So, I really like to pretend I’m a good creative writer (even though I’m really not) and I’ve been craving to start writing this story (which I won’t because I’m too lazy) with kind’ve has the basic archetypal structure as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. But, sadly, I like getting stuck on secondary characters rather than main characters because secondary characters are always more interesting than the main character. Like, for instance, I really want to make one of the character’s to have a cheesy story at first, but then unfold into this internal train wreck that starts to become (as the books grow) too real for a ten year old to handle (but hey! By the time that happens, the ten year old should be a sixteen year old, so it’ll be okay). Anyways, heres sorta the archetypal idea:

He (the secondary character) is going to be the main character’s half brother named James Spartan who starts as an antagonist. He’s a young guy, and he has a cheesy incentive that has to do with saving somebody (probably would be his long-lost mother or something) who assumed to be dead for many years now but he’s obsessed with the idea so he is willing to kill the ‘prince’ to find her. While the main character is on his journey to realizing he is the prince of this underwater world, his half-brother (who doesn’t know he’s his half-brother. Again, cliché!) will be on his own dark journey trying to save his mother. This cliché idea will slowly disappear though and shift into something bigger. The real point though, in the end, is I want to show the manipulation in youth. I want to show abuse through this character as he grows older. I want to show ruthlessness, I want to show war, I want to sexism, I want to show abandonment. I want to show every piece of darkness that is possible for a young person to feel before he explodes, and then make him rise from the ashes.

But then, after I fill my bedroom wall with a thousand sticky notes, I started to ask myself: how do I know all of this darkness? How do I, a high school student, understand  how it feels without really feeling it? Nora lives in this Doll House where she is manipulated to feel happy. She is smiling all the time, she is proud of her family, she loves the relationship with her husband and her role in the world. But in the end, she really doesn't know her role. She realizes when she leaves that she doesn'tknow who she is. She doesn’t know what happiness truly feels like. Instead, she is told what it feel s like so she adopts those feelings and tells herself that they are her own. And I believe that’s how writers are: they are told what it feels like, so they build their own imaginary doll house and create characters that live that way. They don’t have to feel it to understand it. They just have  to be able to imagine the look in the character’s eyes as they fall apart, or be able to illustrate the young secondary character rising from under the ashes. They just need to reenact a visual, just as Nora had. 

                For the last few days (okay, month) , I’ve been talking to Caroline Dixon about Once Upon a Time. Once Upon a Time is basically about a small town, who in which most of the character’s are from a parallel universe and are commonly seen as “fairly tale character”, who have to be pieced together by an outcast named Emma and her son Henry. Of course, now that the third season has arrived some funky new plots are going on – Especially about Rumplestiltzkin’s evil father Peter Pan, who is trying to take over their small town and swipe everybody’s memory so that Peter Pan can take over the world (or something like that). There are soooo many connections to the story though that I have been able to connect toward AP Lit, but I have to connect Hook (Emma’s probably-future boyfriend) and Emma’s son’s dad (who was the love of her life) to the love triangle in Age of Innocence. After I read Age of Innocence, I kinda saw a weird parallel: Hook and Neal (Emma’s son’s dad) hold the same archetypes as Ellen and May.

                Neal is probably the least and most important character on the entire show. He isn’t really a legit fairy tale character, but he is Rumplestilzkin’s son and when he ran away as a child to get away from his father he accidentally fell into a different universe. When he got into the world, he found he didn’t adapt well but found another girl – Emma – who didn’t fit into the world either. Before they knew who eachother really were, they traveled the United States together (committing thievery like Bonnie & Clyde, of course). The thing about their relationship though, despite how he sooner or later leaves her and gets her sent to jail, is how he grounds her. He is, despite everything, the most normal thing she has. For a long time, he is what gave her a reason to at least try being a part of the world before falling apart. This is a lot like May, who is Archer’s anchor. She forces Archer to adapt to the world. Without her, he would have no reason to go to the dinner parties or the Opera or anything else. She is what brings Archer into society and keeps him there, just like Neal. Pregnancy also bounded them. In OUAT, after Neal is forced to leave her she finds out she is pregnant, and though she despises him a bit for it, it’s the reason she can’t let go of him. It’s the same exact thing for Archer – the pregnancy is what made his final decision to be May.

                Hook is, as you probably know, the pirate who is the antagonist in Peter Pan. In Once Upon a Time though, he shows up in the small town to kill Rumplestiltzkin for killing his love like two hundred years before. We learn quickly that he’s kind of a screwed up guy; he has an obsession with Rumplestiltzkin, has a habit of getting arrested, and really likes seducing people. But when he meets Emma Swan, he sees things clearer and somehow in some way he falls in love with her (after trying to kill her a few times). They, in time, become not only allies in taking down Peter Pan and rescuing her son, but she also develops a crush on him too. Of course, to be with him though, she’d have to go against a lot of the town, her son, her parents, and many others. She wouldn’t be disowned or openly disrespected, but the relationship would be frowned on because Hook is known as a troubled person. It was, like Archer and Ellen, nothing more than a dream. Not only is she tied with Neal in ways that can’t be changed, but their love is a fantasy. It’s exciting – amazing even – but Hook will never ground her like Neal does. 

