In The Shadows of The Abyss

Testing the Rule

2012-10-25T17:22:00.000-04:00

H.W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1965), distinguishes five possible senses of "the exception proves the rule." Sense #1 is the legal interpretation "Exception probat regulam [Lat.], the exception proves the rule. A legal maxim of which the complete text is: exceptio probat [or (con)firmat] regulam in casibus non exceptis--`the fact that certain exceptions are made (in a legal document) confirms that the rule is valid in all other cases.'" ; senses #3, #4, and #5 are popular constructions of the saying, which Fowler regards as more or less slipshod. But he thinks more highly of sense #2, which we may state this way: an apparent exception to a rule may serve on closer examination to strengthen it. By way of example he writes:

"We have concluded by induction that Jones the critic, who never writes a kindly notice, lacks the faculty of appreciation. One day a warm eulogy of an anonymous novel appears over his signature; we see that this exception destroys our induction. Later it comes out that the anonymous novelist is Jones himself; our conviction that he lacks the faculty of appreciation is all the stronger for the apparent exception when once we have found out that, being self-appreciation, it is outside the scope of the rule--which, however, we now modify to exclude it, saying that he lacks the faculty of appreciating others. Or again, it turns out that the writer of the notice is another Jones; then our opinion of Jones the first is only the stronger for having been momentarily shaken. These kinds of exception are of great value in scientific inquiry, but they prove the rule not when they are seen to be exceptions, but when they have been shown to be either outside of or reconcilable with the principle they seem to contradict."

The scientific definition, using an apparent exception to a rule to test its strength or validity, is the one I will use in this essay. I’m putting these at the beginning because the rule I am about to test generates strong emotional reactions in most people and I want you all to remember that we are scholars, trained to think critically despite our personal feelings. Any law, principle, or belief that cannot bear close scrutiny and the occasional challenge isn’t worthy of respect. In this age of political correctness, I find it necessary to add this disclaimer: I am not trying to preach or convert, nor disrespect the belief systems of others; I simply wish to examine a highly debated rule and invite my fellow scholars to do the same.

The legal definition above is important to remember because it states that the exceptions to a law actually strengthens and adds weight to the law in ALL other instances. This is important because the rule I chose to examine is the law that would overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal once more. For the purposes of this examination, I will put aside the usual arguments about a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. I will leave the question of how far along in the pregnancy is too late for an abortion for others to debate. Fetal tissue and what to do with it is an entirely separate issue. For the remainder of this essay, I will only focus on the purpose, principle, and exceptions of the anti-abortion lobbyists.

The Pro-Life apologists believe that all life is sacred. They believe that life begins at conception, therefore abortion is murder. They believe that having a law that permits abortion cheapens the value of life, that those who make use of the law use abortion as a form of birth control. They do acknowledge exceptions that they would write into the law, when passed: abortion would be legal in cases of incest, rape, and medical necessity. Some of them have bumper stickers that read “It’s a child, not a choice,” a fairly clear and concise statement of belief.

All life is sacred. I believe that. I also believe that quality of life is important, a vital component to questions of life or death. I have a Living Will, a document that specifically states my wishes in the event of my becoming incapacitated. I agree with Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”. If I will never be able to think or to communicate my thoughts to others, I prefer to donate my organs to those who need them and allow my loved ones to accept my passing.

Others draw the line at constant pain, extreme infirmity, or no hope of cure. There are tests now that can be performed in utero to identify illnesses like Tay-Sachs, an incurable disease that causes the child to live in near-constant pain and die before reaching puberty. If my child had that marker, his life would still have been precious to me, but I may have terminated the pregnancy in order to spare him the pain and suffering. On the other hand, those tests could lead to abortions based on genetic imperfections. There are no easy answers, only more difficult questions.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the debate centered on the notion of abortion as a means of birth control. My circle of friends included other abused children, trying to survive; we all seemed to recognize each other, without having to say a word. Roe v. Wade happened before we were born, but some of our circumstances included the exceptions and restricted our freedoms. Abortion was legal, if you were an adult or accompanied by a parent or guardian. To a girl whose father broke two fingers for not passing the salt at the dinner table, asking for permission to have an abortion was too scary to contemplate.

