The scene that provides a preview to what’s next

For my scene of enchantment, I have to go with the dragon firework that goes awry in The Shire—as seen here:

Things are relatively normal as we start out, Frodo and company are just having a good old time at Bilbo’s party, letting off small wholesome fireworks, but things take a turn for the wondrous when Mary and Pipin abscond with one of Gandalf’s more wild fireworks. It takes to the sky, the shire folk’s curiosity turns to horror as it crescendos, unleashes its wings and swoops down upon the partygoers, almost turning the scene into a massacre, missing them and exploding over a field, instantly bringing relief and humor back to Bilbo’s party.

While it is not necessarily magic, the fact that the firework turns into the form of a dragon is itself incredible, and terrifying and that is enchanting—to me and to everyone at that gathering, in a way not easily attained though the printed word. The camera shows us the apex of the fireworks leaping into the air, showing us the face of the dragon as it transforms from fire into the shape of a lizard’s head. Then we are taken back to a shot of the terrified townsfolk as the thing sprouts wings and starts to soar back towards us.

Howard Shore’s music also plays a part by changing quickly from jolly to intense, making us feel as if something momentous is happening. And seeing as how this scene is in many ways more additive than transformative adds tension/enchantment in the film where there is none in the book. The scene in the novel is minor at best, Gandalf just lights off the firework and it turns into a dragon with no fear or danger involved. Giving control of the Dragon explosive to the unwieldy and clumsy duo of Mary and Pippin makes it seem more chaotic and experimental, and out of hand.

There is recovery and escape too, but not from the real world to a more fantastic world but vice versa. The dragon firework is a taste; an illusion of the perils beyond the shire, and while it ultimately proves harmless and functions purely as entertainment, it reminds us, the viewers that beyond the sleepy everyday lives of these gardeners, sheepherders, postmen and farmers, there are real threats that don’t just poof away to a round of applause.

In this very same film we will encounter monsters that are so powerful that even Gandalf can’t face them and live. That’s what this scene is really, a preview of things to come, a reminder that; just like Bilbo’s birthday, this is not some farcical comedy… but something else entirely.

Planning and Follow through

Planning and Follow-through

“You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin–to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours–closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends”

Merry telling Frodo he’s going with him to Bree

I realize that a big part of this assignment was planning and following through, but this event was very much the textbook definition of a happy accident—I did not intend for it to happen, but it embodied Tolkien for me in a big way.

To fulfill this critical response, I was already planning on doing something nice for my friend; we’ll call her Sam, so imagine my surprise when out of the blue she texted me asking for help/advice. I barely knew her at this time, just a few brief conversations from church and that’s all. But she needed help and she had my number, so she ended up calling a man she hardly knew.

A deep conversation followed, Sam, tearful and crying –as we shared similar stories. She was from out of state, just like me, away from all family and friends, trying hard not to feel alone. I don’t why I did this, but I immediately brushed a tear out of her eye with my thumb and told her everything would be okay. We hugged, and even though I had known her for a brief time, I told her that I’d always be there for her. For some reason, I felt as though I had known her for, perhaps because I understood her. She said the same.

It was all too reminiscent of that one line; you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends. College is a rather dreadful place in some ways–we put so much emphasis on career advancement and serving ourselves that we forget that the real reason we’re here is to help each other, to be a shoulder to cry on and share the joys and disappointments.

What grades we get on the final exam or even if we end up getting degrees is not really that important in the big scheme of things. What is vastly more important is that we serve one another, as best we can, in whatever position in life we’re given. I don’t think I’ll reflect too much on the grades I got, or how much money I made from summer jobs… But I’ll always remember Sam, and that tear running down her cheek. And that at that moment, I was helping someone in need. My worries and troubles seemed to fade as I reached out to her in her hour of distress.

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived”
-Soren Kierkegaard

Class at the U of Utah, Tolkien with Professor Alf Seegert

Politically Correct Princess

Pulp Fiction Screenplay Review

Like many millennials with an interest in film, Quentin Tarantino was one of the first directors who really reached me, and made me realize the power of the auteur. His film Pulp Fiction was a movie that broke all the rules, no matter what, you couldn’t get a handle on it, anticipate what would happen next, or even prescribe it a fixed genre. It’s dark comedy, it’s gangland camp, it’s a fever dream, it’s a classic watershed movie madly in love with other classic watershed movies.

Not surprisingly, all of the memorable dialogue found in movie is verbatim in the script, but what did surprise me is Tarantino’s pension for using other movies to describe his own scenes. I never would’ve thought to compare Pulp Fiction to His Girl Friday but in the opening he literally says that the dialogue should be said like Cary Grant in that film.

It is impossible to tell where the Young Woman is from or how old she is; everything she does contradicts something she did. The boy and girl sit in a booth. Their dialogue is to be said in a rapid pace “HIS GIRL FRIDAY” fashion.

Other interesting things are the little cosmetic changes throughout the script. Jules and Vincent wearing green trench coats? Jules having a huge afro instead of that Jew curl wig he’s sporting in the film?

An old gas guzzling, dirty, white 1974 Chevy Nova BARRELS down a homeless-ridden street in Hollywood. In the front seat are two young fellas – one white, one black – both wearing cheap black suits with thin black ties under long green dusters. Their names are VINCENT VEGA (white) and JULES WINNFIELD (black). Jules is behind the wheel.

Vincent and Jules, their long matching overcoats practically dragging on the ground, walk through the courtyard of what looks like a hacienda-style Hollywood apartment building.

It was weird to imagine the iconic suits worn by John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson from the film covered by green dusters, of all things. But just about everything else in the script is as it appears in the film. Reading the script really is just like watching the film, and it made me think of a quote from the man himself:

“If it works on the page, it can work on the screen”

—Quentin Tarantino

Tarantino’s whole philosophy has been that it all starts with good writing; the rest builds upon that foundation brick by brick. While minor cosmetic things might go by the wayside, the script is the heart and soul of the movie. I learned a lot from reading his scripts, in fact I always have one on hand for when I write one of my own.

Django Unchained Screenplay Review

Here we have a strange specimen. Samuel L. Jackson has long teased that somewhere there exists a five-hour cut of Django Unchained—which is an impressive length of time. That means that there is roughly two hours of material cut from the theatrical release and nowhere is that more apparent then when you read the script.

There is so much cut content that you could take it out and make an entire film from it. The most apparent change between the script and the movie is that the original story followed Broomhilda Von Shaft and Django from both of their perspectives. So while Dr. King Shultz and Django are out searching for her we see Broomhilda pass into the hands of Scotty Harmony—who was supposed to be played by Jonah Hill. Remember Scotty Harmony? He’s a pivotal character in the script, and is the very reason for Broomhilda ending up in the hands of Calvin Candie but he’s nowhere to be seen in the final film.

In the script he’s described as a chubby young man whose parents buy Broomhilda to marry him, only for him to lose her in a card game to Calvin. So what happened? Why is this huge chunk of the movie missing? A little research showed that Jonah Hill ultimately dropped out, forcing Quentin to replace him with the lithe Sacha Baron Coen. But once again, the actor dropped out to be in the movie, Les Miserables leaving Tarantino once again without an actor for Scotty Harmony. Not wanting to recast him again, the director just decided to trash that whole section of the movie making it a much more Django centric film, and dropping the non-linear nature of his previous work.

