Watch your @#$%ing Mouth!

When Suzanne first started relating Leaves of Grass to our image of the body, sexuality, and the like, while I honestly enjoyed the conversation, I really didn't see how it connected that well. It wasn't until after class when I really tried to decipher more of Whitman and the points made in the facilitation that I began to see this message of freedom and clarity or satisfaction of ourselves. In a way, I took Leaves of Grass like I took Emerson's Self Reliance(although I was far more inspired by Emerson), in the way that it gave insight on how to free yourself from the cares of others. Whitman took a risk for the time and let out his own thoughts, whether society approved or not. Now we consider books, movies, and other things that cause controversy to be interesting, even refreshing. They are more of a good thing! Just take "banned books" for example! Some of the greatest, thought-provoking novels have been put on that list because people are "afraid" to open themselves up to other possibilities than the ways they already know. It's like how in Dead Poets Society, the student wouldn't "yarp" or express himself until pushed to his limit, but then he just let it out and felt good about it, as did the others in the class. This reminds me of how in the film Pleasantville, everyone there lived life perfectly the way they knew it would be, but as soon as the brother and sister came, rubbing their new ways onto the people of the town, things began to change from black and white to color, literally. Then when things started to change, the young people accepted it while the older generation were concerned and didn't like the change.

    
His sense of freedom comes off a bit patriotic, but not in a "better to be an American" way. He treats it as more of a whole, "one of the great nation, the nation of many nations--the smallest the same and the largest the same," like it should be, with beauty in freedom, saying that of these people "such as it is to be of these more or less I am".  But in this way it was also about his freedom of speech. Although for that time, many people found his words too outspoken and his images vulgar, like the man when "his blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hipband." His work was edited because people were offended by some of it(What does this say about the first amendment?), where as now, like we seemed to agree in class, there wasn't any part of it that we found a bit risque. While the perspective seems dated, there will always be something that we find vulgar for our taste, we even have vulgar quirks about ourselves, although it seems we are much more tolerable about it now. I've seen that now we even find pleasure in some of what was once considered vulgar. Fear Factor comes to mind! Signing up to and watching people eating disgusting things and doing strange stunts for enjoyment!

Haha! The classic "hold your nose so you won't taste it" trick! Lies.....

Why is it that we can even find pleasure in vulgarity or the risque or even just the new? How does this relate to our freedom? It seems we fear what gives us freedom and pleasure because it is so different to us and to others, but once we experience it we no longer feel that way, even more so when others join in. We don't realize other people are the same way, questioning and trying some of the same things we are, "these are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing," even if some of it may seem a bit strange. It's the fear of stepping out of our element in front of everyone else that gets us. If we all can find something we enjoy out of these things, is it really even vulgar, strange, or risque to begin with or is it just our morality getting in the way? 

In my opinion, I feel that there is a right time for things to be serious, but if you can lighten up something by finding a joke or play with a situation somehow, it isn't as threatening anymore. When my grandfather passed away, we were all so close to him, but instead of making his funeral sad, when we gave our respectful words about him, we made jokes, poking fun at him as well as giving our memories of quirks he had. Some people might think that is strange or disrespectful, but it's the way he was and we all thought he loved hearing those things. It was our way of shedding light on an event that was dimmer on one side, but light on the other. I still remember how he used to hunt squirrels, but then as a nature loving man would feed them out of his hands later in life and how he would fall asleep while watching the news, but as soon as you tried to change the channel to cartoons he would say, in his sleep, "Hey, I was watching that!" Haha! I feel people take things far too seriously now, even when they don't need to, we still have problems accepting change and new things, but doing this takes away the fear or scandal of it, what was it that Hermione said in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?" "Fear of a name, only increases fear of the thing itself"...............Voldemort haha.

 Well I have to say this class has been very enlightening and interesting! I can honestly say I enjoyed everything we read and all topics covered. I noticed the whole way that my blog topics always seemed to be a step ahead of the subject focus for the next week of classes and while I first I thought it wasn't a good thing, I realized it just proved how well everything can flow into each other. I learned that everyone is obsessed with something, we all have and should accept the darkness inside of us, and that we are all insane and animalistic. Pretty dark stuff, but I love it! It makes me realize and appreciate myself more because we are so complex as humans, even on our most seemingly boring days, and you know what? It feels great to be a freak of nature, through the good and the bad inside us, because we are all freaks together! "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one."

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Original 1855 Edition. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1855. Print.

Once Upon A Time, We Were Grown Ups

     When we are children, we are used to wanting and then getting what we want. We are brought up to believe we will fall into some easy fairy tale romance. Our knowledge of survival is knowing we are being taken care of completely by our families. But as we do grow up, these freedoms become restricted. Society begins to put a pressure on us that makes us feel there is less hope in our childish dreams. The 'responsibilities' society puts into our heads can become very overwhelming and sometimes makes us want to abandon it all together, much like Emily Dickinson did. Some of the strengths we had as a child, seemed to be viewed as weaknesses when we are adults, but the poetry of Dickinson and Sexton show that as adults, we still have that wanting that we did when we were a child, only it has become more of a longing.

