee to go through with the shooting he uses the argument of fate and coincidence, presenting it as something Lee has got to do, rather than a choice he has to make.

"You see what this means.  How it shows what you've got to do.  We didn't arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route.  We don't have that kind of reach or power.  There's something else that's generating this event A pattern outside experience.  Something that jerks you out of the spin of history." (384)

If this argument helped sway Lee towards shooting Kennedy, and I think it definitely affected him to some extent, then Lee must also believe that there is some element of fate in life. What do you think Lee believes about fate/destiny?  Does he believe in free will?

Bonus: Writing about free will naturally made me think of the song Freewill by Rush, which has quite interesting (and relevant) lyrics.

"Libra" as a Title

It is not very clear why Don DeLillo chose to call his book Libra.  Libra is a fairly well known zodiac sign, referring to the constellation with the same name.  The constellation is purportedly a scale or balance, with 2 weighing pans suspended from a horizontal beam.

This is said to symbolize balance, peace, and fairness.  Within the context of DeLillo's novel I think it is interesting to consider why he choose "Libra" as his title as opposed to some other zodiac sign, or anything at all really.  This book really doesn't seem like the kind of story one would title "peace" or "fairness" since it is, above all else, focused on an assassination.  In addition to the violence, DeLillo also extensively discusses how the powerful CIA officials make their own rules, planning a failed assassination on their own president to further their own purposes in Cuba.  Parameter at least is in this plot for direct monetary gains if Castro is overthrown.  This makes it odd to title the book with a symbol of fairness and equality.  

Perhaps the title refers more to Lee Harvey Oswald's beliefs and how he was actually a relatively fair person, as can be seen by his obsession with the marine handbook.  However, he also disregards these rules that he memorizes better than anyone else.  Oswald is also a perfect counterexample to the idea of balance.  His life is defined by the unbalanced nature of his mental state.  On one hand he is a dedicated communist, reading Das Kapital at an early age despite his dyslexia.  On the other hand he is unstable enough to attempt to attempt to shoot Major General Edwin A. Walker, just because of the influence from a man he met for only one day.

I think that either I am missing something huge, or DeLillo has something in store for us later in this book to warrant such a title.  Or, perhaps the point of such a title is to deliberately contrast with the plot to highlight the imbalance, the unfairness, of the events depicted.  Why do you think DeLillo chose such a title?  Is it too early in the novel to make such a judgement?

Kevin's Most Important Trait

I think that Kevin is the most interesting character in Kindred.  He tends to say things that make the difference in race between him and Dana very uncomfortable.  However, he also seems to be the one character in this book who can completely ignore the race of whoever he interacts with, and as a result of that has trouble seeing that race does matter to many people.  After finding out that Kevin is Dana's husband, Sarah says,

“Your husband … he’d get in trouble every now and then ’cause he couldn’t tell the difference ’tween black and white.”

Despite the irrelevance of race in society being, I think, a major goal of racial equality, it seems that this is not  a desirable characteristic in Kevin, a white man married to a black woman.  When he talks to Dana after they see slave children playing a game resembling a slave auction, Kevin minimizes the horror of slavery, sounding similar to how I think someone arguing the paternalism side to slavery would

"This place isn't what I would have imagined. No overseer. No more work than the people can manage ..."

While the things he says are somewhat true, he temporarily overlooks the slew of reasons that slavery, even at this relatively good plantation, is a terrible thing.  Dana instantly reminds him of these reasons.  Although I don't think Kevin actually believes slavery is acceptable in any way, remarks like this are what make his sense of race seem flawed.

It could be said that the friction that arises because of his "colorblindness" is because society is not colorblind as a whole in 1976, and certainly not in the antebellum south.  But, for a society to become colorblind as a whole I think that this disregard of race needs to start with someone and then spread.  If that is true, then perhaps Kevin's awkward remarks should be taken not as something to be looked down upon, but rather as a sign of one of the best parts of his character: the ability to completely ignore race.