That’s just one of many, many cut scenes from the final movie—the script is rife with them. Tons of scenes with Dr King and Django are left by the wayside, and an especially gnarly rape scene in the beginning was cut as well (although we know that this was at least filmed because you can see a piece of it in trailer).

If the Django script shows us anything, it’s that films are amorphous things that change over time. Cuts are made, actors drop out, and the journey isn’t necessarily bringing the script exactly as written but finding its soul and pulling it out. I love this film above all Tarantino flicks, and while I feel the hurt of the absent content, I understand that Quentin needed to desperately condense his spaghetti western masterpiece into a workable two-hour cut…. Although I’d be lying if I said I don’t hope and pray that some day I lay my eyes on that elusive five-hour version.

Shelob

There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form, even such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea, such as Beren fought in the Mountains of Terror in Doriath, and so came to Luthien upon the green sward amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. How Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Bara-dur; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow… none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world. (pg 707)

Tolkien informs us about the mythical Shelob.

This passage shows us that Tolkien could very well have been a fine horror author had he pursued it. There agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form…He knew that in of itself a giant spider is unsettling but not horrifying, but a creature with history, some unknowable evil merely taking the form of a spider, is a terror that stays with you. That’s why I find this passage scary, not because it is about a nasty creature, but becaue of Shelob’s sheer omnipresence as state in this part; how Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, she borders on myth and is emblematic of all the bogeymen stories from all cultures of the world.

That is essentially what makes monsters scary, is their distance, the mystery that surrounds them—no one knows where the jersey devil, the boogeyman, or the Slenderman came from, only that they are the embodiment of evil.

What are two hobbits to do against a creature older than Sauron himself? How can Frodo and Sam fight a horrible thing that has managed to exist for centuries, doing whatever it likes as empires fall in the background. The sheer age of Shelob puts her in the realm of beings like Cthulu, things that exist outside our perceptions of reality and in doing so scramble our view of the world, just by looking at them.

The other thing that Tolkien uses here to make Shelob a greater threat is the fact that she is a free agent, servant to no one. She served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, she is not a minion, or a lapdog of some other force, no Shelob like Bombadil exists in her little world and acts as she pleases. This gives power, there is no reward or ulterior motive surrounding her, she simply exists to create chaos and bring evil into the world. Shelob really is cut from the same cloth as some of fiction’s greatest villains, from Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs to DC Comic’s The Joker, Shelob is merely an agent of chaos, with no plan other than to be a parasite on the living.

All of this is accomplished though lore, Tolkien was wise not to simply drop a Spider into our midst and point at it screaming “Look!”, but instead he builds Shelob into a creature, revealing information yet paradoxically making her more mysterious, pushing her deeper into the depths of his legendarium. The funny part is I can’t help but feel that he may have had some affection for Shelob—or at least a bit of pride at creating something so deliciously evil.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” H.P. Lovecraft

The Man from Hollywood

It’s all too much

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!” –CS Lewis

Spoken by the magical creature Jewel at the end of Lewis’s The Last Battle, these words came to mind as I found myself in bed, deep within my grandmother’s basement. Being in my early twenties, I always find it bittersweet revisiting her house, on the one hand, it holds nostalgic significance but on the other I feel like I hit the reset button on my life, as if the past two decades have only led me back to the very beginning. But I digress, it was near pitch-black in the room, with the only illumination coming out of the ghostly-looking window in the corner — it was covered with thick satin drapes that made the moonlight eerie and violet. To be honest, I was starting to feel claustrophobic and a bit uneasy but luckily I had my German shepherd of nine years lying beside me, snoozing away. I reached out and laid my hand on her hide to make sure she was still there. Sure enough she was, and I felt instant relief as I ran my hands through her fur. Despite the creepy horror-movie atmosphere in the basement bedroom, there was always comfort to be found in that house. Even if the world outside was on fire and the tall coastal oaks in the surrounding area fell shattering to the earth, here at least I would find sanctuary.

My real childhood home, the home I had grown up in, had been sold years earlier I never met the owners but revisiting the outside years later, it was evident that they were vastly different people then we had been… even the bushes outside looked alien and unfriendly to me, as if they whispered to each other “Who is this stranger?” and I wanted to talk to them and explain, “No, you see I used to live here.”

My grandmother’s house, in this regard, was the rare example of something that defiantly refused the winds of change; virtually everything was exactly as I remembered when I was young. It had the same towering trees in the yard, the same oil paintings hanging in the hallway, the same tribal masks on the wall, and the same player piano in the basement. I began thinking about the constant flow of change that all things, living or dead, face, even this place.

Even the very earth is destined to one day be enveloped by an uncaring sun, and literally everything I know will pass away as a result. As I lay in the darkness I pondered what makes a certain place or object sentimental…would I mourn the loss all of my sanctuaries the same way I now mourn my house? Is everything that brings us waves of happiness doomed to one day dry up and become a riverbed of yesteryear?

I still keep a box of objects that links me to that childhood house: music, video games, random toys, and of course my Nintendo consoles all still live comfortably in my living space. When I turn them on I can see myself as a child on Saturday nights, with a smooth controller in my hand while on screen a small hero clad in green—not too much older than I was at the time, sailed the open seas, traveled to distance lands, vanquished an evil king, and saved a beautiful princess form certain destruction. It was pure bliss! The problems of my youth were swept away like a leaf in the wind whenever I turned that power button on. Beyond my bedroom door a whole world of grief laid in wait to face me but I was far too busy having adventures with my friends Link, Mario, Fox McCloud, Samus Aran and James Bond.

You could say that the memory of my house is still retained inside that little Nintendo console… but that’s just it. The memories and moments are retained but not perpetuated. Today I could play those games in their entire splendor, and my old friend Link would probably face little resistance as he cast down the evil king for the second time, completing all of his trials with the help of a much wiser adult player. But would it be the same?

The sad fact is, that I am no longer that boy — the world irreversibly has changed, and I cannot hope to feel exactly the same way as I did in that idyllic room years ago. I thought more of the objects I had dragged with me to college, and how in each individual way everything that was of some importance to me, tethered me to the past. Were they special to me then? Or are they just now taking on significance, like evidence found at a crime scene?

Take the music I listen to for instance, do I enjoy listening to those old Tears for Fears and Smiths CDs that litter my glove box because of their content? Or is it simply that I seek to relive those summer drives to the lake with my best friends, when the only itinerary for the day was throwing the cares of school out the window? Looking back on the cheap CDs I bought from that thrift store near my house, I see now that most of them are intrinsically worthless… especially in today’s age where I can listen to virtually any song or album for free on the Internet. But I don’t regret buying them — for a brief moment, they bring me back to halcyon times where college, serious relationships, and student debt are vague phantoms floating off beyond the horizon.