Ahh the fantasies of young love!! Can you see society peeking in through the blinds behind them? haha

     Dickinson’s poetry reflects this want in a more personal sense, seeming more childlike in the things see is searching for, such as love and what makes up her true being. Part of the reason it is so personal can also be because of the isolated path she chose to take later in life. By experiencing adulthood, but perhaps not exactly an adult life, she almost becomes needier. Her “Love” sections of poems were true and beautiful, but slightly like broken records in their message. There is the dreaminess of a child’s thought in wanting love, such as “if you were coming in the fall, I’d brush the summer by,” as if she wants the season to pass quickly so she can see her lover sooner. But then she quickly turns each poem around by adding a melancholy tone like “With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly.” Here she is not sure if she feels positive or negative about love and relates seeing her lover to something as annoying as swatting a fly away.  Her search for the things she wants most are blocked by her own obsession in finding every one of her own flaws to stop her. When she refers to her lover she relates them to “his porcelain,” says “you served Heaven, you know,” and “Your face would put out Jesus,’” while referring to herself as “condemned to be,” “humble,” timidly,” and says “Nor could I rise with you,” as if she is not good enough. She seems to see love as a burden saying, “I cannot live with you, It would be life, And life is over there Behind a shelf.” Although this makes me think that by keeping herself away from society, I wonder if she stunted her own desires. Do you think she could have come closer to knowing herself and connecting with the wants of her childhood had she embraced society? Do you think, still being the way she was, she could have been satisfied by love?
     Sexton seems to be less naive about childhood and her wants by taking childhood fairy tales and bringing about what haunts her and the longing she has to escape the pressures by relating the tales to her personal life. Her poems also all take a negative tone towards this romanticized vision and suggests "Happily Ever After" is not quite how things end up. The haunts of her past, such as being molested by her father and feeling left out from her sisters seem to have pushed her into adulthood too early, making her revert back to these childish tales in search of who she is. Rumpelstiltskin is all about our selves being divided. When the dwarf "tore himself in two. Somewhat like a split broiler. He laid his two sides down on the floor, one part soft as a woman, one part a barbed hook, one part papa, one part Doppelganger," it related to Sexton's trouble in searching for who she really was in adulthood. I feel her unfaithfulness in relationships, her depression, her sexual demeanor, were all characters she played because she was trying to find the person she really was since her childhood had strayed her so far. The way she describes the princesses also show her confusion and negativity towards love ad trust. Rapunzel calls the prince "this beast, she thought, with muscles on his arms like a bag of snakes," claiming you could "shovel dirt on her face and she'd never call back: Hello there! But if you kissed her on the mouth her eyes would spring open," and describes the 12 dancing princesses fun lives like "falling down into purgatory to let them climb in after with their Lucifer kicking." Her wants to find herself and to be able to find safety and trust in what should have been a good childhood kept her almost wild in her search.

Sexton reminded me a lot of The Runaway Bride persona haha. While much darker than Julia Roberts, the fear and lack of commitment, confusion on love and cynical view of it altogether fit perfectly(even some of Richard Gere's first views on women haha) So here's the movie trailer to recap all of that:

     While I’m no where near the state Emily Dickinson was in and I do not see love as such an ugly ans fleeting thing as Anne Sexton, I can see where she is coming from with not finding love because she found so many things wrong with her. I used to do that to myself and the people I dated. I would find a guy I was attracted to, who was attracted to me, and flirt with them, trying to get to know them, going on dates, but then after a while before things got too serious or when they finally brought the topic of a serious relationship up, I would start to pick out all of the things that were wrong with me until I believed it would end badly anyway or I wasn’t worth it for them or I’d go the opposite and find all of the little things that were wrong with them and focus on those things until I wasn’t attracted to them anymore. I could never figure out why I did that because even at the time I knew it was stupid and wrong, then I was miserable anyway. But “the heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain” so it took me until only a year or so ago to really make the change in myself and see what was wrong. It turns out I was afraid of losing that freedom and making that change from childhood comfort to actually learning to trust someone I didn’t know fully in the adult world. I knew my family and friends, but to fall in love is opening yourself up much deeper to someone. It's like how in Sexton's Briar Rose story, the princess "woke up crying 'Daddy! Daddy!'" instead of the prince's name. Even with the horror of her father she still felt she knew and could trust what would happen more there than with another in adulthood. So in a society that puts on so much pressure, there is most risk or rejection for who you are and I felt if it happened enough I wouldn’t be able to handle it. But unlike Dickinson, I was able to overcome this and embrace my new life philosophy of adoring flaws and trying to find them in people because that’s what makes us who we are, how we overcome these ‘flaws’ to realize our true beauty and potential. I found I could be myself, it just took the right people to accept this and synchronize with me. I wasn’t losing freedom, I was becoming more free as myself.
      It seems the one thing that still connects us to our childhood is our search to find who we are, although it shows that it is a never ending journey. Emily has done this by relating it to herself personally, while Sexton has chosen to relate childhood fairy tales to the reality of adult life. While it's sad that they could never seem to reach their actual wants and happiness, the journey to find ourselves and learn to keep some of those child-like qualities seems to be what connects all of us.



     Sexton, Anne. Transformations. New York, New York: Mariner Books, 1971. Print.

Dickinson, Emily. The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson. New York: Modern Library, 2000. Print.

 

Family Nightmares

     I thought the idea of how the family was twisted in The Shining was the most interesting aspect of it. Since we have been studying the inner evils of ourselves, even though the horrors of the house stood out the most, the reality of what the family was going through before they arrived and while the house was preying on their darkest moments seemed a larger part of the message of the story.

     I liked the idea of breaking down each family member into the ideals of their family position and  the way it resembled the signs of domestic violence, being an interesting and large part of Jack's past. Now Jack is suppose to be the head of the household and he is at that. He shows he is in control and has power over Wendy and Danny, but perhaps much of this is due to them fearing him and due to his past. Wendy, being the woman of the house and with the roles in women still leaning more towards family than being independent, she sort of serves the family, especially Jack. The timidness of Wendy and how she keeps an eye on Jack all the time shows how she fears him. Already knowing of his past of drinking and violence, she notices the signs coming back and admits to herself that ""The most frightening thing, vaporous and unmentioned, perhaps unmentionable, was that all of Jack's drinking symptoms had come back, one by one…all but the drink itself." The main thing that stands out here is the unmentioned/unmentionable part. Wendy doesn't dare talk about the horrible things Jack has done due to his temper out of fear he will find out and hurt her. She also notes how "he got irritated over little things. He would unconsciously start snapping his fingers in a nervous rhythm when things got to quiet. Increased profanity. She began to worry about his temper too." Increased anger and verbal abuse, while not acknowledged enough as abuse even though it is a high form of it, are some telling signs of domestic abuse besides the most obvious sign of fear in partners. Alcoholism also is involved in many domestic violence cases, though I'm not sure if it is the majority.