My friend Priscilla (all names changed to protect the sources) was the youngest of four children and the only girl. Her father and brothers were alcoholics and her mother was a worn-out shadow who worked two jobs to keep the fridge full of beer. She lost her virginity at the age of eleven, in the backseat of a car at Bryan Park. Sex with older boys and men and bragging about it to friends later was the only attention she got, so she made the most of it. She got pregnant when she was fourteen.

Priscilla was too scared to tell her parents she was ‘in trouble’, and the twenty-five year old man she was ‘dating’ disappeared as soon as she told him the news. My friend Donna decided to go to her mother and ask her to take Priscilla to the free clinic. We were all worried about her; Priscilla was the type to go out and do something stupid. She did. Priscilla performed a home abortion on herself with a coat hanger. Her mother found her the next morning, bleeding out. She survived, but Priscilla will never be able to carry a child to term. When I hear people talk about using abortion as birth control, as though it was a casual choice, I remember Priscilla, who didn’t feel like she had a choice at all.

We may never know whether Priscilla’s parents would have been supportive and helpful in her time of need. Donna still wishes that she had told her mother sooner; perhaps things would be different. To me, it illustrates the flaws in any system that doesn’t take human variations into account. As Leo Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If Priscilla had better support, better options, or even someone over the age of fifteen who cared what happened to her, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place.

Priscilla didn’t want to raise a child. There are scared girls all over the country who feel the same fear she did. There is a law in Virginia and other states that allows a mother to abandon her child with no consequences if she does it within the first three days and leaves the infant at a hospital or clinic. This law was created because too many girls kept their pregnancies secret and killed their infants or left them in dumpsters after giving birth. Fear often drives people to extremes they later regret.

Priscilla wasn’t the only girl in my circle of friends to ‘get in trouble’, but she was the only one who was promiscuous; the rest of them had steady boyfriends or had special circumstances. Deena was also the youngest child of alcoholics. She started drinking at the age of twelve. One night, when she was sixteen, Deena and her boyfriend parked at Bryan Park with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a faulty condom. She and her boyfriend decided to raise the child together. They quit school, found jobs, and moved into a dingy apartment near Azalea Mall.

Deena’s mother had been too busy drinking and living her own life to structure Deena’s life (her mother is fifteen years older than Deena). When I visited Deena, I noticed that she was raising her daughter the only way she knew – the way her mother raised her. The boyfriend went to Florida to look for a better job and never came back. Deena’s daughter got pregnant at fifteen and left the kid with Deena. Deena doesn’t even know where she is or what she’s doing with her life. Deena’s granddaughter has more rules and more supervision than most of her age mates.

Teen pregnancy is an issue that cannot be ignored. When I hear people complain about how children today have no discipline, I laugh. Generally, people do not appreciate the structure parents provide until well into their twenties; before then, they often complain that parents are too strict and that they would never do that to their own children. I have five friends who had children before the age of nineteen, all of whom were permissive parents. That is one of many problems that occur when children raise children. We all wish we had known then what we know now; we would have been stricter with our children because we understand why it is needed.

Leigh was the quiet one, but she was always there because she didn’t want to go home. Her mother would have to track her down and drag her home. When she was thirteen, she found out she was pregnant. We were all surprised because we knew that Leigh stayed away from boys. We bought her the test kit and stayed with her when she read the results.

She went into Donna’s bathroom and helped herself to an entire bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol. She didn’t succeed in her suicide attempt, but it did cause a miscarriage. Her parents sent her to Westbrook Hospital for treatment, but she was never the same. Years later, she told us that she took the pills because she couldn’t stand the thought of carrying her father’s baby. None of us ever thought to tell her she could have gotten an abortion; it was never an option.

Has anyone considered the irony of the incest exception? Leigh’s father woke her in the middle of the night with a knife to her throat and told her in detail how he was going to kill her whole family and then himself if she ever told on him. She still has a scar on her hand from trying to push the knife away. How could anyone expect her to walk into a clinic and tell a total stranger the secret she’s been choking on for years? Most incest victims are under the age of sixteen when they are molested, so they need a parent or guardian present to get the abortion. Which parent should be present, the one who molested the girl or the one who let it happen?

Rosemary had bad-tempered parents. She referred to them as the Gestapo. They believed in using the belt when Rosemary talked back, cursed, forgot her chores, or rolled her eyes. She was not the type to stand still and take her lumps, so she would run when her mom or stepfather got the belt. Their response was to lock her out of the house.