“Introduction to Poetry” – Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

               In Collin’s famous poem “Introduction to Poetry” is not just about the amazing metaphors, but also about the lack of appreciation of poems in general. He tries to make people understand that readers have lost the charisma of poems. Instead of the audience interpreting it themselves, they only want the true meaning in the poem, but many poets – like Billy Collins – want readers to interpret them themselves and bring their own meaning to the poem so that it can be strong and give the appreciation the poem deserves. Like the first stanza Collins says, “I ask them to take a poem/and hold it up to the light,/like a color shade” he wants the readers to find their own meaning, rather than take his personal meaning because poetry is about yourself, rather than the author. As readers, we are so stuck on the true meaning of the poem that we forget that poetry is about creating your own meaning.

               He says, on stanza three:  I say drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way out/or walk inside the poem's room/and feel the walls for a light switch. He is saying to be blind to the author, and think about yourself. What does this poem mean to you? What could this poem be saying inside your heart? Read it, until you understand how the words connect to your own life. He wants the reader to find their own way out – to find the answer inside the poem. He even says on stanza four: “I want them to waterski/ across the surface of a poem/ waving at the author’s name on the shore” to reassure the readers that there is no answer. He wants the readers to understand that even the authors sometimes don’t know the true meaning, they rely on the readers to understand it.

               On the second to last stanza, Collins says, in order to get to his point “But all they want to do/is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it.” This is what declares his main point: that we have lost the love for poetry. Poetry, to us, has merely come to a work assignment, when it shouldn’t be like that. Instead, it should seen as a piece of art. 

Sorry, I accidentally forgot to blog about a poem for November!
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A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. 

William Blake

For my poem this week, I decided to go with the “Poison Tree” by William Blake because I had a friend, Kate Sadeski, who wrote a short story (in my Lit Mag class) with the same themed idea; they used words like foe, wrath, fear, deceit, etc to center their piece. Blake and Kate use negative emotions/feelings/etc as beings to elaborate on how pure the soul truly is when humans are first made. He says in the first stanza, introducing wrath as a being with life-like movements, “I was angry with my friend:/ I told my wrath, my wrath did end/I was angry with my foe:/I told it not, my wrath did grow”. Blake’s choice on diction brings a mirrored idea into the poem about how the evils inside us are the evils themselves. For example, it is not him who is truly evil, it his wrath and his idea of foe, etc that make him evil. In the second stanza, he elaborates on how he encouraged these beings to grow inside of him by “watered it in fears” and “with my tears”. He means to say that their presence in his life was his fault, by allowing them to take him over and tempt him.

He is also brings in key symbols to add to this point, like “apple” and “beneath the tree”, to show a sign that he was manipulated and tricked. He turned so easily mad and sad that he “till it bore an apple bright” and created/indulged in sin. In the bible, the foe was “satan” or the snake, that was beneath the tree, alike to his words in the last stanza. In the end, he is saying that he was so awfully depressed and easily manipulated that he committed bad acts/sins.

This poem is extremely interesting because of Blake’s closeness to the dark arts and the negative connotations to things like wrath and fear. To somebody biblical, this could be seen as the main point of view being hosted by satanic parasites that are slowly intoxicating him, but to somebody alike to Blake they would realize how Blake’s main point of view has a relationship with the darkness. Blake’s tone can change depending on who is reading it. Blake though favors the darker heavens, generally, rather than the angelic heavens because he believes the darker heavens are more true, and that the angelic heavens are deceiving.

A Cheap CW Show versus the “Age of Innocence” Threshold

A Cheap CW Show versus the “Age of Innocence” Threshold

To add to the list of “my productivity of Thanksgiving Break” (which, I won’t lie, has been taken over by sleeping between one in the morning to twelve in the afternoon) I made a terrible decision to sell my soul to CW’s most recent show “Reign”.  Reign is basically about a 15-year-old Queen Mary and her (of the 16^th century) role in Future King Francis’ French Empire. She is sent to France in attempt rekindle her arranged engagement to the crowned-prince Francis in order to save Scotland from being taken over by England. Sadly, when she arrives, she is clearly unwelcomed and has had several assassination attempts by the queen who disagrees with the engagement, and is forced to adapt to this obscure atmosphere where her words are hushed and are snapped at because she is a “woman”. Though Francis is cold to her because of her outspokenness and her presence is risky in the kingdom, he falls in love with her, as well as his looked-down-on illegitimate brother (whose mother is King Henry’s official mistress). She (apparently) falls in love with Francis, but is constantly disrespected by this Olivia-girl who Francis wants to openly make his mistress. I guess  this show is supposed to be about a love triangle but is actually about the Queen (QUEEN) of Scotland being abused because she is a woman therefore she deserves to be publicly humiliated by an affair, and when she takes interest in a man who will respect her (the illegitimate son of King Henry), she gets yelled at and tossed because it is wrong for her to look at other men while her own fiancée drags around his mistress.