Going back to how "hush hush" most victims are in these situations, another factor that prevents people from how serious and common domestic violence is, when Jack broke Danny's arm, no one in the family made a big deal of it, even though the was the undertone that it had been more than an "accident." Wendy tried to play it off as an accident, but the strange thing was when Jack openly admitted that he "meant to do it. I guess someplace inside I really did mean to do that to him. Or something even worse." This openness strays from normal signs of harassment, but instead shows that while Jack was doing this to Danny, he had some control over it. The Overlook Hotel plays much with the mind so it leaves me to wonder if the intention was to reveal that the choices each family member made were purely reasonable to them and less because of what the hotel was doing to them. Danny, being the child who are known to say whatever is one their mind, is one of the only people who confronts Jack head on about his violent tendencies when he asks him "you'd never hurt Mommy, would you, Daddy?" "No." "Or me?" "No." Silence again, spinning out." Being an only child as well as knowing of the divorce has already taken a hold of his childhood, so being onto the violent tendencies coming for Jack shows the strain in family relations. It appears that Danny does not trust Jack. The story is already threatening enough before you add the supernatural elements, which is what makes me believe the real story lies in the reality of it instead of the ghost story.

    The disguise of the perfect family. How much do we hide about it to the world? How much of ourselves do we hide from our families?


     Finding the inspiration or connection the author, Stephen King, has with their work has always interested me so I did some research in a biography of Stephen King to see if his own past and childhood could reflect why he wrote such stories, including The Shining. It turns out the King's father deserted his family at a young age, leaving his mother to take care of the family. He never said if his father had an alcohol problem, but he does reveal that while writing The Shining, he himself was battling being an alcoholic. A little while after his father had left,  at the age of six he punctured his eardrums, which he said he could never forget the pain of it. I wondered if in his mind he connected the two and while the rest of his life was a decent one, children can feel and experience many things that affect the rest of their lives. This may be the psychologist in me, but I do feel that the pain and negativity put out in the lack of a father figure combined with a connection to the pain of his multiple injuries could be the premise for his beginning writing, as well as the violence and horror style. His earlier works tend to focus on the horrors of being a child, parental neglect, and abuse, which fall very well along the lines of Danny and the others in The Shining. In his later novels, shift more towards the pain and loneliness of being an adult. King explains that meaning and purpose of his books are not a dance of death at all, not really. There is a third lever here, as well. It is, at bottom, a dance of dreams. It's a way of awakening the child inside, who never dies but only sleeps ever more deeply. If the horror story is rehearsal for death, then its strict moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination - just one more pipeline to the infinite." So it seems his childhood is very important to his writing and that it's also about taking the darkness and learning from it to be good. Do you think the attack on Jack as the father figure and his fate reflects King's deeper feelings about his father? How much of Jack do you think could reflect King himself? Could he be reflecting the evils in himself instead?

It just seemed like a startling revelation, but brilliant cover at the same time for a horror story. To me, King was actually showing that the reality of our own family flaws and decay can be more frightening and strange than the supernatural. While the spooks were a huge part of the past of the hotel, they really represented the human mishaps from the people who used to be in the hotel. King has used the nightmares of dreams and spirits to hide the actual horror of the novel, the horror and fear a family can have just from realizing themselves and facing the 'ghosts of their past. Do you think people really deal with their pasts? No matter what amount of therapy given, can we really let go of some of the worst things about us or that have happened to us, or do we just hide them away until the right thing causes us to break?



King, Stephen. The Shining. New York, New York: Pocket Books, 1977. Print. 

"Love and Death, Don't You Mess, With My Heart"