When she got pregnant, she found the college student who used to baby-sit her and paid her fifty dollars to pretend to be her sister. They went to the Fan Free Clinic, wherein Rosemary looked the counselor straight in the eye and told her that her stepfather raped her. She lied because the counselors told her they had to inform her parents – it was the law. Rosemary had taken three years of Drama and used it to pretend to be Leigh for a few hours. What she didn’t know was that the counselor would have her stepfather arrested. The court ordered a DNA test on the aborted fetus and caught her in her lie. Rosemary was released from Bon Air Learning Center when she turned nineteen.

The U.S. Department of Justice in a 1997 summary, Sex Offenses and Offenders, reinforces a striking observation found in several studies: teenagers report the highest per capita rates of exposure to rape and sexual assault. Illustrative of official records, police reports in three states reveal that 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18. To further support the view of youth being at high risk, two-thirds of convicted rapists serving time in state prisons, in one study, indicated that their victims included girls and young women under the age of 18—and nearly four in 10 imprisoned violent sex offenders said their victims included those who were age 12 or younger. Overall, the U.S. Justice department reports that per capita rates of rape and other sexual assault are highest among residents age 16 to 19, low-income residents, and urban residents. For the youngest victims of rape—those younger than age 12—the offender was known to them. Forty-three percent of these young victims were sexually assaulted by family members—about four times the proportion found among rape victims age 30 or older. Victims under the age of 19 were most likely to have been assaulted by a family member or someone known to them (36 percent versus 3 percent).

My friend Sabrina enjoyed sex. She had a boyfriend and spent a lot of nights at his apartment. One night she didn’t want to have sex and told her boyfriend so, in no uncertain terms. He hit her, tied her to his bed, and spent the next fifteen hours raping her. She called her parents the next morning, after he left, and her mother took her to the hospital. The hospital staff examined her, documented her injuries, and offered her the morning-after pill. Her mother, a devout fundamentalist Christian, refused to allow her to take it. Sabrina could have insisted, but her parents would have kicked her out of her home. Fortunately, she was not pregnant, but she has no idea what she would have done if she had been.

I became pregnant at the age of twenty-two. My husband and I were delighted when the doctor’s initial exam confirmed my pregnancy. The follow-up exam revealed that I had three serious medical issues that complicated the pregnancy: toxemia, high blood pressure, and gestational diabetes. The doctors told me that it was not likely that my child and I would live long enough to give birth.

My fundamentalist Southern Baptist mother asked me to terminate the pregnancy, as did my father, my sisters, cousins who hadn’t called me in years, and just about everyone else who heard the news. The only holdouts were me and my husband. We had grown to love the child between visits and the doctors were clear about my only having one chance at childbirth. I spent most of the next six months flat on my back, too sick to think. Erik was born six weeks premature, jaundiced and anemic. We both survived.

“It’s a child, not a choice.” I disagree. I think it’s both a child and a choice. We must choose, whether the law allows or prevents the termination of a pregnancy. Personally, I resent the implication that, given the choice, most people would choose to terminate a pregnancy unless someone intervened.

Let’s examine the exceptions that everyone agrees should be allowed.

Medical necessity seems simple on the surface. If a pregnancy puts the life of the child and/or the mother at risk, termination should be an option. Many medications for the treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes, and mental illnesses cannot be taken if you are pregnant or nursing. To make exceptions for medical necessity, many factors must be taken into consideration. Do we really want to take a paranoid schizophrenic off of medication, for any reason? She would have to be under constant supervision until at least a month after childbirth. Who will pay the medical bills for that?

In cases of medical necessity, I can foresee a different problem. What happens when a birth defect or medical disorder in either parent or child justifies abortion? Would parents who chose to carry the child to term be condemned for it? Would health care for the child be more difficult to obtain because abortion was an option? Would HMOs pay for the abortion but not ongoing treatment? Where would one draw the line between euthanasia and eugenics?

In cases of rape and incest, the problems are more complex and contain emotional minefields. Two thirds of all rapes go unreported. This includes incestuous rape. The secrecy alone complicates matters. How can they make use of the exception we all agree they should have if they cannot even speak of it? Then, many of these exceptions are caused by the very parents or guardians who are supposed to be protecting the children. How can they make use of the exception when the person who must give permission for the procedure may be the perpetrator?