But here I am, I thought to myself, and the phantoms are real, and the past is past. The house was sold, my friends now live in different parts of the globe, and here I rest with the tiny fragments of our lives together in my hands. I felt sad in the darkness, nostalgic for a time that seemed unobtainable and far beyond me, the lyrics to the Beatle’s seminal, It’s All Too Much, were running through my mind;

“Floating down the stream of time, of life to life with me,

Makes no difference where you are or where you’d like to be

It’s all too much for me to take”

Here I was, alone and in the dark, lamenting the objects, places, and people of yesteryear and wishing that they would come back to me, when I should be looking forward to whatever tomorrow brings. It had been a hard year for me, and I was, for lack of a better term: “In the pits” for most of it, but at the time of writing this I feel for the first time, a tad optimistic. For a brief moment, without even the added assistance of a Nintendo 64 I now find myself feeling once again like that boy in green, sailing across the high seas… except now he’s no longer a boy. He is a man of twenty-one, and he’s smiling. My mind awash in deep thought finally resurfaced I rolled over and ran my fingers through my dog’s fur once more as I drifted off to sleep.

St Augustine and Dante

Abundantly clear to anyone comparing the two authors, St. Augustine and Dante Alighieri are like oil and water when it comes to their opinion of pagan works such as Virgil’s Aeneid or Homer’s Iliad. Augustine rebukes the material as “foolish delusions” (37) Book 17, while Dante showers praise upon Virgil from the very onset when he casts him as his very own guide in The Divine Comedy, saying about the man:

O light and honor of all other poets,
may my long study and the intense love
that made me search your volume serve me now.
You are my master and my author, you
– the only one from whom my writing drew
the noble style for which I have been honored.” (Inf. I, 79-87)

Why the stark contrast when both writers are devout Christians attempting to bring their readers closer to God? The answer to Augustine’s disdainful view on pagan literature as opposed to Dante’s more embracing and positive outlook on the subject, reflects their separate journeys through Christianity– which I believe is the root of the difference and ultimately what inspired them to write such different works.

Confessions, especially at the first can be seen in many ways as a cautionary tale, listing the various ways not to spend young adulthood. Long before he wrote the book, Augustine was himself a pagan and spent his life chasing after hedonistic pursuits, including sex, petty theft, and an academic career. In light of this, we can see why Augustine places the Aeneid alongside his past sins and merely categorizes it as distraction from one’s duty to love and worship God.

Dante finds a way to marry his love for Virgil and the Aeneid with his love for God, justifying that while it may indeed be pagan there is a light, a worth to be found in great literature no matter where it comes from. That detail seems to show Dante as a forward thinker as he is willing and able to cross-pollinate his work with earlier poems.

One could in fact make the argument that Augustine begrudgingly drew about as much from the Aeneid for his Confessions as did Dante for his Divine Comedy, and it is more a matter of the intent in which they did so — Dante to honor the classics, and Augustine to push back against them.

Vicissitudes

Pondering over the stories of The Iliad, Burial at Thebes, and The Epic of Gilgamesh I was reminded of a quote by author Lemony Snicket:

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like” (Horseradish).

Lemony may be living centuries apart from the likes of Socrates and Homer, but his words ring true. Despite being incredible, larger-than-life characters, the lead characters of these three tales all learn a similar lesson — that no matter how hard they try, there is absolutely no chance of outrunning fate. This essay will attempt to prove that characters like Gilgamesh, Achilles, and Creon, despite their great and unyielding natures, are all forced to bend the knee to external forces, denoting a fatalistic belief system.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a prime example of this, as the poem begins — Gilgamesh is a man without fear, concern, or many aspirations beyond subjugating the city of Uruk:

Surpassing all other kings, heroic in stature, brave scion of Uruk, wild bull on the rampage! Going at the force he was the vanguard, going at the rear, one his comrades could trust! Who is there can rival his kingly standing, and say like Gilgamesh, ‘It is I am the king’? Gilgamesh was his name from the day he was born, two-thirds god and one third human (2).

Gilgamesh, not merely in feats but on a physiological level stands head and shoulders above his fellow man. As a demigod he is unmatched physically or intellectually and as king of Uruk his power exceeds that of anyone in Samaria. It seems at this point that Gilgamesh is very much in control of his destiny, as he chides the advances of a goddess, slays monsters, and does whatever his heart desires. But, after Gilgamesh is forced to deal with the death of his close friend Enkidu, and begins his journey to find eternal life, he is faced with defeat at nearly every turn, first failing Uta-napishti’s trial and finally losing the precious life-giving plant to the serpent. Realizing his fate, Gilgamesh, the greatest hero in Samaria is moved to tears, not by a monster but by the sheer hopelessness of his situation.

“As it turned away it sloughed its skin. Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept, down his cheeks the tears were coursing, …[he spoke] to Ur-shanabi the boatman:

‘Now far and wide the tide is rising. Having opened the channel I abandoned the tools: what thing would I find that served as my landmark? Had I only turned back, and left the boat on the shore!’ (99).

It is here that Gilgamesh is at the end of his journey and must return to his city, not with a plant, or an artifact, or any semblance of immortality but merely with newfound knowledge of the finite nature of his life.

Achilles leads a similar life in Homer’s Iliad, as he is the mightiest warrior of all the Achaeans, a demigod, and a natural born leader. The main difference being that Gilgamesh bowed to no one, while Achilles must answer to the arrogant King Agamemnon for his actions. His separation from both God and man dooms him to a life of loneliness and confusion from which he cannot escape. This comes to a head when Achilles, exiled from his fellow Acheans and torn from his lover Briseis, falls upon his knees and weeps upon the shoreline.

But Achilles wept, and slipping away from his companions, far apart, sat down on the beach of the heaving gray sea and scanned the endless ocean. Reaching out his arms, again and again he prayed to his dear mother:

“Mother! You gave me life, short as that life will be, so at least Olympian Zeus, thundering up on high, should give me honor—but now he gives me nothing (89 Book 1 line 410).

Achilles, despite his prowess and stature in the Greek army, is like every mortal doomed to suffer and die in this world, in a life destined to be cut short in the prime of his life. Like Gilgamesh, he spends the majority of the poem attempting to avoid his fate, this time using inaction and passivity as opposed to Gilgamesh’s course of action. Nowhere are these ideas of fatalism more apparent than Book IV, where Hektor states:

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you – it’s born with us the day that we are born” (Book IV).

These morals continue into The Burial at Thebes, which pits an immovable object against an unstoppable force in the form of Antigone and Creon. Creon is our third character who realizes that he, like everyone, is a slave to the whims of the gods. He works tirelessly to thwart the actions of the unflinching Antigone, who will go to her death before sacrificing her principals. It is only when he is warned by the blind seer Tiresias that he relents, only to find that he is already doomed from the start. As Chorus almost prophetically states:

Whoever has been spared the worst is lucky. When high gods shake a house that family is going to feel the blow generation after generation… O Zeus on high, beyond all human reach, nothing outwits you and nothing ever will. You cannot be lulled by sleep or slowed by time (39 Heaney).

The stories though markedly different are vastly alike in their fatalistic view on life. In the worlds of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Achilles, Patroclus, Antigone, Haemon, and Creon, choices are not made so much as carried out by performers on a stage. Their heroes is not to seek after riches or some magical item to reverse time, but to come to the realization that life is hard and death is inevitable… no matter who you are. As Lemony Snicket would say:

“The sad truth is, the truth is sad” (Hostile Hospital).

Works Cited

Homer. The Illiad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Snicket, Lemony. Horseradish. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. Print.

Snicket, Lemony. The Hostile Hospital. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. Print.