     While I hate to be the one to point out a negativity when it comes to love, one of the strongest themes I noticed in the Edgar Allan Poe stories we read was the connection between love and violence. Now I'm not saying that this has to be a romantic sort of love, but that it is a strong connection of the heart to someone else that caused the decay into violence in this case.
     In the tales "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," there seems to be a progression in events that lead the narrator's love to become a feeling that leads them to acts of violence, which both result in death. In "Black Cat," the narrator begins by confessing "my tenderness of the heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them." This begins his basis of love which defined his later love in life for animals and having many pets. When he was older, he also had many pets with his wife and among getting the black cat, his "favourite pet and playmate," his love for the cat replaced his love for all of the animals equally. This led to him to make his pets "feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them." Then, the night his love for the cat was replaced by his love for alcohol, he "grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of it's eyes from the socket!" Sure, he was taken over by the alcohol which clouded his judgment, but the act of causing pain, the thirst for bloodshed caused his love for the before to turn into a new passion for violence. His natural urges to be a predator took hold after getting a first taste, which made him finish off the cat because "I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offense; hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin," so he had to get rid of the former love to make room for the new. He had to destroy it from his life. The same happened with the doppelganger cat. The memory from his old love had not been purged so when his new love for violence tried to outdo his love for the cat, he ended up accidentally killing his wife, which could be argued would happen eventually since she had been a previous love. Basically when his inner savage nature came out, it took over because it had been supressed for so long and the narrator needed to indulge it, and honestly, enjoyed watching and causing the pain in the end.
     In "The Tell Tale Heart," the narrator also constantly reminds the reader how calm, precise, cautious, and sane he was during the sins he committed. Though he lived with this other man and claimed "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire," for some reason that he cannot even morally describe, he slowly plotted the man's death. The narrator came to the conclusion that "it was not the old man who vexed me, but this Evil Eye." The old man had an eye that "resembled that if a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees--very gradually--I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever." It is said that the eye is like a window to the soul and vice versa, so perhaps the narrator felt the old man's eye could see the evil within him and it caused those realized evils to take hold of him out of paranoia in the end. Again, his love and caring for the old man was corrupted by his need to destroy what was preventing him from contentment. The way he committed the crime and how calm he was with the police at first after the deed was done, shows that he did take pleasure and satisfaction in the bad deed.
     The horrific deeds done and questionable loss of sanity in these men reminded me a lot of our class discussions on morality, mainly how morality was created by man. I feel this was possibly to contain our natural animal urges inside a more rule bound human being. A way to separate ourselves from the darkness that we know lies inside of us. There is a quote by Samuel Johnson that goes, "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." I feel that the pressures of life morals and love along with the desires man pushes down inside himself caused them to snap. I don't think it's so much that they went completely insane, but more like their real inner desires became to much to hold back and so they took over the outside man full of worldly morals and became too overwhelming. Much like our conversation in class on mental illnesses, I do wonder if outbreaks such as the ones in these tales as well as real life mental cases are really just caused by our natural animal instincts and wants resurfacing or the pressures of society to keep them repressed.
     These beastly tendencies and the way the men witnessed things that felt real but were never verified to actually be true felt similar to the horror stories of Lycanthropy. Now I will be the first to admit my obsessive interest in wolves and werewolves from films to folklore to the actual root and stem of these fantasies. It may sound silly at first, but Lycanthropy is a very serious and very real mental illness. In the scientific research and lore book, "The Book of Were-Wolves(1865)" by Sabine Baring-Gould it's found that "It was not till the close of the Middle Ages that Lycanthropy was recognized as a disease." This disease takes on not only mental effects, but can take physical ones as well. "Among the ancients this kind of insanity went by the names of Lycanthropy, Kuanthropy, or Boanthropy, because those afflicted with it believed themselves to be turned into wolves, dogs, or cows.It makes the person psychologically believe they are turning into a monster, an actual beast that goes about doing horrible things. These thoughts can become so controlling over the person that it can physically alter their hormones and body, including excessive hair growth, which adds to their thoughts of becoming a beast, as well as fever and anger issues. While the exact cause of such an absurd psychological disorder hasn't been pin pointed, "the propensity, however, exists in different degrees. In some it is manifest simply as indifference to suffering, in others it appears as simple pleasure in seeing killed, and in others again it is dominant as an irresistible desire to torture and destroy." The most common acts committed in these cases are murder, rape, and cannibalism. A better known historic account of Lycanthropy involved a man named Jean Grenier. During the 1600's in southwest France several children went missing and a young girl was attacked. Jean Grenier confessed to these acts in court saying "the charge of Marguerite Poirier is correct. My intention was to have killed and devoured her, but she kept me off with a stick." "When questioned touching the children, whom he said he had killed and eaten as a wolf, he allowed that he had once entered an empty house on the way between S. Coutras and S. Anlaye, in a small village, the name of which he did not remember, and had found a child asleep in its cradle; and as no one was within to hinder him, he dragged the baby out of its cradle, carried it into the garden, leaped the hedge, and devoured as much of it as satisfied his hunger. What remained he had given to a wolf." Grenier claimed he had sold his soul to become the wolf. His disease which caused him to have the urge to kill and not control himself are much like the narrators in Poe's tales because "startling though the assertion may be, it is a matter of fact, that man, naturally, in common with other carnivora, is actuated by an impulse to kill, and by a love of destroying life." After Grenier's first taste of misdeeds, his psychological disorder drove him to commit more out of the enjoyment and love for pain just like the narrator's who could not stop their urges to continue watching others suffer by their hand.

Sadly the video wouldn't come up so I had to only post the links. But these clips are from the film, "The 10th Kingdom," one of my favourite films. It's a scene where the character 'Wolf' is on trial for doing bad, wolfy things. I thought it was the perfect mock trial representation of how I felt Grenier's trial went. Unfortunately the scene was cut on YouTube...... So start watching at 4:15 then go to part 2 (although I personally recommend watching the entire movie haha).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgvf6rIDSZg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgSHOjVoKM&feature=related

     Poe has delved inside the human soul and heart to tell all sides of what humans are capable of, even when their sanity is intact, though questionable. He has created macabre romance in showing that love comes in many forms, it all just depends on what our natural animal hearts really desires deep down when we let ourselves abandon morals and act purely for our own strange ideas, and scarier yet, realities.

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." -The Wolfman(1941)


 Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Book of Were-Wolves. 1st ed. New York: Cosimo Classics, 1865. Print.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Tales. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.

Survive Yourself

     After reading In the Heart of the Sea, watching Fight Club, and having our class discuss survival instinct, I kept visualizing the same diagram or pattern in my head, a sort of triangle of repetition for the characters and myself. Our need to survive has been around since mankind began, but I feel only certain stories and films have really captured the insanity and suffering a person must go through when they realize what they are really fighting. Sure, our basic needs will be the core of our driven actions in the end, but what really makes it so hard for us to survive, is in our minds, it's that we realize, in the end, we are really fighting against ourselves to stay alive, feel alive, to feel human.
     I started off analyzing the roles of the crew on a ship. The captain of the ship has to keep the entire operation running. He must have control over his crew and holds the responsibility of what turns out in the end. I guess you could say the captain needs to be a very strong and stable man. Captain Pollard seemed this way in the beginning, winning over the crew in a slightly different way than cruelty though. While he was able to keep his men in line, he also "paused to consider their arguments" instead of ignoring their ideas and being a selfish captain. His surprising strength came from his difference 'without overbearing display or ungentleman-like language." The ship is like a government and Pollard created a democracy in it, but his affection towards pleasing his crew ended up being his weakness. He was not tough enough, like Owen Chase, to do what was best for his crew without sparing their feelings. In this way, I saw him a lot like Jack in Fight Club. While he was suppose to be an important person, he didn't actually have the means to be a leader at the beginning. He was a bit feminine, in the theme of masculinity, in letting others run his actions instead of grabbing the reigns for himself and taking charge. It was as if he cared too much of what people thought of him. Though I saw Pollard actually changing into the character of Tyler, symbolically, by the end of the book.
      Pollard was quite rule driven, being a captain's duty, and kept to his standards. I found this was much like how Brad Pitt's character, Tyler, kept so strongly to his rules for the fight club and also for the things he taught Jack. They seemed to govern over both their lives and actions, Tyler's in leading these men into freedom, Pollard in leading his crew. But the way he relates to Tyler is more symbolic, than physical. They way his being, who Pollard thought he was, began to disintegrate was like when Jack discovered Tyler was himself, he was the same as such a destructive being. All morals and rules abandoned in the end to try to survive raw, was like Tyler's existence disintegrating from the world. He was no better than Chase, which was hard to take. His struggle to survive was when he realized he was a coward, no better a captain or a hero than any of the rest, perhaps even worse.