Many viewers, including feminists, argue with my description of the show because even though having an affair is terrible, it was accepted in that society therefore it should be overlooked. They think Mary should just forget about the mistress and move on because it is her “job”. And though the inner-feminist in me disagrees with these critics, there is also a piece of me that wonders if I am wrong. Does Francis deserve to be judged, when his father taught him to do it? Does Francis deserve to be punished for something every man with power did have a mistress in that century? And when I really question it, I go back to the Age of Innocence, and how Archer seems to fight with the same system even though he was taught he had no logical reason to defend females, and I realize the show really isn’t about Francis at all. It’s about how women, like Ellen Olenska and Queen Mary, who are suppressed and ignored, continue to beat the odds against men and their social standards, and writers (novel or by screen) want us to realize that no matter what era it is/situation it has become, it is still wrong. The “Age of Innocence”, I think by reading The Age of Innocence , is the unofficial handbook of what a woman should be and what we are taught now (at least in Western countries) to break. It’s why we argue for criticism toward Francis, even though we were taught in World History that it was okay in that era. It is what makes us shudder when a man in Wharton’s story cannot fathom why Ellen Olenska would want a lawsuit against her horrifying husband, if it isn’t about looking for money. It is basically what makes us fight for feminism, even when there is a devil advocate ready to argue with a logical point.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that most of the time trashy young adult shows don’t always grasp feminism right, but when they do they really get it right. 

                William Blake, a gothic poet born in the mid 1700’s, is greatly known for his cryptic point of view in life and the afterlife. I, personally (even though I’m really not a fan of poetry), see him as a great inspiration as a writer and I do admire his taste and ideas because they are actually original – yes, maybe a little mid-evil and worrisome, but to me he was so messed up and possibly crazy that he’s extraordinary.  Though I’m not a fan of John Gardner, he adopted the same tone in his novel Grendel.  He even inserts a small portion of William Blake’s poem “Mental Traveller” in the beginning pages:

                “And if a Babe is born a Boy

                He’s given to a Woman Old,

                Who nails him down upon a rock,

                Catches his shrieks in cups of gold”

               

                Other then the fact that the stanza is depressing, it creates a good outlook on the character Grendel. Firstly, one of the bigger conflicts within Grendel is that he lacks freewill. Though I do believe everything somebody does is a choice, I also believe Grendel was pushed into his fate. The Dragon convinced him that the only thing he can do that will ever mean anything is to torment men, and after a while he lost himself within his duty of torturing people. In other words, he did not start bad. Actually, I thought he was pretty innocent in the beginning because even though he did not want to do it, he tormented people because he thought it was for the greater good. He killed his soul to “mean something”. Of course, that reiterates the entire question again, “Is Grendel a monster?”  Because murdering innocent people is pretty bad, but is he a martyr? But, precisely because of the line “who nails him down upon a rock” I do not believe he is. I believe somebody else forced him to – Woman Old.

                As far as I know, the Dragon was a man, but you have to look at the entire emotional connotation of woman – emotional, motherly, “take in”. Though the Dragon really was not that nice of a fellow, he mentored Grendel. He helped him find the one thing he wanted to do – mean something. Of course, trusting the Dragon came with consequences, hence the “who nails him down upon a rock”.

                The last line always catches me, but I think I understand it. I believe it means the evilness – the darkness or whatever – is priceless. Or, in different words, the horrible stuff that is happening is actually good. In a way, this makes sense. Grendel tells apart the kingdom trying to obey the Dragon and cause a mess, and yeah, sure, some people are getting murdered, but in the end it’s the greater good because it makes people come together. It makes people have a reason to keep going and build society and fight. Or at least that’s what the dragon says to Grendel – who knows, maybe the whole thing is a bunch of lies.

                But, either way, William Blake is a genius and John Gardner may be too. 

BBC’s show Merlin versus Grendel & the Dragon

                BBC’s hit show (which sadly canceled) “Merlin” is based upon the Arthurian legends about Merlin’s (the sorcerer) impact on King Arthur’s reign. BBC embedded many different allusions and adopted a lot of Campbell’s ideas within the t.v. show (with some minor tweeks). As I briefly brought up in my “Grendel Journal”, after reading about the dragon in Grendel, it made me question the impact of the dragon in Merlin’s story and the dragon in Grendel’s story. In a nutshell, Merlin enters Camelot as a scavenger to find a way to control (and hide) his magic under Gaius, his some-what mentor. But immediately when he arrives to Camelot, the younger version of Merlin runs into a hot-headed youth named Arthur, in which he gets in a fight with (before realizing, of course, he is the kings’ son). After getting thrown in jail temporarily, he is determined to leave Camelot and almost refuses his “call to adventure” until he meets a dragon, who in which he finds chained into a cave below the castle because of King Uther’s dislike for magic and magical creatures.  The dragon in Merlin, alike to the dragon in Grendel, notices his quick decision to change his fate and immediately stops him, by saying that Merlin and Arthur are meant to be “two sides of the same coin”. Or in other words, he must continue his role in Camelot to make Arthur a successful ruler, whether Merlin is happy with that or not. Of course, Merlin is convinced to stay (even though he swears to not believe in the dragon’s words). At the dinner towards the end of the first episode, Merlin saves Arthur’s life and is hired to be his manservant, forever stuck in his role in the kingdom.

                Though it is debatable of whether the dragon in Grendel is a bad being or a good being, his impact on Grendel’s decision leads Grendel to continuously destroy the community. Though in Merlin his role is the complete opposite – Merlin is supposed to keep balance by saving people with magic, especially Arthur – the dragon still holds a selfish dark side that destroys the kingdom.  Though it is not addressed in the beginning of the show, in the middle of the second season it is revealed that the dragon actually despises the kingdom and has been using Merlin as a way to cause chaos (like the Dragon in Grendel has been using Grendel to physically destroy the kingdom). After the dragon realizes that Merlin’s place in society had not backfired and he, frankly, has not screwed it up yet, the dragon reveals to Merlin that he will not guide him anymore if he does not let him go. Merlin is skeptical, finally seeing that the dragon could be potentially angry at Uther but he refuses to release him because of his love (context of this ‘love’ has been debated greatly) for Arthur. After a certain point though, when Merlin and the Dragon make one last final deal that the dragon will help save Arthur one last time in return with being free, Merlin is forced to release the dragon. The dragon burns down the majority of Camelot, trying to prove to Merlin how balance between the magical creatures and mortals is impossible (which, ironically, he had been telling Merlin the opposite to keep him in Camelot). That, in the end, only time will tell how the humans pan out.