Sophocles. The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles’ Antigone. Trans. Seamus Heaney. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Print.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Andrew George. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

So it Goes

Pondering the stories of The Iliad, The Burial at Thebes, and The Epic of Gilgamesh, I was reminded of the end of The Great Gatsby, where F. Scott Fitzgerald writes those unforgettable words: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Fate, destiny, and freewill each play a role in these books. While fate plays a large part in all three stories, it does so in varying degrees from tale to tale. This essay will attempt to prove that comparing these books almost forms a gradient — with the characters of The Iliad locked in place from the very onset, The Epic of Gilgamesh remaining ambiguous on the subject, and The Burial at Thebes throwing out the concept of predestined fate altogether.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a moderate on this debate. It concerns the desperate efforts of the petulant king Gilgamesh in his quest to find immortal life. The question on whether or not Gilgamesh can succeed in this journey is left somewhat unanswered by the book. His quest brings him to Utnapishtim — the lone survivor of the mythical flood that cleansed the earth, and the sole person ever to be granted immortality. Utnapishtim’s very existence seems to suggest that Gilgamesh could indeed achieve eternal life, if he proceeded down the correct path. Although he gets very close to his goal, the fact that the King of Uruk narrowly loses his shot at immortality could be an indicator that Gilgamesh is bound by fate to die like the rest of mankind. After losing Utnapishtim’s first challenge, Gilgamesh is told of an herb called “the plant of heartbeat” deep within the earth that can prolong his life indefinitely if he simply eats it. But just as he is about to partake of it, he turns his back but for a moment and a serpent appears and devours his one hope for freedom from death:

Gilgamesh found a pool whose water was cool,

down he went into it, to bathe in the water.

Of the plant’s fragrance a snake caught scent,

Came up [in silence], and bore the plant off.

As it turned away it sloughed its skin.

Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept,

down his cheeks the tears were coursing.

…[he spoke] to Ur-shanabi the boatman:

‘[For whom], Ur-shanabi, toiled my arms so hard,

for whom ran dry the blood of my heart?” (99)

Was Gilgamesh truly robbed of the life-giving plant, or were there forces beyond his control looking to foil his quest from the very beginning? The sudden appearance of the serpent, coupled with the existence of Utnapishtim, almost seems to suggest that Gilgamesh, for whatever reason was not meant to partake of immortality. However, there is simply not enough evidence to flat out claim that Gilgamesh is bound by fate. As readers, we are left uncertain of whether Gilgamesh was ever capable of achieving his dream or not. If he could have entered into full Godhood the implications trickle down through the whole poem.

The fate of Achilles on the other hand, the hero found in The Iliad, is unquestionable. Achilles is bound to die at Troy and there is no chance of him escaping that end. The man himself says: “Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.” The actions of the war of Troy and its characters are as predestined as the acts of a play. Reading any dialogue from the poem will support the feeling that most of if not all the people involved are destined either to victory or certain death. My favorite line that echoes this, is found in Book VI, where Hektor tells his uneasy wife: “Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you – it’s born with us the day that we are born” (212 Book 6 line 580). Hektor like Achilles, and very much unlike Giglamesh moves towards his ultimate fate accepting it outright.

The Burial at Thebes is the blacksheep of the bunch. Nowhere in the text is there even a hint of people being destined to walk a certain path. Everyone in the play is in the position they find themselves due to very specific decisions made during the course of the story. The martyr Antigone could have easily backed out of her choice to bury her brother, just as Creon had the opportunity to absolve her many times. Antigone herself makes it quite apparent that she is choosing her fate, and that death and martyrdom is ultimately what she desires. She says to her sister Ismene:

I urge no more; nay, wert thou willing still,
I would not welcome such a fellowship.
Go thine own way; myself will bury him.
How sweet to die in such employ, to rest,–
Sister and brother linked in love’s embrace–
A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth,
But by the dead commended; and with them
I shall abide for ever. As for thee,
Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.

Compare Anitgone’s words to that of Gilgamesh. Here we have Gilgamesh, a demigod mighty in strength, who fears death and spends almost the entirety of his story retreating from death. Antigone not only accepts death as inevitable, but also outright asks Creon to give it to her so that she may wear it as some sort of badge of honor. The question of freewill still troubles writers to this day, and in a way, all three outlooks seem grim. Antigone may have freewill but squanders it, and Achilles may die a hero’s death but would he have been happier with a different outcome? The implications change the way the stories read altogether and add shades to already endlessly complex narratives.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.

Homer. The Illiad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Sophocles. The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles’ Antigone. Trans. Seamus Heaney. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Print.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Andrew George. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Seth Taylor

Professor John Talbot

Eng 201 Honors Masterpieces of World Lit 1

12 October 2015

So it Goes

Noises Off

Noises Off’s approach to comedy is like Keith Richard’s approach to drug use — pure unbridled excess with not a single hint of shame. Paradoxically, that ends up being the play’s greatest strength and its biggest vice. It is beyond the shadow of a doubt a comedic piece, with all notions of realism and sadness melting away like an ice cream cone left in the rain.

If whimsical farce is your cup of tea then Noises Off certainly provides, but if you’re like me and you enjoy a tinge of darkness and sympathy with your laughs then you might find the play lacking.

Part of it I feel however, is its legacy. Noises Off was a smash hit back in it’s 1982 debut, running until 1987, having run 553 performances. Ten years down the line however, the poorly received feature film adaptation was created which probably helped push the work from its classic status, to merely acceptable.

This is a play that demands to be seen live, on stage, with all the shenanigans happening in the moment. Simply reading the play or watching the forgettable movie destroys the piece. That, in conjunction with my general distaste of the genre left me wanting more from Noises Off.

The plot in layman’s terms is about a play within a play, seen entirely from the back, where we see the actors, the director, and everyone else involved. The play itself is lackluster, the actors forget their lines, the director’s a temperamental jerk, there’s a nasty love triangle going on, and it all continues to go down hill until every line of dialogue is improvised, ironically making for much more entertaining performance. Noises Off is a polarizing piece of art and if it must be experienced it must be live — it is far too theatrical to be captured in words.

Little Miss Prometheus

The Shape of Things is a look at the moral choices an artist is faced with, and what is within the limits of acceptability. President John F. Kennedy shared his thoughts on the matter when he addressed Amherst College:

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him” (“President John F. Kennedy: Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963”).

His points are indeed valid, but they raise an interesting question — what if the artist had to hurt someone to meet their goals? Should they be allowed to proceed if it meant creating a masterpiece?

This is the subject of Labute’s rather incendiary play, The Shape of Things. When analyzing this most complex work, it is impossible to overlook Evelyn, perhaps the most fascinating and mysterious of the four lead characters. An intensely beautiful, spontaneous and seemingly open person, she begins dating Adam, a dumpy, sad sack loser and begins to subtly change his life. She dominates Adam both physically and intellectually, turning him into a beautiful hunk of a man over the course of a wardrobe overhaul, plastic surgery, and by forcing him to sever all ties with his former friends. All of this seems expected if not a bit hasty, that is until she reveals that it was all an elaborate façade, that Adam is merely an art project for her, and that she harbored no feelings for him whatsoever—all so that she could see if Adam could be transformed the same way clay is shaped into a sculpture. It is here that Eve’s already complex character begins to become even more labyrinthine. The question arises, did she go through all of these lies simply to wound an innocent man, or is she truly creating art? According to Oscar Wilde’s chilling novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey the answer to the latter is an affirmative yes. Oscar Wilde explained,

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all (xii).