135,000

As was brought up during the panel presentations today, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the dresden bombings and the exact number of people killed.  I did a bit of research and found that there was recently a German historical study of the bombing, partly as a response to the use of this event in far-right radical propaganda.  The results were published in this book, although it is written in German.  From reading the summary given online it seems to be a very thorough and scientific study, which I think presents the most accurate numbers on Dresden.  These numbers are at least 22,700 dead, 20,000 of which can be listed by name.  The upper estimate is no more than 25,000.

Vonnegut's source for his 135,000 figure was The Destruction of Dresden by David Irving.  Vonnegut did not know at the time that this source was far from an accurate history.  It is now widely known that David Irving is a holocaust denier and deliberately misrepresented history in order to downplay Nazi atrocities and exaggerate allied ones.  In writing this "history," Irving used a falsified document created as Nazi propaganda as his main source, and it was from this document that he got his number of 135,000.  It is a shame that Vonnegut was influenced by such a terribly inaccurate historical source.  

In All This Happened, More or Less: What a Novelist Made of the Bombing of Dresden by Ann Rigney, the article we discuss in our panel presentation, the author argues that Irving's book had a greater impact on Vonnegut and Slaughter House Five than just the number it gave. In the opening pages of his book, Vonnegut writes "It wasn’t a famous air raid back then in America. Not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima." This comparison to Hiroshima apparently stems directly from Irving's book, and, through the popularity of Slaughter House Five has been brought into the popular perception of these two bombings.  Vonnegut's unintentional propagation of these misleading figures and arguments are very misfortunate and in the eyes of some take away from the powerful anti-war message of this book.  I think that just because Vonnegut got his numbers wrong and (mistakenly) said that one WWII bombing was worse than another does not reduce the power of this book's message.  His denunciation of war in general is completely unaffected by the details about which bombing in war claimed more lives.

Reed's Version of the Osiris Myth

Reading the lengthly history in chapter 52 made me curious how much Reed stuck to the actual myth of Osiris.  While looking for this myth online, it quickly became apparent to me that it is nearly impossible to define what the "actual" myth was.  However, I did find a source that looks reliable.  This is an English translation from Plutarch's greek recording of the myth.  

The first thing I noticed when reading this translation was that instead of being called "Set" this character was called "Typhoon."  I think this is probably because Set is the god of storms and disorder among other things.  This makes it likely that the Greeks would have called him by their word for storms and disorder, and then when translating to English this would have been translated as "Typhoon." 

I found no mention of dancing throughout the myth on this site.  This is a vast difference from how Reed focuses on Osiris's dancing as his most important characteristic in Mumbo Jumbo.  It is therefore apparent that Reed is not using this story as it is generally accepted in ancient history.  There is also no mention of a text being recorded about these dances that were not in this version of the myth.  However, the Book of Thoth, as Reed calls the text of Jes Grew, is mentioned elsewhere in Egyptian history.  Instead of containing dance moves it is said to have 2 spells, one allowing the user to talk with animals and the other enabling the user to see the gods.  

Another discrepancy between Reed's version and the source I found is how Set/Typhoon kills Osiris.  In Mumbo Jumbo Set brings Osiris back to Egypt by spreading rumors and then challenging Osiris to "Preform the feat of the Germ" (165) and be planted in the Nile to spring forth again.  Osiris eventually agrees to this challenge and is sealed inside a coffer using nails and molten lead.  He does fine, laying under the waters in a "death-like slumber," but when Set and his followers open the coffer, they mutilate him to make it look like he was torn apart by fishes.

According to the source I found, Osiris returns from his travels without any influence from Typhoon, who pretends to be a loyal servant.  However, Set has formed a group of 72 conspirators and laid his plans, in secret obtaining exact measurements of Osiris's body which he uses to construct a perfectly fitting, decorated chest.  He then brings this chest to a feast and says that whoever fits into the chest most exactly will win it.  When Osiris tries it he fits perfectly of course, but Typhoon and his followers immediately close the chest and seal it with nails and molten lead.  They then put this chest into the nile and it is carried out to the sea.  Later, Osiris's dead body is found and Typhoon cuts it into 14 pieces and scatters them across Egypt.