                

Ork versus Orc

                In Gardner’s Grendel, Gardner adopts William Blake’s mythological figure “Orc” by taking Orc’s symbolic meanings and using it as a medium to explain the concept of destruction in his novel. Orc is, basically, a positive figure that technically symbolizes destruction, but yet in terms of revolution and freedom. Orc is greatly known as a figure that goes against Urizen (the angel that represents tradition). In many of Blake’s stories, Orc is used as a force that influenced the French Revolution and brings a sense of ambition and freedom to people with lost hope. The most interesting trait of Orc is that William Blake refuses to make him a hero, but yet a mere spirit that inhabits people to fight for revolution and freedom.

                In Gardner’s novel, Gardner uses Ork (Orc with a  “k”) as a priest that finally sees God as a limitation rather than a figure of hope and safety. The priest says on page 131 when Grendel appears to be a God and asks what Ork believes of the King of the Gods, “The King of Gods is the ultimate limitation and His existence is the ultimate irrationality.” Ork has a release of hope when he says this, tearing up and seeing the Destroyer as his savior rather than the devil. In this way, Gardner also adopts the “Milton concept” on how God is bad, and Satan is good, because Satan is freedom and God is holding people back. Ork, realizing this, takes on the mythological Orc’s traits by accepting his idea of freedom and that revolution needs to be taken place before any true hope can happen because right now the only hope they have is an artificial disguise that the Shaper takes and now the Shaper is dying.

                Destruction is one of the main themes in the novel and is still an interesting concept in literature because a lot of times destruction does not just have the connotation of evil and darkness, but of revolution and the idea of starting over. Gardner points out when he brings Ork into the story, that the kingdom is corrupt. The kingdom is being ruled by a dying figure that holds the power of God in the Kingdom, which is slowly killing all of the civilians because they have relied on this figure so deeply that they do not know how to survive without him. When Ork tries bringing this back to the other priests and liberates on his findings, they use religion against him and claim that he is nuts and that he has lost his mind, when really he just holds the fate of seeing the destroyer as a savior and finally understands that he was right about the kingdom. Sadly when he confronts the other priests, they dismiss him and say that God would never appear in front of him. 

Robert Creely

“OhNo”

If you wander far enough

You will come to it

And when you get here

They will give you a place to sit

For yourself, in a nice chair,

And all your friends will be there

With smiles on their faces

And they will likewise all have places.

                In Robert Creely’s poem “Ohno” he explores the fundamental concepts of life after death. Though he never says the word “death” literally, the speaker implies that your soul is wandering away from life, meeting the people you had lost during life. To create this idea, the speaker first gives it a grave (no pun intended) tone, that illustrates the idea of walking away from your usual so-called “bubble”. Wander, in connotation, means to walk away aimlessly without any true guide. If the speaker was implying life, the speaker would have used a different word like “follow” or “steer” because life is practically set up for an individual, making them, if only staying the process of life, not confused or aimless. The speaker tries to use this in the first stanza to bring upon the idea that death is isolation, but when the speaker hits the last line of the first stanza the speaker brings in the word “They”. They, a word for camaraderie, implies that the end of the journey there are new set of beings ready to accept the individual, placing the speaker in an unusual atmosphere that is different than before. These people could be angels, dead relatives, or merely people who have died in general.  

                In the second stanza, Creely develops a positive yet cryptic tone that implies that the place the individual landed is not a regular place. The speaker brings affectionate words like “friends” and “smiles”. But when read the whole stanza together, it brings upon a creepy feeling that these smiling friends are not smiling to be friendly but because they were waiting for him. The speaker says, as if getting for the speaker’s entrance toward this new world, “for yourself, in a nice chair”, implying that the friends had made a permanent place for him there. The point of view also develops a creepy feeling toward the piece. The point of view is second person, but it also acts as if the speaker is still talking about himself retelling a story. The speaker is retelling it so to the point and descriptive to the scene it makes it seem like a trap, rather than a welcoming. The speaker uses lines in the poem like, “they will likewise all have places” and “And when you get there/they will give you a place to sit”. The control that this character does not have shows a sign that the speaker will be there permanently, rather than a nice visit. The speaker obviously knows this as it is happening by the other characters awkward and feels a lack of control. The speaker, knowing there is no going back, takes the seat and joins the camaraderie. 

                In Grendel  by John Gardner, Gardner creates the world-wide philosophical question, “What’s is more monstrous: man or beast?”. In hope to answer this, he takes the antagonist Grendel from Beowulf and twists Grendel into a cynical, yet emotional, character that hosts two different monsters inside of him: a beast and a man. In this first chapter Grendel is introduced as a being that lives in the deepest of the forest and lives like an animal but has the sophistication of a man, with complex thoughts and a range of emotion. Though most people blame his anger on his animalistic side, he craves the ability to communicate, and in some ways to be a part of the community. For example he, like the rest of human society, is manipulated by the shaper, but yet still has the survival instincts of a beast. Though Gardner approaches this as a unique and different idea, there have been countless characters just like Grendel, except they were introduced as werewolves, or wolves that can appear as men.