Had Oscar Wilde been in attendance at the climax of the play, The Shape of Things, he certainly would have come to a different verdict than most of the principal cast—despite the unconventional means, Adam has become a most fine work of art, and to Wilde that is all that is important. With Dorian Grey as the Exhibit A, this essay will examine Eve’s actions through Wilde’s unique point of view, and determine that they are justified in the realm of art.

Even before Eve is unveiled as the true renegade that she is, she begins showing signs of her loyalty to art over social norms as early as the first scene as she is about to deface a statute in a public museum where Adam works as a security guard. Adam approaches her:

“…[Y]ou stepped over the line. [M]iss? / [U]mmm, you stepped over…” And Eve responds, “I meant to. / [S]tep over…” Adam continues, “[W]hat? / [Y]eah, [I] figured you did. [I] mean, the way you did it and all…” And Eve interjects, “[I] know, / [T]hat’s why I tried it” (1).

Eve, much like her biblical namesake, has already established herself as a rebel, and has her own artistic agenda, even if it conflicts with legality or morality. Such actions might be seen as off-putting, but through the lens of an artist such as Wilde, these actions are not only acceptable but also necessary to create good art. From that standpoint, she is not defacing art but is resurrecting it from cliché. The morality may be in question, but her artistry cannot be detested, and as Wilde has pointed out, the former should not even matter to a perspective audience.

Adam allows Eve to alter the statue as she sees fit, which is the first in a long chain of events involving him submitting effortlessly to her will. With Adam as the only witness to her actions it seems innocent enough, but then the couple rub shoulders with Adam’s friends and then Eve feels put upon to defend her seemingly anachronistic motives against Adam’s bullheaded friend Philip, when he begins defaming the anonymous graffiti artist in the museum who we of course know to be Eve:

“[N]o seriously, do you believe that shit? [S]somebody with the gall to do that kinda bullshit on our campus? [T]hat fucking burns me up…”(31). To which Adam responds, “…[I] understand the impulse… [I] don’t think it was just kids playing, [I] think it was a sort of statement…” (31).

Here Eve’s morals are once again put on trial and scrutinized by all except her subservient lover. She does a fair job of countering all of Philip’s arguments but she still comes off as narcissistic and pretentious to readers—especially with those familiar with the play’s shocking twist ending. It is through Wilde’s strikingly similar companion piece, that Eve’s actions take on credibility. Wilde builds a similar debate of the importance of beauty over morals in The Picture of Dorian Grey, here the hedonistic Lord Henry coaches’ Dorian Grey, a beautiful but naïve youth on his life philosophy on beauty:

…[Y]ou have the most marvelous youth, and youth is the only thing worth having… You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation (16).

Regardless whether it is his superior prose or his beautiful choice of words, through Wilde’s book, Eve gains more traction. Lord Henry’s support for beauty and pleasure over all else is in the exact same vain as Eve’s point of view, and if indeed beauty is rarer and more richer than morals or intellect, than in the end Eve has given Adam a gift that far exceeds the means taken to achieve them— whatever the repercussions may be.

Eve, in her mind is creating a fantastic human masterpiece, foregoing pencil and paint for more discreet tools such as sex, lies, manipulation, persuasion, and subtlety. To Eve, how the art is created is not nearly as important as the quality of the art itself. But Adam is still blissfully unaware of what is happening behind the scenes, for him the trim new physique and wardrobe are simply the icing on the cake of his newfound relationship. However, his unquestioned loyalty to Eve is put to the ultimate test, when she gives Adam a harsh ultimatum. Either put aside his friendships with Philip and Jenny or lose her forever.

Morally speaking, her actions are unacceptable but to Eve this is the quintessential finishing touch on her tour de force, not even a necessary evil—just necessary, because for the sake of beauty they are rational. Adam’s acceptance of the proposition is his final downfall, he has partaken of the fruit, and there is no going back to the Eden he left behind. Following the Bible story from which his name originates, Adam is about to realize the difference between paradise and the real world.

On the night of her art presentation, Evelyn reveals the deception that she had been pulling over Adam’s eyes throughout the entirety of the play. The confrontation afterwards between the two stands as the highlight of the entire story, Adam verbally attacks her, going so far as to call her a “heartless cunt,” but like Wilde and Lord Henry, Eve is willing to justify her actions. She responds blissfully:

“All that stuff we did was real for you therefore it was real, it wasn’t for me therefore it wasn’t. It’s all subjective Adam—everything” (123).

In Eve’s mind she has done no wrong, the world to her is merely art; morality has no place in art. Adam on the other hand cannot see himself that way, he is a person, and he has just been robbed of a waking dream to escape his painful reality. Neither of these perspectives is wrong, just different, but if Adam were to take the side of Eve or Lord Henry he might see the bright side of the situation. Because according to Oscar Wilde:

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow…” (26).

Oscar Wilde would look upon Adam and see him as nothing more than a beautiful flower in full bloom, and though he has endured a harsh winter, that was only so he could enjoy a peaceful spring. But as John F. Kennedy could attest to, sometimes spring is short lived.

Works Cited

Labute, Neil. The Shape of Things. New York: The Broadway Play Pub, 2003. Print.

“President John F. Kennedy: Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963.” National Endowment for the Arts. Web. 15 December 2014.

Wilde, Osacr. The Picture of Dorian Grey. New York: Dover Publications, 1993. Print.

Aura

Walter Benjamin’s “A Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is a philosophical text that explores the downfall of art due to the age of mass reproduction in which we live. Benjamin classifies art that is original, which exists only as a single whole with no copies, as having an “aura” — a vague atmospheric quality that makes it special. When paintings, text, and all other works of art are reproduced into perfect copies, the object in question loses this “aura” and is now merely counterfeit:

The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced… One might subsume the eliminated element in the term ‘aura’ and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art (Benjamin 2).

Benjamin literally sums up “aura” in a somewhat philosophical twist as the thing that is lost in the age of reproduction. Reproduction is not a form renewal or creation but is a stake to the heart of the original itself. Only making new art, and not hacking pieces off of established work is the way of summoning the hidden auras. Once created they must be closely guarded otherwise, upon mechanical reproduction, the thing in question loses said aura.

Benjaimin’s “aura” is similar to Gilles Deleuze’s use of “Figure” and “figure,” in his work, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, with the “Figure” having all of the qualities of Benjamin’s mysterious “aura.” The “Figures” are works of quality art that are formed by deforming “figures” or clichés into superior art. The ultimate difference is that while “auras” exist by themselves and are destroyed by human hands, “Figures” are not created until “figures” are demolished and reconstructed by an artist’s paintbrush.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “A Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Web. 15 December 2014.

Ignorance is Bliss

In the latter end of the 3rd century BC, Solomon, King of Israel wrote down his philosophy on the meaning of life,

“…And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.” (New American Standard Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:17-18).

Agree or disagree, the above statement holds truth in regards to the passages explored thus far, specifically Two Ways of Seeing a River by Mark Twain, Learning the Language by Perri Klass, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The focus of this essay will therefore, not examine style so much as this omnipresent theme, that knowledge and realization are sometimes equated with sadness.

Nowhere is this more apparent then in Two Ways of Seeing a River, in which Twain, at this time in his life, a steamboat pilot working along the Mississippi river, laments having traded his initial wonder and awe at the natural beauty of the river for benign observation. He describes his first encounter with the river as if he were acting out of reverence towards God himself.