     Now Owen Chase was the complete opposite! Though he seems to be the masculine one, he is hiding behind his need to succeed. Being the first mate, he is higher in command, but lacks the ability to become a leader until his successor is gone. In Fight Club, before Jack met Tyler, he felt no means or way out of his position. Owen feels the need for complete control over his life, this is a lot like how Jack started out. While he becomes apathetic to it, his life in completely routine down to every detail he needs to know. But eventually the need to rise above this takes hold, his real desires to move up in life. The way Jack once to have feeling and perhaps even an actual life, Chase wants to take more glory and sort of become captain. Both characters also fill their own voids with little tasks, Chase keeping his log and Jack shopping through his IKEA magizine. These tasks are meant to keep them sane through the mental destruction they feel is going around them. While Chase's seems much more horrific, being stranded and all, it's the mental torture that is the real struggle. They are both trapped in the desires that they long to have, but are kept from. While in the end, the true identities of Pollard and Chase are finally revealed to themselves, but the intensity of how they wanted to be presented to others, instead of focusing on surviving themselves, I feel helped lead to their insanity in the end. Though they handled in it different ways, facing themselves, even their own failures became too much because they didn't see it coming, or perhaps wouldn't accept the truth, which you could argue was human.

     I suppose this means that in order to survive, we feel the need to hide who we really are, we fight to push our real nature deep below so to every day others we seem like completely different people than we really are. In order to survive, some try to blend in with the rest, we disguise ourselves like wolves dressed like sheep, until the right time. But these attempts get the best of us, in order to actually survive we have to be true to ourselves. The true nature of man or beast are one in the same at the core and in the end, if we keep it buried too long, we will never fully know ourselves so when we have to face our true nature, we won't be prepared, and it could destroy us. Not in such a savage way, such as death, but it will destroy the life we could be experiencing, the life we want to live, but will not allow ourselves to until we reach this epiphany. What are some times in your life when you remember holding back out of fear or some other emotion? What are you still holding back?
  


Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 2000. Print. 

From Fascination to Obsession

     It always starts off harmless. Something that intrigued you, makes me learn more about it until you've studied so hard that it's always on your mind, then it stays on your mind so much that it becomes the only thing on your mind, the only thing that seems to matter anymore. That's when your little fascination in something that seemed so small turns into a life size obsession.
     While Moby Dick is an obvious tale of an interest leading to obsession there is also an obsession in Emerson's Self Reliance, maybe less so for himself, but more for his ideas in being self reliant. In Moby Dick, a seaman named Ishmael decides to join a whaling ship since he had never done such a thing before and wanted the experience, but ends up being plunged into a captain's descent into further madness. When on the ship, Captain Ahab's obsession has already become just not full blown as Ishmael sees "there seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any." I took this line as not only a reflection of how Ishmael saw him, but as a foreshadowing of what looks good at first, but there is something strange and foreboding about it, even before it happens. It's the little wording too, like how he refers to him as being "branded" almost like his obsession is a curse,  since he has already lost his leg to the whale, leading to his pursuit to destroy it. What started out as a love for the sea, became full of vengeance to get revenge on this whale. Ahab sees it as this demon out to get him and his desire to kill it leads to obsession when he abandons his role as captain by neglecting the safely and control of his crew so that he could get this whale. "Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad" which led him to throw away the responsibility and morals of his title to go after pure selfish obsession, even though he suspected the worse within him. This whale was more than a whale, it was the evil he wished to overcome, his own wrongdoings personified, confusing him to do what he thought was right, which only furthered his bad judgment of morals.
     Since I just watched the movie last night, I found a comical, but true connection to a man lost to his obsession in Frank N Furter from The Rocky Horror picture show. While we don't know exactly why they all came to Earth from the planet Transexual, we are given a glimpse of Frank N Furter's ways in the past and how they build up to his creation of Rocky. When Brad and Janet reach the mansion, they learn he wants to create the perfect man. When he sees Rocky is what he considers perfection, all he's concerned about is taking care of Rocky and making sure he is in tip top shape for Frank's desires. His tendencies led him to think you should always "give yourself over to absolute pleasure" so he ends up using all of his friends for his own personal gain. This is revealed after he becomes fed up with his guests and Columbia tells him she "can't stand any more of this! First you spurn me for Eddie, and then you throw him off like an old overcoat for Rocky! You chew people up and then you spit them out again... I loved you... do you hear me? I loved you! And what did it get me? Yeah, I'll tell you: a big nothing. You're like a sponge. You take, take, take, and drain others of their love and emotion." Even after he seems to understand what he has done was a bit immoral, his past selfishness and obsession for lust lead to his demise, by those he the servants he thought were on his side. His obsession led to his death, just like Ahab's did because they could see nothing but what they wanted, without a thought of anything else, perhaps even their own well being in the end.

