When first reading about heteroglossia, I understood the term to show the complexity of language through the many "languages" that make up one cohesive language. Vice describes heteroglossia initially as the interaction of genre, register, sociolect, and dialect. Essentially, I understood this to mean that heteroglossia explores the different ways people use one language in a variety of forms to serve a variety of means. Vice primarily uses Henry Roth's Call it Sleep to illustrate Bakhtin's idea of heteroglossia. The examples from Call it Sleep, however, primarily concern an interaction between what is more generally meant by "language." Vice discusses how Roth expresses English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish through a single instrument, English. While I found Roth's tactics linguistically and artistically interesting, they actually confused me even more about the real meaning of heteroglossia. And again, Vice continually references dialogism, which only served to confuse me more.
Essentially, this is what I understand of Bakhtin after reading this first chapter of Vice: Heteroglossia describes the multilayered nature of language. An understanding of heteroglossia will give a reader a greater understanding of the complexities of meaning within the language. I am a bit afraid that I may be completely wrong about all of this, and I am pretty sure that Vice thinks I should also understand dialogized heteroglossia at this point, but I certainly do not.
I found the narratives much more approachable. The narratives raised interesting questions as I saw links between them. One of the first things that stuck out to me was the role of discipline in the lives of these men. They all ended up in what is essentially the most severe form of discipline our country allows- death row. For most of these men, this upcoming punishment has caused them to reflect upon their lives and look back with grief and regret. All but John Jubeart had faced criminal charges before and faced various types of punishment and imprisonment. The others, however, were not too greatly affected by these reprimands and calls for reformation. They broke out of their cells, even through quite elaborate and dangerous means, and after finding freedom took up counterfeiting and stealing once again. It is only when faced with death that these men change. I think their refusal to accept earlier punishment is related to an interesting remark by Owen Syllavan at the beginning of his narrative. He recounts an instance of punishment in which his parents kept him locked in a room. After a while he "seemed to humble myself; till I again obtained Liberty." I was struck by his remark on humility. What is the relationship between humility and discipline? Certainly many forms of discipline are meant to humble (and humiliate) the guilty person. The stocks, the dunce cap, branding, scarlet letters; all of these are at least partially meant to humble their victims. Which naturally leads to the question: Is humility the cure for vice? Are deviants acting primarily out of pride? The image of the confidence-man seems to agree with this idea. The line between innocent confidence and grievous pride is often very thin. How often confident people are mistaken as pompous, proud, and vain. Perhaps, even more often, everyone is not mistaken, and the general opinion is deserved. Pride and humility are also parts of our presentation and performance. Owen Syllavan is a prime example of how pride and humility can easily be just another part of the confidence-man's performance. He writes that he seemed to have humbled himself, and that this performance was convincing enough for his parents to release him from his punishment. The men in these narratives who are remorseful just before their deaths also certainly seem humble. They note their humble position before God as they are about to seek his judgment, and their humility appears genuine. But that, of course, brings up one of the major questions that is not necessarily definitively answerable: how can we trust these narratives when they are written by great deceivers? It will be interesting, however, to continue to examine the role of pride in some of society's most notorious deviants, and also how humility interacts with our ideas of discipline.
I also thought it was interesting how the counterfeiters wanted to make money and gain wealth to have "a gentleman's life" of ease and luxury, but none of them ever attained anything like it-even fleetingly. Most of the time they were so busy running from the law, they did not have the slightest chance of relaxing and enjoying their stolen wealth. This realization makes me distrust their motives for their thieving. Perhaps wealth and ease are the obvious answers and the easiest explanations to give for stealing, but it logically does not make sense. No one in fear of the law will ever have "a gentleman's life." I think it will also be interesting to continue to explore the motives behind crime. So far, my main observation has been that most of these men showed an outpour of emotion and frustration before they began their criminal activity. Isaac Frazier notes that he "gave rein to [his] covetous disposition" after his wife left him and he felt overwhelming despair.
I am interested to see how the rest of our counterfeiters fall in line with these first few examples. I also hope to gain a greater understanding of Bakhtin from our discussion. See you all soon!