There are a multitude of considerations I have omitted here. I have left out the Pro-Life contingent who would prefer no abortions with entopic pregnancies (which would kill the mother and child) as the sole exception. I have omitted the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortions for Medicaid recipients, people who can’t afford health care, let alone children. I have remained silent about the overwhelming numbers of children severely abused by parents who never wanted to be parents. I do not want to spark debate about people who have the power to walk into a clinic and make the hard choices and accept the consequences.

I realize that I am mostly concentrating on people who are under the age of eighteen and need written parental consent, but they are the people I knew growing up. They are the ones who did not benefit from Roe v. Wade. They are the ones who would lose the few options they have if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned. They are young and desperate and not thinking straight. They are children who are in as much need of our protection as any child who has not taken a breath.

These are the exceptions that (prove) test the rule. Do the exceptions support the rule, change the rule, or validate it? The rule, according to Pro-Life apologists, is that all life is sacred and abortion is wrong, except in cases of incest, rape, or medical necessity. The medical necessity exception alters the rule to allow for quality of life and health considerations; it seems to strengthen the rule. The rape and incest exceptions are more problematic. In cases of rape and incest, these exceptions are allowed because carrying the child to term would further traumatize a victim of rape or incest. Yet, less than one percent of abortions are provided for victims of rape or incest. Most of these victims continue to suffer in silence. What does it say about the rule if the exceptions can’t be used?

I believe that life is sacred. I believe that life begins at conception. I believe that quality of life is an important element in making life-or-death decisions. I believe that when people have the right to choose, they will most likely make the most ethical choice they can. I believe that fear robs people of their ability to reason and make ethical choices. I believe that the energy involved in both sides of the abortion debate would be better spent in protecting the children from harm and supporting those we have failed to protect.

What do you believe?

Fishing for Readers: Advice on Writing Genre Fiction

2012-10-14T16:56:00.000-04:00

You want to write fiction. Not just any fiction – you want to write stories that people will talk about and remember. You want to hook readers with your brilliant prose and reel them in, one after another. You want to feel that thrill of success, followed by another one, a bigger one. You want bragging rights, not just another fish tale. (“You should have seen the reader that got away; I swear he was THIS big…”) When you talk about your ambition, you get a lot of advice. Most of what you hear is a variant of “Don’t quit your day job” or that old chestnut “Write what you know”. So, you make sure you have a steady income and you review your personal knowledge base, but you still end up staring at a blinking cursor. After an hour or two, some twisted part of your mind is convinced that this bit of technology is mocking you. You wonder where you left the hammer (that’ll take care of the crafty mouse). This would be a good time to take a break (away from blunt objects) and think about how you write.

Relax. This won’t hurt a bit. Writing fiction is a craft, not unlike making wooden toys. You start with a shape in mind and some sort of plan or blueprint. You might be a person who isn’t comfortable unless you know everything you’re going to do, and in what order. Writing fiction without a detailed outline is probably painful for you. Conversely, you might draft a bare outline and then not want to write the story; why bother, if you already know what’s going to happen? Then, you are better off writing a very rough first draft and fixing your errors in the next versions.

Whatever method you use, all stories start with a thought. Do you close your eyes and see a grassy meadow filled with bright red poppies, as far as the eye can see? (MGM has copyrighted that image; their attorneys will be in touch.) Did you ever believe (in a tiny corner of your heart) that the monster [under your bed/ in your closet] was real and adults told you it wasn’t because they were too scared to look? Do you wonder why that beautiful skinny blonde is hugging the large slob wearing the Star Trek tee shirt and the ‘Where the f-ck is Kansas’ baseball cap? Do you wish you could kill your [teacher, fellow student, roommate, ex-lover, ex-friend, total stranger who cut you off in traffic] and get away with it, but then you feel guilty for even thinking about it because he/she is really not that bad, and what kind of twisted thought is that to have, even for a minute? Breathe. Then realize that it is not your fault – you have an overly developed sense of curiosity and imagination; it is part of what makes you a writer. If you don’t ask ‘what if’, then you don’t write the answer (fiction).