                Remus and Romulus were, in a nutshell, two demigod brothers in Roman Mythology that were meant to be strong, fearless men but instead got thrown into the river to drown. Their father, a Roman God named Ares, forced a she-wolf to save them before they could drown. The she-wolf granted them her milk, feeding them and sheltering them in the only way she could because she could not communicate and continued to mother them until they could return to society. Though they were obviously more sophisticated then her, for a moment in time they were nothing more than humanistic wolves themselves because they held an emotional attachment to the she-wolf and they saw her, despite being intellectually different, as their mother and lived like her. While they were not actually the physically form of werewolves, they still held the issues of a werewolf.

                Though Grendel is on the opposite of Remus & Romulus because he is actually born a beast, they share the same story line. Grendel and the brothers are both in the same archetypal situation; they live between two worlds because they are born as one type of species but are unconsciously living like the other. Remus & Romulus for instance, should have stayed in the wolf pack, as Grendel should have been accepted and granted into society. This could be a cause of their irrational decisions when they fully step foot into their worlds. When Grendel lets the beast take him over because of his anger toward his humanistic side, he turns into a mass murderer and kills half the town. When Remus & Romulus step foot in society and take hold of the throne of Rome, they both commit terrible acts because they are incapable of reentering society in a normal manner. Romulus for example, broke human ethics and raped a large amount of women, then started a war.

                Personally, I do not think there is only one answer to Gardener’s question. I think there are a thousand answers that can go along with this question, but if seen compared to Remus & Romulus’ tale, it is easy to say that his monstrous acts are because he is a mix between two worlds.  

                T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” the speaker questions the overall question of what a love song is. Though the poem does not speak about love directly, it casts out the feelings of isolation and the effects it can have on someone’s well being. The speaker states on lines 80-81, “Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed”  illustrates the pain and misery, and what it can turn an individual into, alike to Sherwood Anderson. In Sherwood Anderson’s novel Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood takes individuals just like the speaker of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and shapes them into grotesques, because of how their heartburning truth had taken over their life and brought them, emotionally, away from society.

                According to Anderson’s requirements of what a grotesque is, the main speaker of Eliot’s poem is defined as one as well. The speaker says on line 15, “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes”, in which begins his imagery with the color yellow, symbolizing cowardice and deceit. Most of the characters in Anderson’s novel have cowardice tendencies, like Elizabeth Williard in “Mother”.  George Williard’s mother, Elizabeth Williard, had always been too scared to leave her husband, though she despises him and is deeply unhappy in her current situation. Anderson says on page 14, after watching a terrible situation between a helpless cat and a violent baker, “After that she did not look along the alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest between the bearded man and the cat.” In Elizabeth’s situation, she would rather be blind to the ugly truth than see it, deceiving herself, and being a coward.

                Also, in that same line, Anderson and Eliot hold parallels. “Window panes” was a large symbol in Anderson’s novel, often times symbolizing a threshold or a barrier. In most of the situations, a character was looking out the window from inside somewhere, aching to leave, but for whatever reason, could not. For instance, in “Mother”, Elizabeth hopes to see guidance and hope when she looks out the window, but only finds a cold fight.

                Also, the speaker also personifies this yellow smoke, hinting that it could possibly be a person. On line 24, the speaker in Eliot’s poem says, “For the yellow smoke that slides up the street”. Smoke, a visible but at the same time invisible substance, is seen as a living thing in the poem. Many characters in Anderson’s novel holds the same form, like Wing Biddlebaum, who insists on being around people but at the same time draws back and is afraid to be fully seen. For instance, whenever Wing Biddlebaum would get in a rant, George would hope for him to continue but when Wing realizes he was going too far and almost opens up too much, he puts his hands in his pockets and returns to being invisible. 

In T.S. Elliot’s Poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, the speaker illustrates the struggle for self expression and how the separated failure to express oneself leads to a disconnection between the individual and the community. One of the many factors that made an individual a grotesque in Winesburg, Ohio was that the characters, other than George Williard, could not self express the truths that were filled in their lives and when they tried it only ended in falsehood. Anderson even says  “The Book of Grotesques”, “It was the truths that made people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the manner. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood”. For example, in “The Strength of God”, Reverend cursed himself for seeing Kate Swift smoke a cigarette and nude on her bed, but once he came to terms that maybe he is not a totally awful person, he instead went the radical way and said that Kate Swift must then be the instrument of God if what he did was not bad. In other words, he took the truth that he is not an awful person, and then connected it to a radical belief that because he is not bad than Kate Swift must be a sign from God that is trying to reach him.  He then tries to express it with George Williard, saying on page 92, “I smashed the glass of the window. Now it will have to be wholly replaced. The strength of God was in me and I broke it with my fist.” George then forever on believes that the Reverend had gone mad, and now any connection George will have with him will end with him thinking he is nuts rather than understanding Reverends expression. It is also easy to say that Reverend will never have the same connection with anybody the same way ever again, because he sees something extraordinary (“God”) and the people around him do not see it.