     Though Self Reliance does not seem as dangerous an obsession as pursuing Moby Dick, it ties in another point I wanted to make of how obsession can lead us to abandon our own morals, or more so, when we've gone so far, how can we judge what's right and wrong? Though Emerson talks about becoming self reliant, I also wonder if the things he says can be taken too far. We talked in class about how, men would leave society to go live as hermits by themselves, only relying on what they could provide for themselves by what was naturally around them. Though it seems quite manly and heroic, the question of the cost of being self reliant came up. Losing communication with others and isolating yourself can lead to a loss of actual reality with the rest of the world. Though I don't blame Emerson for his writing, as I actually loved it and was inspired by it, I feel the idea of being self reliant is easily misunderstood. When you are completely self reliant, I feel your morals change and are different from if you depended on at least some things in normal life. Emerson says "good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong, what is against it." I agree with this, but wonder if anything can really be considered moral if everything can be morally good or bad, it just depends on what the person thinks. I think "killing puppies" is bad, but a puppy killer probably thinks it's a good idea. I may be wrong but it seems Emerson feels if this puppy killer thinks it's right, then it is right. I believe when reading Self Reliance we are figuring out our own morals as we go through what he says. We interpret it our own way, which is brilliant, but can be misinterpreted and therefore taken too far in the minds of some people's morals. Very, VERY confusing ha! Another quote I liked that goes along was "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." It's true that we should trust ourselves, but how do we know if we can trust ourselves if we are on our own, completely self reliant, wouldn't we start to question ourselves in a "Cast Away" sort of way? I think we need some sort of connection to others that are like us to establish our own sane morals, otherwise we will become obsessed with needing to be disconnected, we will all start having deep conversations with volleyballs, or with an object of our desire that is unhealthy because our morals have been blurred.
     A documentary that I remembered and was inspired by from this was "Grizzly Man." It was about a man named Timothy Treadwell, a man so fascinated and in love with bears that he left society to go try to live among them. His fascination grew to obsession when he began thinking he could touch them and communicate with them without harm. He had done much research and know a lot about their habits, but his "need" for acceptance by the bears made him drop his caution of them still being a wild animal because he really thought he could be one of them. In the end, his love and obsession ended up getting him killed by the animal he thought he had such a connection with. It also took the life of his girlfriend, who ended up getting pulled into his obsession as well. Perhaps his abandonment of society, left him feeling outcast with these animals being his only connection anymore, which is where the idea of self reliance can be taken too far. One of the quotes I liked from Emerson was "what I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think." Though good advice, I feel from experience that while we go after what we want most, sometimes to isolation is too strong and breaks a person down. It really is sad because I was always hoping it would work out for him but because he lost sight of reality a bit in his obsession, his desire was taken from him. I really recommend watching it because while he seems a bit insane at times, watching his motives and heart for what he is doing shows a lot about where obsession comes from. It's strange, but it's sort of beautiful.  

This leads to my final questions:

When we do become obsessed, are we sane enough to know what is right or wrong, even if we don't do what's right? I really am not sure since, from experience I do have that feeling of guilt when I am doing something wrong, even when I am doing it. I do not consider myself obsessed when doing these things though so I feel that doesn't count. Since the examples I made show people abandoning morals in pursuit of what they do think is right, I think the answer is probably no, we are not sane in to make these decisions while obsessed, but what do you think?

Like the thought of how our own white whale is an obsession deeper than just the thing itself, in the words of Melville, "can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek?" Can we do this especially if we are not sane?


Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1851. Print. 

Herzog, Werner , Dir. Grizzly Man. Perf. Treadwell, Timothy. Lions Gate Films: 2005, Film.

Peer Pressure of the Heart

The stories about men trying to woo women and competing with other men for the same conquest had been happening for ages, as have the stories of women being promiscuous and teasing towards them. I loved that The Coquette was written in the form of letters though because it gave a better feel for the gossip in the tale as well as hearing it from all sides. I thought it made the story easily relatable even to modern times, though it was an older work. Now I'm sure I'm not the only girl who has connected with Eliza's situation, though I knew it was harder than it sounds to make a decision between two people who want you for their own. I've been put in the situation two major times that I can remember so far. Eliza needed to choose between two men who were there, but perhaps not connected to her or to be alone. To me, Eliza seemed like a pretty level-headed woman at first, believing " that the graces and virtues are not oftner united! They must however, meet in the man of my choice; and til I find such a one, I shall continue to subscribe my name." She seemed like the type of woman to know what she wanted generally and not to settle. I related to her in this way because of the morals and values I was raised with, but also because of past horrible relationships. While Eliza wanted to find a man good enough for her, I wanted to find a man who wouldn't trick me and treat me badly later on. I wanted to find a good guy.

While our intentions may not have been the same, the men certainly were. Eliza had Reverend J. Boyer, who while maybe not the most interesting man, was respectable and seemed to truly care about her. As a gentleman, he wanted to remain ' a reasonable creature; and not suffer my judgment to be mislead by the operations of a blind passion." This statement showed that his intentions were good towards Eliza because when he finally realized he "believe it peculiar to lovers; and with that class I must now rank myself, though I did not know, until this evening, that I was so engaged as I find I really am. I knew indeed I was pleased with this amiable girl; that I was interested in her favor; that I was happier in her company than anywhere else, with innumerable other circumstances, which would have told me the truth." He only wanted to be with her, honest with himself, out of love, nothing more.
I had a guy who was pretty shy, but a sweetheart who tried to do all the right things and was always polite, but we had no chemistry and only a few things in common (and you have to know those few things aren't enough to last long). So after just a few dates and giving him the benefit, I could feel it wasn't going to work though I couldn't let go just yet.