You have a thought. Maybe it is an idea for a plot point, or a vivid setting, or a fragment of a dream. What starts the story is the thought. Characters make the story memorable. The first thing you want to do is design a character to suit your initial thought. Who will walk through that field of poppies (er, I mean that field of unspecified brightly colored flowers of some sort)? Who is that beautiful skinny blonde, anyway? What is it about that person you are mad at that enrages you? You may want to write timeless literary texts that showcase a person or place or era. I wish you luck and redirect you to the question of character building because I am a craftsperson, not an artist, and I write what I know. So, I will demonstrate the technique of crafting characters for various genres in popular fiction.

Let’s start at the beginning, with a basic sketch. Remember the beautiful skinny blonde with the fat guy in the Star Trek tee shirt and the ‘Where the f-ck is Kansas’ baseball cap? They’re gone, to class, to lunch, to Cleveland, but you still have an image of these early twenty-something students in your mind’s eye. You can sit down and write the details you want to use.

The woman was between five foot two and five foot four, had shoulder-length ash blonde hair with wide platinum blonde highlights (Miss Clairol 27), cornflower blue eyes, and a full figure. She was wearing low-riding hip hugger jeans, the kind that are supposed to show off your incredible muscle tone and part of your pelvic bones (assuming that you have incredible muscle tone and have actually seen your pelvic bones recently) and a belly-baring, low cut powder-blue cotton shirt. She did not have a flat stomach, although she was not fat, either. She was, however, top heavy enough to rouse a prurient curiosity for a moment; if she breathed really deep, would she fall out of the shirt, and was the bra you hope she was wearing enough to prevent an indecent exposure charge if she did fall out if the shirt? She wore platform flip-flops and her toenails were painted the same shade of blue as her shirt (which was still doing a great job caging the cleavage). [On a side note, my second grade teacher, who was full-figured in every sense, wore a halter top to school one day and she fell out of it. After that, the school dress code was amended to exclude halter tops of any kind. I resented it at the time, as I would not even have cleavage for several years and the school lacked air conditioning.]

The man was four to six inches taller than the woman. He wore jeans (standard button fly) with the tee shirt and black athletic shoes. He was out of shape, had a peach fuzz beard, wore sunglasses under the cap, and had brown hair (messy, from what you could see). His clothes fit and they were clean and not wrinkled. He had been doing most of the talking, his large hands gesturing wildly, almost hitting a passerby once.
So, you know where they are (on the sidewalk where you first saw them, talking in low tones) and what they look like. Now what? It is time to ask why and what if: why are they on the sidewalk, why are they dressed the way they are, and what if… Here’s where the genres come into play. A rule of thumb is if you like to read it, you will probably like to write it.

ROMANCE: This genre is about romantic relationships, usually in a positive light. So the blonde and the guy in the cap are supposed to fall in love. But first, they need names; for this category, let’s call them Robert and Elizabeth, after the Brownings. They have physical descriptions and names – now, we need conflict. The best conflict is caused by character traits, whether they are flaws or strengths. At a casual first glance, this couple seems lopsided because she is beautiful and he is only average; an observer’s first thought may be that she could do better. You could play into that or against it. Let’s say that they have known each other throughout high school and the first year of college. Scenario One: She has had a crush on him since the day he killed a garter snake in her back yard, but he has never given her any hint that he wanted to date her; she wonders if there is something about her that he doesn’t like. He, on the other hand, thinks she is out of his league and doesn’t want to hurt the friendship, since that’s all he’ll ever have. Scenario Two: He’s had a crush on her for years; she barely noticed him until they started college, where she was the fish out of water. Now, she wants him to notice her. Scenario Three: She has had a crush on him since he won the science fair, but he only dates people he considers smart or interesting and she does not qualify. Can she change his mind?

Maybe Robert looks the way he does because he has given up trying to be one of the beautiful people. Maybe Elizabeth wears the revealing clothes to catch his attention. If you want to add comedy, you could weave in dueling wardrobes; every time she wears something more eye-catching, he wears something that clashes with it. Maybe Robert writes plays and Elizabeth is an actress, so they see each other nearly every day and she is always trying out a new look. One day she wears a poodle skirt, knit shirt, bobby socks, saddle shoes, and a pony tail (not a hair out of place) and he shows up styling ‘early Seattle grunge’; she wears prim business suits and he copies Billy Idol, complete with safety pin through the nose and trademark sneer. This not only engages the reader, but it reveals that Robert and Elizabeth are alike, even compatible.