“…the lights drifted steadily, enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of coloring. I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me and I had never seen anything like this at home” (Twain 1).

Twain is well known for his fine prose, but here his flourishes are poetic. It’s as if he’s scrounging every word in his expansive vocabulary to describe his emotions but can’t, so in desperation he throws everything he’s got into this passage with the passion and pent up emotion of a 70’s punk rock singer. But halfway through the narrative, his tone shifts from one of astonishment to a heavy, weary, nostalgic, sadness.

“…I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them” (Twain 1).

What has happened? Employment on the ship has forced our hero to sell his feelings for thoughts. His relationship with the river goes from an admirer to that of an associate. To him, the river represents a mechanism, something that is used rather than viewed for the sake of viewing.

“No, the romance and beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat” (Twain 2).

Twain speaks as if he’s confessing to a crime in an attempt to wash his hands of guilt. By obtaining the knowledge necessary to run and operate a steamboat, he has traded an inborn asset, his innocence.

The entire scene becomes so demystified that even his choice of words is flat and professional, which happens to be the very subject of Learning the Language by Perri Klass. Not unlike the Twain piece, this passage follows Klass as she begins a fledging new job in the medical practice.

“I learned a new language this past summer. At times it thrills me to hear myself using it. It enables me to understand my colleagues, to communicate in the hospital” (Klass).

Again similar to the previous author she experiences the thrills of being lost in a totally new environment, experiencing something to unknown and foreign. She uses the choice word: enable, to suggest that without this new found knowledge she could not hope to survive in this world, exactly as Twain would never have been able to hold his position as a pilot without an intimate understanding of the river. However, she continues:

[I] find that this language is becoming my professional speech. It no longer sounds strange in my ears-or coming from my mouth. And I am afraid that as with any new language, to use it properly you must absorb not only the vocabulary but also the structure, the logic, the attitudes (Klass).

Klass reveals that with the acquisition of knowledge comes familiarity, and eventually adaptation. She puts forth that not only does one give up mystique with mastery of a subject, but also that that comprehension changes a person’s identity. Because being an observer and a participant are mutually exclusive, Klass has to sacrifice one for the other.

“At first you may notice these new and alien assumptions every time you put together a sentence, but with time and increased fluency you stop being aware of them at all” (Klass).

The narrative leaves the question of whether or not the change is ultimately worth it, decidedly open, but it does state that the transformation happens so gradually that the participant doesn’t realize they’ve lost something until it’s gone. This reinforces the theme of these texts that knowledge often goes hand in hand with an inescapable feeling of sadness and nostalgia.

Plato’s take is perhaps the most poignant. He paints the picture of life-long prisoners in a cave filled with nothing but darkness.

“Behold! Human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so they cannot move…” (Plato).

The sad inhabitants of this cave, know nothing except about the world that is the cave itself. Unlike the Mississippi River, there is no obvious beauty apparent in this place. Neither is there the excitement that was found in Klass’s personal experience. It seems that the prisoners in this reality have nothing to look forward to in their existence except the possibility of escape. Plato however, sheds an important light on this notion.

At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows… Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formally saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him? (Plato).

This famous allegory draws many comparisons and interpretations, and the author of this paper would be quite foolish in assuming that it’s only application is to his thesis. That being said, what does light do in Plato’s cave? It illuminates, and it reveals what was previously hidden. The light is the physical embodiment of any knowledge. Do humans not all start their lives in a cave? Gradually they grow, they adapt, and things become expected of them. They shed their youth, their innocence, and must become adults.

These texts don’t seem to suggest that it would be better or even possible to avoid having one’s mind expanded, changed, and molded. But they do shed light on the sad truth that growing, learning, and progressing in life are a painful experience. While the learned thinking man, might at times regret his decision to leave the comfort and security of the cave, he cannot go back. His only option is to move forward, where hopefully he’ll discover a new vista, and with it his sense of wonder.

Preformulation

The word “preformulation” appears in Walker Percy’s “The Loss of Creature,” a made-up phrase that has yet to enter any of the world’s dictionaries. Percy uses “preformulations” to describe the thoughts and feelings a person formulates about a certain object, place, or individual that colors the viewer’s expectations before the actual visage is seen or experienced for oneself. It implies that the actual seeing of the thing will differ, sometimes drastically, from the images that have been created in the mind of the observer. “The Loss of Creature” chronicles the tale of explorer Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, the discoverer of the Grand Canyon. Percy explains that while Cardenas was able to witness something beautiful and wholly new, those who behold the Grand Canyon now are experiencing the “preformulations” or the shadows of that original meeting:

The thing is no longer the thing as it confronted the Spaniard; it is rather ‘that which has already been formulated-by the picture postcard, geography book, tourist folders, and the words Grand Can-yon. As a result of this preformulation, the source of the sightseer’s pleasure undergoes a shift. Where the wonder and delight of the Spaniard arose –from his penetration f the thing itself, from a progressive discovery of depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc., now the sightseer measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex” (Percy 2).

The “preformulation” is all that is left of the original beauty of the object, place, or person that was first beheld. “

Percy’s “preformulations” are similar to Walter Benjamin’s “auras,” in “A Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” — the energy and mystery that something displays before it is mechanically reproduced. The difference between the two, is that “preformulations” occur only when something has been recreated from a source, while “auras” come only from things without any known copies. It could be argued that “auras” become “preformulations” through the course of assembly line reproduction.

Works Cited

Percy, Walker. “The Loss of the Creature.” Web. 15 Dec. 2014.

Imitator

Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” isn’t so much a story as it is a prolonged attack on privacy and government invasion. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is essentially the same drive behind “1984”. While updating the message of Orwell’s classic is a good idea in principle, where Doctorow drops the baton is in execution–especially in regards to tone.

Orwell used lean and dour prose to paint a very real, and oppressive society that is as fascinating today as it was in 1948,

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship”

Little Brother on the other hand is both aggressive and thunderous in its thrust,

“It’s our goddamed city! It’s our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as we’re free. Once we’re not free, the terrorists win! Take it back! You’re young enough and stupid enough not to know that you can’t possibly win, so you’re the only ones who can lead us to victory!”

While this type of expression might work for Rage Against The Machine, in the context of a dystopian novel it just feels like a desperate cry for attention and it almost ruins the immersion of the reader. With every line of dialogue you can almost feel Doctorow digging his elbow into your side and proclaiming, “Get it?”

Another example of Little Brother’s failure to replicate the brilliance of Orwell is in its protagonist, Marcus Yallow, a tech savvy hipster meant to appeal to Generation Y. Marcus, a.k.a w1n5t0n (obvious reference to 1984) starts out being a fairly likeable protagonist overall, but when the novel hits it’s stride it becomes increasingly difficult not to think of him as merely an author surrogate. Ultimately, Cory Doctorow clearly understands great science fiction literature like “Brave New World” and “1984” but when it comes to his own work he doesn’t quite grasp the subtleties.

Dracula

“Das Unheimliche”

A saying by Alfred Hitchcock perfectly encapsulates the book, this book: “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it,” Dracula forgoes copious action for atmosphere and tension. It is a tale told through subtlety, and a strong pacing that weaves a powerful narrative that is light on morals.

