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.