MYSTERY: New genre, new names. How about Nick and Nora? Too bad, you’re not here to argue. Change it in the rewrite. Nick and Nora may have a romantic relationship, but it is not the focus of the story, nor is it necessary. They could be siblings. But, since we paired people who looked just like them a minute ago, let’s assume that they have couple potential and no common DNA. In the mystery genre, the point of the story is usually to solve a murder, so we start with a corpse. Scenario One: A friend of Nora’s older sister has been murdered. This friend was [someone who shared some characteristic with that person you wished you could kill in paragraph three – shh] a student on campus, involved in all sorts of groups and organizations, making enemies everywhere. Nora, a third year criminal science major, decides to investigate – after all, her sister is a suspect. Unfortunately, Nick knows that she’s not a student. He is. He agrees to pretend to be her significant other to give her a reason to be on campus. Scenario Two: Nick is accused of murder. Nora, who knew him in high school, leaves her criminal science studies long enough to prove his innocence. Nick resents what he thinks of as Nora using his problems as field research. Scenario Three: Nora is accused of murder. Nick leaves his musical studies long enough to help her solve the puzzle; after all, music is math-based, as are most logic problems. In any of these scenarios, his outfit is his idea of a disguise and he finds her revealing outfit hilarious.

SUSPENSE/THRILLER: Steven, an English major, has just won a prize for best first novel. His wife is thrilled; she would have come to the reading, but the baby was running a slight fever. He is on top of the world. He knew his looks and intelligence were average, but finally he found a strong talent in writing. Saundra, a beautiful blonde, asks him to sign her copy of his book. She is the first to ask. Euphoric (and a little silly), he signs the inside page the way he absently signed birthday cards for relatives: “With love, from Steven”. She takes him at his word and plans their future together. He slowly realizes she’s stalking him and feels afraid, but no one believes that she would go after him with no encouragement. What will he do? In a suspense/thriller, you have to pick a character to be your protagonist; the other becomes the antagonist by default. The reader wants to know more about Steven than Saundra and most of the time, the narrative is from his point of view. Maybe Steven is shy; maybe he is flattered by the attention at first, and then feels guilty when he realizes that she is obsessed. There are a lot of ways to spin this character to make compelling drama.

HORROR: Saundra, a beautiful blonde History major, reads the first novel by Steven, another student on campus and realizes that the main character is just like her, the first half of the novel describes events that have actually taken place in her life, and her character dies in the last chapter. What is she going to do? Will she confront him directly? Will she break into his apartment, looking for clues? Will she hop a plane to Reno? That depends on her character traits.

FANTASY/SCIENCE FICTION: Saundra and Steven buy their dream home with the money from first novel grant. The problem is they have a nosy neighbor. The bigger problem is their neighbor lives in a cave below the basement of their house. The biggest problem is that their neighbor is an exiled goblin prince who has become the rallying point in an Otherworld civil war. Where is the Neighborhood Watch when you need them? Will Saundra demand a refund? Will Steven find this fascinating? Will Saundra use their neighbor’s problem as a topic for her dissertation? How will they react? What characteristics do they have that will eventually win out over incredible odds (because they are so alien to the goblins that the goblins have no defense)?

The main things to remember when crafting character are:
Tags
Traits
Loves & Fears

Tags are small things about the character’s appearance or personality that can be described in five words or less; they serve as reminders to the readers of who the character is (ex. a specific shade of eye color – cornflower blue).

Traits, in this instance, are dominant aspects of a character’s personality that fuel their behaviors (ex. an edgy character may always want to sit with his/her back to the wall, frequently scan the area, and jump to conclusions with minimal evidence).

Loves and fears are pairs that are vitally important to create compelling fiction. You must show the reader what your character values above all else, show how happy this person, place or thing makes your character, how devastated he/she would be without it. Then, you must threaten to blow that most valued thing to Kingdom Come, metaphorically speaking.

You bait the hook by crafting characters with interesting and offbeat tags and traits. You set the hook by inviting the reader to share your character’s joy in [being near the person of his/her dreams, having his/her talent rewarded, receiving large amounts of cash, owning his/her first home] the valued thing. Once the reader has experienced the joy vicariously through your character, the reader must also have an emotional investment in protecting the valued thing. You can reel him in. The reader wants to know what will happen. If you tell a story that is true to character, then the character (and your story) will live on in the reader’s memory. That’s not just a fish tale.