Unlike lesser horror stories, Dracula does not commit the cardinal sin of merely introducing the Count as a suave, debonair, gentleman, and then suddenly reveal him as a monster. Early on, the niggling doubts about his employer gradually grow into intense, crippling, revelations, as Harker begins to witness surreal events:

“What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms…I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking and it could be no delusion.”

The reader is drawn into events that unfold from a single point of view, subjecting him/her to the narrator’s character as it becomes evident that something devilish lies in wait. It is the anticipation that captures the reader. The audience follows the characters and gradually feels as if they are Harker, Seward, or Mina. The reader of Dracula will be left with frightening images, not easy to dispel.

Phantasmagoria

Discussing “Alice in Wonderland” and its sister novel: “Through the Looking Glass” is difficult. Contained within their pages isn’t so much a story as it is a series of strange vignettes with little or no connectivity. Despite the complete lack of a narrative the books are surprisingly absorbing, if only so we can see what sort of claptrap Alice will stumble into next. Stumble is the right word because for the entirety of these books she has no motive or purpose for being anywhere or doing anything–all her actions are at the whim of Wonderland’s eccentric denizens.

More elitist readers might dismiss the above paragraph and try to explain that Alice is actually a deconstruction of childhood innocence or some other seemingly intelligence remark. In their defense, “Wonderland” and “Looking Glass” certainly show glimpses of brilliance–like this scene in first book where Alice is gabbing with the Duchess.

“–I can’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember in a bit.”

“Perhaps it hasn’t one,” Alice ventured to remark.

“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral if only you can find it.”

Whether this is evidence that there is indeed a subliminal message behind Carroll’s gobbledygook or not, is up to the reader. Lewis certainly shows a command over the English language that few other authors possess, with words and phrases that flow seamlessly together to create something wholly unique (even if it is vexing at times.)

But perhaps Carroll wanted us to keep mulling over whether what we just read was a masterpiece or merely pulp fantasy. If that’s the case, then he definitely deserves recognition for accomplishing what he set out to do, even if the end result is just a mass of confusion.

‘You may call it “nonsense” if you like, but I’ve heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!’ -The Red Queen

Griffin

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Continuing with the theme of scientists and experiments that go horribly wrong, here comes Griffin, a man not too dissimilar from Victor Frankenstein, but overall far more sinister. H.G. Welles doesn’t even remotely try to paint the Invisible Man as heroic in any sense; he’s brash, arrogant, violent, and incredibly vulgar–yet he’s the most engaging protagonist yet in this course.

Throughout the book he’s constantly raining on people’s parades for almost no reason. There’s at least three times in the book where he engages in all out brawls when simply fleeing the scene would be feasible–if not desirable.

“Possibly the Invisible Man’s original intention was simply cover Marvel’s [his accomplice] retreat with the clothes and books. But his temper, at no time very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to smiting and overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting.”

With a character as vile as Griffin, it seems like anyone with a hint of taste would simply put the book–however that is not case. The Invisible Man is kept very mysterious; the audience doesn’t even discover his name until about ninety pages in. When our hero takes refuge in the house of a friend, his pent up back-story shows a different side of our anti-hero:

“‘And after three years of secrecy and exasperation, I found that to complete it was impossible-impossible [referring to the experiment]’

‘How?’ asked Kemp.

‘Money,’ said the Invisible Man, and went again to stare out of the window. He turned abruptly. ‘I robbed the old man-robbed my father…The money was not his and he shot himself.'”

Most novels would establish a hero and villain right off the bat, but here it’s left up to the reader. In the end, Griffin may be of questionable fiber, but had that not been the case, The Invisible Man would have faded into the annals of history.

Aylmer

Aylmer – The Birthmark

The potential discussion topics about “The Birthmark” are numerous, but none are as captivating as Aylmer himself. He’s a vile character who disrespects the metaphysical world and his egotistical experiments rightfully lead to his downfall.

To summarize, Aylmer is a brilliant scientist who’s wife, Georgiana would be the most beautiful woman in the world were it not for a small insignificant birthmark on her left cheek. When he offers to remove her imperfection, it seems a legitimate means to an end — after all if he possesses the skill; why wouldn’t he do away with it?

The reader does not discover Aylmer’s true nature until further into the story. It is only when the subject of the birthmark comes into play that his negative characteristics become visible. He wants a perfect wife and begins the long and arduous operation to remove the benign birthmark. This is not about Georgiana, but Aylmer and his own ambitions.

As he continues his quest to remove the unsightly mark, at whatever the cost, he becomes more desperate. It is as if his whole existence now relies on the eradication of the birthmark. He has the skill and in his own words surmises,

“A philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it.”

Georgiana is pushed to the point where she feels she has nothing to live for, should the blotch remain,

“Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand…methinks I am of all mortals most fit to die.”

Aylmer finally produces an anecdote that destroys the birthmark but kills Georgiana in the process. One might expect the reader to feel sad and cheated at such an ending, but Aylmer’s failure is only fortunate in that he learns that life is more precious than perfection.

Foster Parent

The characters in Frankenstein endure severe suffering, almost akin to the residents of Dante’s ninth circle. Like most tragedies, the hero’s single inescapable vice feeds his actions and ultimate demise. Hamlet’s was indecision; Othello’s was jealousy; and Victor’s is rooted in pride.

A vain egotist throughout most of the book, Victor Frankenstein is so confident and emotionally invested in his bizarre experiment that he appears as a would-be despot:

“A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child completely as I should deserve theirs.” (Shelley)

Counter balancing Frankenstein’s cocksure attitude is the Monster, who, thanks to Victor, lives an existence so miserable that one cannot help but pity him. He is one of the rare characters that can commit a heinous crime, smothering a child, and yet a compassionate person may still pity the loathsome and unloved creature. He blatantly declares in the final chapter,

“was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me?” (Shelley)

The ongoing vendetta between Frankenstein and his Monster is quite similar to Moby Dick, in that Captain Ahab is hell-bent on slaying the whale that took his leg, foregoing opportunities to catch other whales and become rich. Ahab exclaims,

“to the last, I will grapple with thee… from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!” (Melville)

Not unlike Melville’s sea epic, the apex of Shelley’s novel is when the two rivals cross paths, even though they only interact sparsely. Sadly, neither of these characters is heroic or chivalrous, and since it’s a cautionary tale, that’s probably for the best.

Invisibility Reveals

H.G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man” brings to mind a famous quote from President Abraham Lincoln: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Griffin, the protagonist, begins as an idealistic young man, saying, “I will devote my life to this. This is worth while.” (Wells) He was referring to experiments in optical density resulting in invisibility. This power is what ultimately tests his character.

Initially Griffin’s only inclination is to reverse the experiment, but his invisibility allows him to wreak havoc with little consequence. Burglary, extortion, and murder are all in his grasp. Several times in the book Griffin engages in intense brawls when simply fleeing the scene would have been more feasible — if not desirable — “he set to smiting and overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting.” (Wells)

The invisible man continues to become more emotional throughout the novel, prone to fits of rage and cursing. At one point, while staying at an inn, he starts an argument over breakfast, which results in him taking off his mask and revealing his invisibility, terrifying the residents and battling policemen.