In T.S. Elliot’s poem, the speaker has issues speaking and connecting, like the Reverend, as well. He even makes an illustrated scene between lines 90-98 that explains the utter frustration he has with communicating his thoughts like a normal person, “Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,/Would it have been worthwhile,/To have bitten off the matter with a smile/To have squeezed the universe into a ball/to roll it toward some overwhelming question”. The speaker also makes an allusion to Michelangelo, and his perfect David. Though these woman gush about him and speak about how perfect he is, the speaker has a different sight than the rest of them, just as Reverend believes he sees God in a different viewpoint as well. The speaker even expresses how lamely the women admire Michelangelo on lines 35-36, “In the room the woman come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” His inability to see perfection the same way woman do hurts his connection with people, therefore creating a boundary between truth and relationships. 

                In my Formal Literary Analysis Essay, I was considering the idea of writing the paper on the fact that Anderson makes an allusion to Greek mythology through his characters, first starting with George Williard.  After much research I concluded with four different heroes for George:

11)      Orpheus

22)      Jason

33)      Perseus

44)      Achilles

But the only issue I had with these five heroes was this: none of them fully represent George Williard. Actually, as I refreshed my memory, I realized they all symbolized a different part of George Williard. And in a way, they all make him up as a whole. Orpheus (one of my personal favorites), for example, spent the majority of his life falling in love with women (while at the same time going on quests and other adventures that also made him a legend), but once the true love of his life, Eurydice, was killed (by a serpent snake, to be matter-of-fact) he was determined to rescue her from the Underworld. Thankfully, he was a music prodigy because he was the son of Apollo (the God of Music), and Hades believed his music was so powerful that Hades decided that he could bring Eurydice back, but only if he does not look back on his way back toward the Upper World. Sadly, he looked back just as he rose to the surface and Eurydice was taken away. After that, people shunned him and threw him into bushes while throwing rocks and sticks at him.

How could this ever connect back to George Williard? Though George was very determined to leave, he also yearned for a woman, just as Orpheus had. Though there was no specific “woman” until the end when he was officially with Helen, he believed that a woman would be his key to leave Winesburg. Sadly, these women kept slipping away from him, or did not seem like the right one, so he took the hard road (like Orpheus had). Once he believed he could actually win Belle Carpenter’s heart, it was ripped away from him. He ended, just like Orpheus, to be thrown into the bushes, physically abused, and then left with no love.

The second hero I saw in George Williard was Jason, a prince who was determined to get his father's kingdom back after it was taken over. He was most famous for his voyage of the Golden Fleece, which was what he thought would be the "key" to get his father's kingdom back. Jason, like George Williard, had to go through many tasks to get to the Golden Fleece (or whatever it was that was believed would get him out of his hopeless state), like dealing with women who were not the right women to accompany him for his destiny, sacrificing teammates (or emotional parts of himself) for the greater good, and being forced to prove the people around him wrong.

Perseus, another noble hero, was a son of a mortal woman and Zeus. A mortal woman had been told a prophecy that her son would kill her parents, so she was forced to be locked into a dark tower with only a small window for her to look out of. When Zeus arrived, she was desperate and lonely, so he gave her a child. (The mother sounds an awful lot like Elizabeth) Perseus, after getting out of the tower, was forced into the sea and swept away after her parents discovered the baby, feeling alone and not meant to be where he landed. Throughout the next few years, he was tormented for not being “manly enough”, and took up a quest from a “tall” woman (Athena). After fighting many distorted creatures, like Gorgons and Medusa, he finally ended with the love of his life, Andromeda.

 Lastly, Achilles shares a lot of George’s story. He was destined to leave his home for Troy (or, in other words, where his “fate” was, like George’s fate to be a journalist).  His mother feared that he would die there though, so she dipped him into the River of Styx to make him impossible to kill. The majority of his body was invincible, but because he was still mortal he had one weak spot in the side of his ankle (the one part that made him human; love, vulnerability, sadness, etc) which would kill him if he was pierced. Throughout his journey, he was forced to kill through many people to get to live his life. These people were often times thresholds, just as George had many thresholds that he had to “kill” to get out of Winesburg. 

"Suicide’s Note"

The Calm,

Cool face of the river

Asked me for a kiss.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

                Hughe’s beautiful (yet tragic) poem is simply a terrible dilemma between death and life. Though the poem only consists of the four lines, he chooses to use spiritual aspects rather than a person. Because of his use of “river” and “calm” he is able to capture a type of tranquility that is unusual to see in an angst piece.  He manipulates the idea of death and the addictive curiosity that pulls many people toward the next stage of life: death. Many of whom that have read this poem may also find allusions between Greek Myths. The River of The Styx, a classical setting of the underworld, symbolizes the consequences of death (lost dreams, sacrifices, the things that people were never about to finish in life, etc). The River of The Styx is meant to be perceived as a force that was tempting but dreadful. Giving the river a “kiss” would make the soul become apart of the Underworld and would never be able to go back into the living realm. It would be, in other words, death.

                Also, unlike the mythology allusion, a river is known to go “on and on” and never stops. This is ironic, since the piece is about suicide and ending a life. This, therefore, could symbolize a goodbye note to suicide, saying for it to “go away”. Because of the kiss toward the river, the speaker no longer wants to die. The speaker wants to continue on his/her road in life, following the stream onward.