Secret Identity: A Closer Look at Three Superheroes In and Out of Costume

2012-06-13T17:11:00.000-04:00

“Every man has three faces: the face that the world sees, the face that his loved ones see, and the face that only he sees. – Japanese Proverb”

I confess; I am a geek, an unabashed old-school comic fangirl. I grew up in the 1980s reading Marvel and DC Comics superhero stories. I stopped reading and collecting in the 1990s, but have collected the movies as they have become available on DVD. It is in this capacity that I respond to the latest recreations of the superhero mythos, whether on television, film, or print. The three most instantly recognizable superheroes are: Superman, Batman, and Spiderman. They are also excellent examples of points on a continuum of dual identity, with Superman and Batman as the extremes and Spiderman as the central point. The superhero’s struggle with balancing different aspects of his life and identity is the same struggle we face in our own lives, writ large.

Men in Tights

Peter Parker AKA Spiderman, Bruce Wayne AKA Batman, and Clark Kent AKA Superman/ Kal El of Krypton cover three wide points on the superhero identity continuum. Superman is Clark Kent minus his assumed cover story, with an overemphasis on the traits he hides behind the glasses. Batman is a trained, driven, narrow-focused multi-talented vigilante genius. Bruce Wayne is a lie, a cover story with a birth certificate, the wealth needed to fund the Bat, and a deep, dark secret: Bruce Wayne really does hate the Batman (it’s not just a lie to distract those who get too close) because the other stole his life and his purpose, sure as criminals stole his parents and ideals. Spiderman is Peter Parker’s burden of guilt coupled with his snarky juvenile fantasies. So, in the middle you have Spiderman who is a burden and secret for Peter Parker (but not really another identity, simply a release and means to reveal hidden aspects of his personality – much the same as actors when they play their parts). On one end you have Batman, for whom Bruce Wayne is the source of his power, a cover story and an ATM. On the other end is Superman, who actually has two personas, each with its own history, verity, and meaning. He is both Kal El, last son of Krypton (who feels abandoned and bereft of his parents, heritage, culture and fears losing his adopted world and becoming again the worst kind of orphan) and Clark Kent, son of Jonathan and Martha Kent (who struggles with secrets, but has friends, emotional ties, lunch dates, and other things denied the Man of Steel, things he needs in order to belong).

Kal El was raised as Clark Kent. He could not simply assume another identity any easier than you or I could. Bruce Wayne is not as necessary to Batman, but cannot be easily thrown away without serious repercussions, not least of which the fact that Bruce’s grief and rage is the fuel is that sustains the Bat. Peter Parker cannot simply walk away from his alter ego, but his lack of emotional attachment to the persona has allowed him to make several attempts to retire; duty and guilt bring him back to the costume.

The costume and the codename are disguises to delineate the difference between their everyday lives and the special duty. Peter Parker was an average high school student bitten by a radioactive spider, giving him superpowers. He designed his own costume to reflect the source of his powers; he didn’t give it a lot of thought, it simply needed to conceal his face and cover his body. Batman designed his costume for the dual purposes of practicality and psychology. On a practical note, the costume is designed to carry anything he thinks he might need when wearing it. The psychology comes into play in the dark colors and the bat symbol. “Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot,” he says often in print. Bruce Wayne, the man who wears the Batman costume, was scared by a chamber filled with bats soon after the murder of his parents; to him, there are few things scarier than bats. Superman, however, is different. His ‘costume’ is made from his old baby blankets (by the way, how can a grown man make a full costume out of a set of blankets made for an infant?). His code name is closely tied to his birth name (Kal El of Krypton). He does not become Superman, he is Superman when he wakes up in the morning; he must become Clark Kent.

They say that clothes make the man. What I wear when I am planning to stay home and not see anyone is quite different from what I wear to church. I even feel different in various types of clothes. I have a leather jacket from high school; when I wear it, I feel nostalgic and tough. Clothing is even divided into categories that name the role it is made to suit: business wear, casual wear, active wear, and formal wear.