Power doesn’t corrupt Griffin but reveals his true nature — a common theme for science fiction of the era, such as Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau. Years later, authors would portray characters that become heroes with their newfound strength, helping humanity. With the gift of invisibility, Griffin is given a choice, to use it for the greater good even at his own expense, or to abuse it for his gain. Clearly he chose the latter. As Mr. Lincoln, said, a man’s nature is revealed when he is given power.

“But-! I say! The common conventions of humanity-‘
‘Are all very well for common people.” -Griffin

Cyrano de Bergerac Review

“Cyrano de Bergerac” is a biographical tragicomedy of sorts, by Edmond Rostand written in 1897, loosely based on the real life poet of the same name. It played at the Folsom Lake College Performing Arts Center for one night only on March 21st 2013 where I viewed it. It’s important to note that I am a fan of Edmond Rostand’s work and the theatre troupe Aquila. So going in I expected a good performance, what I didn’t expect was to experience the rare pleasure of getting completely absorbed in a story being told. During the first moments of the play, I had my usual reviewer mindset on and was merely analyzing the work than really ‘watching’ it. Then something weird happened, I can’t say when exactly but suddenly I was no longer thinking of the review but of the characters and their troubles, personalities, quirks, hopes, dreams, etc. I felt less like an audience member and more like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, completely ignorant of everything except the events unfolding before me. Luckily unlike Mr. Stewart, no one tried to murder me during the procedure and nor did I have to take a fall from a three story building at any point.

I suppose I should back up and describe the plot, (although I’d assume most people are familiar with it thanks in part to the Steve Martin film) it’s set in France, 1640 and centers on the swordsmen/poet/musician/part time theatre critic Cyrano de Bergerac, who apart from Jean Val Jean and Batman is perhaps the smoothest operator in all fiction. Like most great heroes however, he has a flaw that makes him tragically human. For Batman it was dead parents, for Val Jean it was being an ex-con, and for Cyrano it’s an abnormally large, almost phallic shaped nose. An otherwise exquisite and fearless individual, the nose makes Cyrano insecure in his ability to attract women and he even goes so far as to say:

[I am denied] the dream of being loved by an ugly woman

So as you can hazard a guess, the plot is around Cyrano trying to woo a lovely lady and get over his extreme self-confidence issues. Not quite exactly, Cyrano has a debilitating crush on his cousin (distant cousin, mind you) but instead of manning up he decides to live out his fantasy by aiding a handsome but stupid young man named Christian by writing all his letters to her for him, telling him what to say during a date (sometimes on the actual date whilst hiding), and overall Christian basically becomes an extension of Cyrano in all but looks.

The thing that’s truly great about the story is how balanced it all is. The whole situation lends itself well to both comic and dramatic appeal, and most writers couldn’t keep both of those plates spinning. Either they end up milking the comedy to the point where the serious scenes lack weight, or the dramatic sequences make the light comedy feel out of place. It takes the work of a masterful author to be able to conduct people like an orchestra to the point where one moment they’re laughing and the next they’re brushing away tears and when even attempting such a thing, the play will usually have a tendency to go completely snooker loopy and lose all traces of humanity. But it doesn’t, it’s a true testament to a work of fiction’s staying power when it remains both funny and sad over a hundred years after it was written–and presented in a different language no less.

But as anyone worth their salt would know, good writing is all for naught if there are no charismatic actors to read them. Aquila does not drop the ball here, they are definitely a talented and experienced troupe and they handle the source material well. Special mention should go to the fellow playing Cyrano, Jamie Bower (whom I actually took an improv acting class from once). In an odd sort of way his commanding performance reminded me of John Cleese. At the end of the day, no matter who your favorite Python is, when you watch Flying Circus and John Cleese appears, he immediately steals the entire scene. The same is true for Jamie’s Cyrano, every time he appears the other characters almost take a back seat to his shtick, which hilariously is quite befitting to how the actual Cyrano would be as an actor.
Cyrano is pretty much the perfect kind of entertainment because it satisfies on both an intellectual level with its dialogue and the more shameless, visceral part of our minds because of its action and its humor. Is this incarceration of Cyrano the very best? Probably not, the 1950 film version still stands as an immortal classic that gets better with each repeated viewing but this version too stands head and shoulders above the crowd. I think Cyrano himself would give the film a very positive review just for it’s ‘panache’.

Finite

Episodic in nature, The Martian Chronicles features twenty-eight thinly connected vignettes that Ray Bradbury described as “a book of stories pretending to be a novel”. The Martians play very small roles, and as characters they are quite forgettable. Portrayed neither as heroes, nor villains, the aliens have a finite essentiality to the plot and when they supposedly die-out the story merely continues without looking back, which reinforces the book’s notion that no matter how technologically advanced a civilization, it is bound to fall. Mars is the only constant in this ever changing cast of characters.
For example, the marital woes of Ylla and Yll and the desperate attempts of an unnamed taxpayer to board a departing spaceship have very little to do with one another, but ultimately they do have common ground in that they all eventually perish.

Bradbury was influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series and the similarity is quite evident; after all, “A Princess of Mars” is one of the first books to instill the idea of Mars as a habitable planet. There’s a certain familiarity we share with Mars; it is close in both size and relative proximity, and overall, makes the perfect replacement for earth.

The residents of Earth don’t occupy The Red Planet like invaders; just the introduction of a new species with simple biological differences. After the sporadic growth of trees in “The Green Morning”, the influx of colonists in “The Locusts”, and the eventual devastation of Earth life, and in what feels like a brief instant the Martians are history.

The last line in the book is the most telling. Surviving humans board a lone rocket for Mars, to start anew. With the last mementos of Earth destroyed, the refugees look into a pool and see–themselves. “The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water…. The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water….”
It is the perpetuation of the species, or the survival of the fittest; a type of evolutionary change, where the original Martians succumb to the stronger species of Earthlings, and that race continues until some other comes along.

Get Yourself to Mars

A Princess of Mars is a formulaic science fiction romance that chronicles the journey of civil war veteran John Carter to the planet of Mars, where he becomes immersed in an interspecies conflict. Readers might interpret the Barsoom series as a commentary on 18th century western culture, specifically focusing on the troubled relationship between Native American Indians and American-European Settlers. However, in the words of Edgar Rice Burroughs,

“No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature … If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.”

When analyzing the story from the time frame and point of view of the author it becomes apparent that the theme of a technologically superior race struggling with a nomadic savage people is merely a setting that informs the grand adventure, and not a deliberate social commentary. Burroughs employed the parallels between warring races based upon his real life experience.

Essentially the exact opposite of the 2009 film “Avatar,” “A Princess of Mars” shows the primitive green Martians opening the hostilities, as opposed to the sophisticated human inhabitants. This comes to a head when Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium, is being held prisoner by the Tharks. She says resolutely,

“Why, oh why will you not learn to live in amity with your fellows, must you ever go on down the ages to your final extinction but little above the plane of dumb brutes that serve you!”

If this were to be read as a serious critical analysis, then A Princess of Mars not only demonizes Native Americans, but also paints them as mindless barbarians. Dejah describes Tharks as, “A people without written language, without art, without homes…the victim of eons of the horrible community idea.”
While intriguing, the subtexts in the Barsoom books are not the incentive for reading; Burroughs essentially wrote stories to help pay the bills and aimed them at the common man, just looking for escapism.

Straight from the Udder

Documentary Film School, Sacramento, CA — this was one of the early films which we did and won first place.

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