Then Eliza had Major Peter Sanford, who I like to call the 'bad boy' of the story, on the other side. He was the devilishly handsome, charmer at first sight, but with all the wrong intentions for later on. While she may of suspected, she couldn't have known his wrong intentions from the beginning as only the reader could view his letters, but from the very start he fancied 'this young lady is a coquette; and if so, I shall avenge my sex, by retaliating the mischiefs, she meditates against us" so he was treating her more like a game, like a conquest. Though he keeps it in the dark to only talk to some "again of conquests" though to "only enjoy them in silence." Being of his status and persona, he seems to certainly get around. There was also the intention of wanting her wealth that I picked up on, seeing as Eliza was of higher society, as was well known, his intentions are revealed in private that while he is "persuaded she would make an excellent wife; but that you know is no part of my plan, so as long as I can keep out of the noose. Whenever I do submit to be shackled, it must be from the necessity of mending my fortune." He doesn't really care anything for her and would only surrender to her if he needed the wealth. Now I'm not wealthy, but the other guy I was caught on was a guy who could make me laugh instantly, was very playful, so there was instant attraction, but I could see the early signs that if anything started, he would end up treating me like dirt.

Now it seems obvious who would be the right choice, if feeling you had to indeed choose. You want someone who is going to treat you right, but you also want someone you can connect with and be attracted to. In my situation and Eliza's both men had a bit of each, so it's hard to choose or even decide against both. In the end, I was able to realize neither man was right for me, so I chose independence, and although a bit miserable, I knew it would be the best for the time being. I didn't want to just choose one of the guys so I would have someone, then end up getting pregnant and dying at an inn ha! These times are much different than back then though. Eliza knew neither man was right for her, she felt Sanford was "deficient in one of the greatest essentials of the character, and that is, virtue" and "could not repulse and do not intend to encourage" Boyer since he was not of interest to her heart. I think a lot of her decision to choose a man, when she would have been just fine without them, was the time period. Society felt finding a man was much more important in order to be successful! If a woman didn't find a man that could represent her, than she didn't have much hope for a fulfilling future. They were not taken as seriously as they are now, so there was no real place other than beside a man to lead her, which is why I believe if I remember my research right, The Coquette was not published with her real name at firs. She was pressured into thinking she needed a man to get ahead in life, which became her focus and control in life in the end. Although we can wonder what would have happened if she chose to be with Boyer or alone, I believe everything happens for a reason so I can't help but feel the irony in Mr. Haly's words at the beginning when he told Eliza, "God is wise nd good in all his ways; and in this, as in all other respects, I would cheerfully say, His will be done." It makes me wonder if Eliza's fate was inevitable. What do you think? Do you think she would have somehow reached the same fate with Boyer? What would have happened if she rejected both of them?


 Foster, Hannah W. The Coquette. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print.

"Roll It, Pat It, Mark It With an A"

 

Branding is quite an unusual statement. It started off as just a way for ranchers to be able to tell who's cattle was who's by taking a big, hot iron stamp and burning their name or symbol into the cow's ass. It was like there way of claiming or taking power over the cow. Over time, it's spread to a number of different things such as stickers on food to show where it came from, a saying meaning someone had left there 'mark' or some impression on you, even sexual fetishes(Hey! Who knows? Maybe the cows like it....), but they all still stand as a symbol of identification and ownership over something. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead(Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)" because this idea of branding is a lot like the 'A' Hester had to wear in The Scarlet Letter. This 'A' was stitched onto her clothes, burning into her heart and head, to stand as a reminder of the adultery committed. She had become a product, a mascot, of the sin so that everyone who saw this brand would be warned against doing the same. Hawthorne referred to her as "a walking sermon," which instilled fear into the townspeople to disobey or even "let loose" in such a limited religious society. It was a lot like the views for the people during the Salem Witch Trials in a way.

While this may seem far off at first, I thought this scarlet letter Hester was forced to wear was similar to the numbers put on the Jews arms during the Holocaust. It was a mechanism used to take away their humanity and turn them into a statement. The Jews were tortured and killed for standing by their ethnicity, just as Hester was tortured for standing by her desire. But I'm really relating this more to the actual history the story is based on. We learned that these women were killed for going against society's norms, even the smallest thing, and the part of society that wanted an Aryan race, did this to the Jews for being Jews! It was society's need for control over the people, to own them, that led to this. The others was out of fear of being killed for not following what society tells them, even if they didn't commit a crime as such, going against society was enough. I have discovered that fear will often get in the way of what's right in people.

As would be expected from a class focusing on monsters and restless ghosts, there is a reoccurring theme of instilling fear in us. While the first thoughts on evil are what evil presence must we face in the outer world that can harm us, it seems that the worse of these two evils is the inner evil within ourselves. The main inner monsters of The Scarlet Letter are desire and our interest in human suffering. Desire does not have to always be about love and lust, although it often is. It can be the desire for power, wealth, fame, or matters of love, but it all can be pretty overwhelming. Hester's desire to be with the one she wanted at the time led to her punishment and though she knew it was wrong she did it anyway so that she and "the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that God sees him(Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)." The desire they had became too powerful, leading them to forget there place and morals. It makes me wonder, what is my true deepest desire that I would lose reason for? What is yours? I think mine is matters of the heart as well, but I can never be sure.

I think that desire and suffering go hand in hand. We will go through some pretty horrible and intense events to reach what we truly want. Our need to have what we want, to stand out, make something of ourselves eventually digs so deep we cannot take it, and that's when our own monster of desire comes out and takes over. Hester suffered for love, and this idea reminds me of the song, "A Martyr For My Love For You" by The White Stripes. I mean, the title is the main thing that stands out to me about this topic because it's exactly what she's is, but there is a line in the song that goes, "and we could share a kiss, but I feel like I can't go through with this, and I bet we could build a home, but I know the right thing for me to do, is to leave you alone." The song is about a relationship that is happening even though at least one of them knows it shouldn't be. Even though Hester knew it was wrong, she did it, and that's where we create our own suffering. While the pain can be unbearable, the truth is that we like it, we don't want to get rid of our desires and urges because it makes us who we are. That one moment of pleasure out of all that pain is worth it to us for some odd reason. Even with the worst society could do to us for it, in the end, do we really end up punishing ourselves for our own wrong doings worse than others?