I think that by comparing these two stories it is clear that Reed had read the version found in this source or a similar one.  He uses the same idea of a chest sealed by nails and molten lead which is thrown into the nile.  The question is then why did Reed change the details of this story.  It is clear why he made the changes he did regarding the dancing Osiris and the Book of Thoth, but why did he modify the way Osiris is murdered?

The Center of Art Detention

I think that Ishmael Reed renames the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the "Center of Art Detention" because he is making a statement about how western civilization both exploits non western cultures, but is also afraid of their influence.  The image Reed conjures of a museum being like a prison for the art, much of it from african, asian and south american cultures, but at the same time we know that people pay to see this art from other parts of the world.  In this way, western culture is making a profit  off of other cultures.  However, western civilization is also afraid of other cultures as can be seen in the description Reed gives of the Knights Templar.

[Hugues de Payens] is founding the "Knights Templar," the "poor fellows of Christ."  They are a scraggly bunch who look as if they haven't bathed in months.  The are a kind of Tac Squad for Western Civilization; a mighty highway patrol assigned to  protect the pilgrims en route to the Holy Land from attack by infidels and robbers. (56)

 The very fact that western civilization needs a "Tac Squad" as wide reaching and powerful as the Knights Templar supposedly are in this novel means that there is some serious threat to western civilization that needs to be defended against.  The quote above says that the threat is infidels and robbers, but I think what this really means is non-western civilization.  This is because the cultures that these infidels and robbers come from are non-western cultures, or at least in 1118 A.D. they were non-western.  With that in mind, this quote then reads: The Knights Templar are a kind of Tac Squad to defend Western Civilization against the rest of the cultures of the world.  The "Center of Art Detention" is one of the parts of this defense, containing and controlling the art taken from other cultures by western civilization.  The word "Detention" in Reed's name for this museum tells us that the control this museum has over the art takes a much more containment based form, rather than promoting the art of the non-western cultures represented in this museum.  Using this museum, Reed forms a kind of metaphor for how America treats the rest of the world's cultures in this time period, specifically African culture.  America takes in the valuable parts of the culture, but at the same time stops the culture from spreading and evolving.  Essentially, America ends up controlling the cultures of other people like the Metropolitan Museum controls art.

The Seed of Younger Brother's Revolution

When Younger Brother offers to make bombs for Coalhouse, Doctorow writes, "Thus did Younger Brother commence his career as an outlaw and a revolutionary.  However, I think that this "career" started far earlier in Doctorow's novel.  In fact, I will argue that he started on this path as soon as Evelyn Nesbit left Younger Brother.  This shook him out of the daydream that he had wished for since the start of the novel, but by luck actually got to experience, only to have it turn bitter and come to an end.  He had always been a bit of an outsider, but I think this is what pushed him over the edge into becoming a true outcast from society.  

The next big step he took was when he was mistaken for a police spy standing outside the offices of Emma Goldman's revolutionary magazine.  He is taken inside and ends up at a congress in the Cooper Union in support of the Mexican Revolution.  This time instead of being at such a meeting because Evelyn was there, it seems that he attends because he is drawn to Goldman and her ideas.  He feels ashamed that he, from a relatively wealthy family, has nothing with which to support the cause while the working poor around him all find some change to give.  I think that this is another turning point, the point where he wants to contribute to a revolutionary cause.  We clearly see how strong Younger Brother begins to feel about his ideals when he responds to Father's comment that Coalhouse would have been better off just driving away when he could and forgetting the matter.

Younger Brother bristled.  You speak like a man who has never been tested in his principles, he said. Father was so outraged by this remark that he could find no words.

This firm belief in justice is the basis of all revolution, and Younger Brother obviously has this belief. Of course, the real leap he makes towards becoming an outlaw like Coalhouse is when he seeks out the man himself.  He shows how he truly wants to rebel by the amount of effort he puts into joining him.  An easy way out without feeling like a coward would be to put little efforts in to attempts to communicate such that he never actually got Coalhouse's attention.  However, Younger Brother is no coward when it comes to this revolution, and successfully joins the small group of black fighters.  This officially commences his career, though the seeds had been planted long before.