                The tone has a romantic taste to it. “Kiss”, which in many ways could have a connotation of giving the speaker away or awakening death, adds a peaceful tone. Adding to the romantic tone, normally, a river is not calm. Typically, it is hitting the rocks and splashing around its surroundings. The ability for the river to be calm toward the person shows an attempt of sympathy or possibly shows how the speaker does not see it as a bad force. The description of calm proves the positive view the speaker has for the “river”.

                A river in many novels and poems symbolizes a mirror.  “Rivers” in novels and poems are found frequently to reveal the true identity toward the speaker. Commonly, it gives the speaker a realization of identity and discovers, just by looking into it, what truth is hidden within themselves. Also, the diction use of “face”, rather than “surface”, brings upon an idea that the river is not just a geological setting, but in many ways could be a metaphor toward a person. “The cool face of the river”, the face being of a person, and the river being the sin the speaker is about to commit.

                Lastly, the shortness of the poem brings an abrupt end toward the speaker. If the poem was long, it would show a tremendous life to the speaker, but since it is short it makes the reader question whether or not that was truly the end of the speaker’s life or not. 

In chapter 18, in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Shelley uses a piece of William Wordsworth “Tintern Abbey” to illustrate Henry Clerval’s, Victor Frankenstein’s best friend, inner feelings and add in a piece of romanticism toward her work. In the introduction of the section where Henry Clerval came in, Henry first speaks about the inspiring sights he was experiencing and seeing while taking part in Frankenstein’s voyage. Though Clerval had been known for a while before this point of the book, this scene was more of the clearer moments of Clerval and Frankenstein’s friendship because Clerval, for the first time, shares his own “tragically beautiful” emotions. He tells Victor, “I have seen the most beautiful scenes in our own country…but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never saw equaled.” Though he continues in his loving persona by complimenting his country, he admits to Victor that even he feels incomplete and unsatisfied with what he has, and wishes to see more. Mary Shelley says afterword, quoting William Wordsworth:

“The sounding cataract

Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to him

An appetite; a feeling, and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, or any interest

Unborrow’d from the eye.”

William Wordsworth brought out the same message. Though the speaker may be satisfied in his life, the speaker will never be “full” without experiencing the beautiful nature that the speaker is experiencing at that exact moment. Being familiar with the feeling makes the speaker long for who he once was, though holding onto who the speaker is at the present moment. It also questions the speaker’s innocence versus maturity. By the line, “haunted him like a passion” the speaker is questioning who he was when he was younger, and when he had less knowledge and possibly more naive. The beautiful outlook also haunted the speaker with the person the speaker once was. Clerval relates to this because though he does not make the same mistakes as Frankenstein, Clerval is infamous for making the “right choices” that Frankenstein does not. Clerval must have made his own mistakes when he was younger, causing him to be sure what the right choices in his problems are. The scene brings Clerval back to that, forcing him to reminisce over the nature that forces him back to his younger state.

                Also, Shelley uses this to bring in a dose of romanticism. Though her novel was written as, for the most part, a gothic novel, she was inspired by many romantic poets, such as William Wordsworth. Bringing in this section of Wordsworth’s poem does not only add to Clerval’s character, but in the nature of the book and her era. It also noted that she brings this quote in while being in a calm scene, rather than a rough excillirating scene. She wants to capture the moment of peace and tranquility. 

“Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

            Fitzgerald, of all novelists, would know how to make a hero tragic. Though I did not like Fitzgerald’s ending to the “The Great Gatsby”, it was an interesting book in not only the plot but of the underlining messages that Fitzgerald was trying to release. One of the underlining messages was simple: can anybody be a hero and not be tragic? “Of course they can!” Some writers would say, before they write an amateur novel that isn’t half as good as anything with Fitzgerald’s name on it.  Obviously, there are writers who can write a half-decent novel and let the hero have a good life, but 99.8% of the great novels we read in school and trade with our friends at lunch are not happy-go-lucky novels. The hero is typically somebody that appears weaker than the rest of the characters in the beginning of the novel (or at least somebody that has not appeared as extraordinary as the rest).  So why do we need to read about somebody weak, rather than the cliché hero that is naturally strong and fearless and brave? Shane Koyczan, a new age poet, answers beautifully: “Because we see ourselves in them”.

            Analyzing the ‘hero must be weak to become strong’ is just another piece of The Hero’s Journey, but the affect it has on modern culture is more extraordinary than ever. Every movie we see, every book we read, that actually makes an imprint in our lives are focused on weaknesses. Joseph Campbell, the “father” of The Hero’s Journey, explains that our need to have a weak character as the hero is because we see ourselves as heroes. We have the desire, naturally, to want to give our life a meaning, which generally means to be selfless. Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, and so on, have portrayed the perfect hero we want to be. Sadly, most of us are either too ordinary to make it to that moment in being a true hero or we do not gain enough courage in enough time to prove it.

            But, back to F. Scott Fitzgerald, every good book has a weak main character because we have to be able to see ourselves in the book. Whether it is a messed up billionaire in The Great Gatsby or a “young sport” who thinks he is perfect, we need somebody that we can hope for when we lack the ability to give hope toward ourselves. The entire point of reading a fictional book is to live a life that is not ours, and how can we do that if the character is already brave and strong and perfect? Why can we not find a character better than ourselves to look at as a role model? Simple: we are flawed creatures, which is why we need flawed heroes.