On a final thought, we seem to set ourselves up as old time Freakshows, we're either the attraction everyone is making fun of or in awe of, or we are the audience staring suffering in the face. We know it's horrible, but we watch others suffering disguised as wonder and entertainment because we are glad it's not us up there for the moment, but at the same time we can relate to them. It may not be our turn to be the bearded lady or whatever other freak is in the cage, but we are wary that it could happen, we fear it, but by mocking it, is does not seem as bad, until we get put in the cage and have to experience just how bad it is.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Tribeca Books, 1850. Print.

Dwork, Deborah, and Robert Jan Van Pelt. Holocaust: A History. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2002. Print. 

Girls With the Hex

Evil (ee-vil), n. 1. Any natural force, internal or external, human or spirit, that corrupts the soul of any living being to the point that it has lost all sight of anything good or moral and is therefore an unrecognizable being of destruction to itself, those around it, and the whole of nature.

Though you probably wouldn't find this definition in your dictionary, it would definitely be in mine! In class, we were asked what our personal definition of evil was and whether it be "the Temptations of the Devil would inveigle us(On Witchcraft)" as Cotton Mather would say, or a delusion of our own minds, one thing is for sure, it only causes trouble.

Although I have some previous knowledge on the Salem Witch Trials, I had never been completely sure of the trigger point where it really began until this class. I knew that people were being accused left and right by their neighbors, but never knew it all brewed down to a babysitter and the gossip of young girls. Will times never change hah! Dijuba( I'm not sure of the spelling) has to be one of the most interesting real life characters I have learned about in awhile. She was obviously a bit out of her head, but truly believed in what she was telling and teaching these innocent girls. She(or perhaps the Devil within her) was responsible for their corruption! The Indian voodoo and tricks she taught the girls reminded me of the similar "magic" called hoodoo used in the movie "The Skeleton Key." While it states that hoodoo is not like voodoo, the power behind it is quite the same. While voodoo uses wax dolls, needles, and is more visual in my opinon, hoodoo is an African-American force that is more in the mind. It uses rituals and certain objects, but supposedly cannot effect or hurt you if you do not believe in it. Now you could say you would never fall for such a silly thing, but I think the Salem Witch Trails and society throughout history have proven that "the crazy" is contagious in numbers ha! After relating the girls actions and Dijuba's teachings to this movie it changed my mind about the girls. While at first I thought one or two of the girls persuaded the others to play along with their bratty game of "Who's the Witch?," I now wonder if they believed in what Dijuba said so much that they ended up really thinking these people they accused were witches, and even worse, the symptoms they showed before and during the trials were real! I believe the mind can be led in strange ways and so I really do see the huge possibility that these young girls believed in this witchcraft so much that they tricked their minds into putting full belief into it and therefore, tricked their bodies into believing it as well. In the video we watched from The History Channel, one historian said the girls "couldn't hear the word of God" and had screaming fits. These are symptoms that could be easily faked at that age, but what got me was that she also mentions them having convulsions or seizures, plus moving in sync with actions of the accused witches. These would be much harder symptoms to pass off to the adults, movements and timing would need to be precise, yet they pulled it off. Do you think such young girls would really have enough experience to know how to react with a seizure? I somehow doubt it. Now that truly is a terrifying evil! To think, even our own minds that we keep our strongest beliefs and darkest secrets in, can be crept into like that and distorted without our knowledge. Do you think it's really possible for our minds to become that strayed from even what we stand strongest for?

I really loved the quote Suzanne used in class by Baudelaire that said, "The most powerful thing the Devil can do, is make you believe he does not exist." It struck a powerful cord in me because a lot of the time people tend to make up scientific reasons or conspiracies to explain what we cannot ourselves. While spiritual or religious belief would probably take part in this, we have to remember that as humans, we don't know all there is to know. There were things in life long before humans, just as there will most likely be life here long after we are gone. Evil does exist and it has to come from somewhere! Humans may be jerks sometime, but we are not powerful enough to conjure such a horrible evil alone. We have to learn to be more open-minded and not stay ignorant just because we're scared or "don't care." The supernatural forces that we can't explain are not unnatural at all. The evil put into us is just as natural as the good. Stephen Asma teaches us that the truly existent demons around us, "are not creating so much as altering nature(On Monsters)." They take what is already there, that we don't know of, and "alter nature in ways that scare and frighten us and seem supernatural" to tempt us into giving in to the already existent evil(by the way, I would just like to add that I had no idea who Stephen Asma was before this school year, but after hearing about him and reading only the first few sections of his book, I'm super freaking excited for him to come here and I will probably be buying this book in the future ha). Not straying from my point, puppets freak me out. They are meant to look all cute and innocent with their little, creepy smiles, then screenwriters decide it's fun to write horror movies where they are brought to life by evil and do horrible things(all with those little, creepy smiles). That is just what Asma says witches are, "a pawn in the various schemes of evil demons. An act of maleficium, or harmful magic requires three things: the evil demon who acts as a puppeteer, the puppet human(or animal) who works the harmful magic, and God's acquiescence." This is how demons manipulate life and humans, by making them feel they have the power alone until it destroys them or something else. Humans are puppets, driven by evil forces to do bad things we hear the next day on the news. There has to be some sort of evil force that already existed for this to happen in Asma's opinion. So perhaps, if there wasn't a dark force driving us to do wrong or making little girl's back in history believe in witchcraft some of the horrible things that have happened, wouldn't have. Do you think that's possible? I think it's a nice thought, but that it would probably throw off the balance of life or something. After reading some of Stephen Asma's words, does it seem unwise or ignorant to not believe in the monsters in our closets and horror tales or do you think he's just another person trying to scare us?


 Mathers, Cotton. On Witchcraft. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Print.

Haskins, Jim. Voodoo and Hoodoo:The Craft as Revealed by Traditional Practicioners. 1st ed.
Scarborough House, 1978. Print.

Softley , Iain, Dir. The Skeleton Key. Perf. Hudson, Kate. Universal Pictures: 2005, Film.