Fan Fiction

                Most of everybody I know over the age of fourteen (and claim to have mastered the elements of fictional writing) say that “Fan fiction” is a load of potatoes. In other words, they think taking a piece of entertainment (a book/movie/show/etc) and molding it into a different shape and form so deeply that everything about this piece of entertainment (other than the characters and the main “magical” sense of the entertainment) is different, is absolutely disgusting. But they are wrong. See, fan fiction is really just a synonym for inspiration of a plot or theme. What these critics are really basing their opinions off of (whether they know it or not), are twelve year olds taking the entire theme, plot, and characters and rewriting it. That’s not the only type of fan fiction. Real fan fiction is taking the inner depths and the idea of the piece of entertainment and using it to create their own. The truth is, fan fiction is probably the most overrated yet misunderstood genre, and critics do not even acknowledge that.

                If people really want to get inside the depths of fan fiction, they need to look at literature as a whole. What inspired Suzanne Collins to write a book about a group of youths trying to kill each other over a simple reward? She said much of her novel was based upon Theseus, a tale in Greek Mythology. And do people think it is a coincidence that all science-fiction hold ties to Orson Scott Card and Ray Bradberry? If so, they need to reread books from the 20^th century. Too many books have common themes taken from people like Shakespeare and Mary Shelley. If people can take characters from legends, change their names, possibly add a few quirks to their main conflicts, is that not the same thing as fan fiction? I have read way too many books lately about an abused main character that “suddenly” realized that they are just a magical creature born in the wrong world. Surely that idea originated from somewhere. And what about when authors name their characters off of different characters? Like Hermione from “The Winter’s Tale” (Shakespeare). Most people do not even know that connection because “The Winter’s Tale” is overshadowed by other works of Shakespeare like “Romeo & Juliet” and “Julius Caesar”. Maybe if they did, they would realize that even the most powerful writers of this generation are basing their “oh so original” works on classics that people have forgotten about.

                Fan fiction is not necessarily bad. Whether it is published, unpublished, hidden inside other famous works, tucked into the cracks of overrated internet sites, it is just a genre that has been picked on and abused. If we did not have fan fiction, a lot of the works that make up our life today would be gone. If anything, fan fiction is needed. Even a critic in The New York Times can manage to defend the classical, new age fan fiction written by twelve year olds on sketchy websites:

“Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.”

—	The Boy Who Lived Forever | Time Magazine (via bergusia)

                So yeah, maybe fan fiction can be collection of paragraphs consisting of trash that are practically insults toward the original works, but in the end everything is a piece of fan fiction. We all want to base our pieces off works from people like Oscar Wilde, Homer, and Charlotte Bronte; not because we are not creative enough to write as well as them, but because we see them as the true masters of fiction. And who knows, maybe we are not reading about Sherlock Holmes dealing with his secret crush on John Watson three hundred years earlier than the true story is set, but two men fighting the social prejudices in the Elizabethan Era while at the same time being forced under a injustice monarchy to save the English community so that their nation will not collapse. 

                Before I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, I did not understand the loopholes female authors in the 19^th century had to create. Of course, the hardships strong female woman (even up to this day) have to go through are evident in society, and the clever things that Mary Shelley had to do to get her opinions out there were also clever and ingenious. I read an article last night (one of the many I printed off in hope to find a good article that would be appropriate for Frankenstein) that explained how many people believed Mary Shelley was a male after reading her extraordinary novel and, if she had not gone anonymous, her extraordinary work would not have been seen as “extraordinary” because people would know she was a female. But keeping her name anonymous is only the tip of the iceberg compared to the deeper tactics she had to put in the novel to avoid sexism.

                In an interview many years ago, an interviewer asked J.K. Rowling (who, coincidentally, went by ‘J.K’ to avoid sexism and judgment for being a female as well) why she made the main character, Harry Potter, a male. Many authors make the main character their own gender because they like to live through their own main character and put a piece of themselves in the main character. She said, simply, that people would only see the “female” in the main character, instead of the deeper themes that she was trying to get out toward the world. For instance, instead of seeing the dark evils of the wizarding world and the prejudice themes that came along with it, they would only see a girl and connect all of the themes with her gender instead of the soul of the character (which, no matter what gender, the themes she wanted to create had nothing to do with the gender of her main character). I believe Mary Shelley was thinking the same exact way. She did not just make a male character as the scientist so that people would take the character seriously (though I am sure it was also a reason), but because any theme or message she would put into it would be automatically connected to the main character’s sex. Coincidentally, I had an argument about this exact topic with my cousin the other day. My cousin (a girl) thought it was because all female characters are weak and a writer cannot possibly make a strong female character when it comes to fiction because of “media”, but I think my cousin is wrong. I think it is because writers are afraid that people will not see the true messages that they are trying to bring out if the make the main character a female. Instead of seeing the romanticism in Shelley’s work, they would assume “it’s just a girl who admires nature because it appeals to females more than it does to males. It’s not a symbol. End of the story”. The messages would be ruined.

                The feminism in Shelley’s work is not seen inside of it, but in the construction of it. We, as feminists and fighters for equality, wait for the day that somebody can write a female character and not have every reader assuming that everything has to do with the main character’s struggles as a female and that all themes have to do with the gender. Instead, they can see the light and dark themes; romanticism, individuality, friendship, selfless sacrifice, and a thousand more topics that deserve to be discussed which, I promise you, have nothing to do with the character’s gender.