The face the world sees

The Clark Kent seen by the world at large, in all of his ‘weaknesses’ is a deliberate lie, carefully constructed by Jonathan and Martha Kent, inexpertly and awkwardly carried out by their minor son, Clark Kent. They made sure he did nothing to call attention to his differences. He grew taller than ordinary people – his parents taught him to slouch at all times. He was faster, stronger, more agile; the Kents kept him away from competitive sports and taught him to fake clumsiness. Superboy wanted to save the day; Clark Kent needed a reason to never be on-site at any of these events. The struggle between who he (Clark Kent) wants to be and who he has to be in order to conceal his dual identity is part of what makes his story so interesting.

One reason Superman and Batman are my favorite superheroes is that struggle with necessity. Clark has to appear weak and cowardly, so that no one questions his absence from disaster scenes, despite the fact that as a reporter he should be covering the story as it breaks. Bruce Wayne must appear to be a drunken dilettante with no more on his mind than the next supermodel or people might be inclined to wonder how he spends his time and why he seems so tired. Both of them have had to maintain this pervasive fiction for most of their lives, Clark because he has had to hide his abilities and Bruce because he was planning revenge and needed to cover his tracks. Peter Parker remains much the same, but faces consequences for not being able to juggle the workload of photographer, college student, and superhero; to the world, he appears shiftless and unreliable.

Superman gets the best press. Batman is considered a dangerous vigilante and Spiderman a chaotic menace. Superman experiences some of the drawbacks of celebrity, in that many rescue missions become photo ops and many people insist on making a connection with him, but rarely wish to look beyond the powers to the person. Batman has personal contacts that have become friends, but he maintains a distance in order to do the duty more efficiently. Spiderman works alone, in order to reduce the risk to his loved ones.

The only one who would be unable to lead a (relatively) normal life if his secret was revealed is Superman. Bruce Wayne would face criminal charges, but could conceivably rebuild some form of meaningful purpose-driven life, possibly as a private investigator. Peter Parker could join a team, live at the team headquarters, and balance his various responsibilities better now that he no longer had to lie. His biggest problem would be villains targeting his family, but he worries about that now. Clark, however, could not show up at work in his suit or the costume, with or without the glasses, and have people treat him in any way remotely normal. In one of the 1980s guest author books, Superman’s secret is revealed to the world. Jimmy complains to his girlfriend that he misses Clark. She asks Jimmy what he would say if he saw Clark right this minute; without thinking, he replies, “Hi Superman.” Even Clark’s closest loved ones (not including his parents) all seem to like Superman better than Clark. Clark, as a person, would be ignored in favor of the icon Superman.

I don’t know how often someone has asked me how I am and I have answered, ‘fine, thank you.’ Even if I was in considerable pain that is what I would say because my mother and every other genteel southern lady in my family made sure I understood that I must always be polite. My great-grandmother once tried to serve me tea the day she got home from the hospital after having heart surgery because I was in her home. My sister once went twenty-eight hours without eating because she worked a swing shift with no dinner break and had back to back visits from friends when she got home. She couldn’t eat while she had company because she didn’t have enough food to offer any to her guests. I was taught that the person we show the world should be the person we want to be.

The face his loved ones see

Superman and Batman have had consequences to deal with as a direct result of how they constructed their alter egos. (In the 1980s comics) Clark was viewed by most of his friends with a certain amount of amused contempt. In one instance, Superman was kidnapped and he needed a reason why Clark never contacted anyone during that time. He told them he had an inner ear infection and hid out in his apartment with his phone unplugged to avoid pain; no one questioned the excuse – of course Clark would do anything to avoid pain. Superman is in some ways a caricature, an exaggeration of all of the traits Clark must keep hidden. Bruce is nearly as much of a caricature, since most of the traits that make up his actual self are in custody of the Batman persona. In many short stories written by guest authors in the 80s and 90s, Bruce has been the subject of an intervention by close friends who perceive him as wasting his tremendous potential and drinking his life away.

Clark has to hear a lot of complaints from the people in his life. He chose a profession that gave him instant access to information about crimes, disasters, and other ‘jobs for Superman’, yet he has a record of frequent absenteeism and other unprofessional behavior. Still, he is able (much like Peter Parker) to cut corners in order to meet deadlines. (Clark creates his copy at super speed and Peter sets up a camera to take photographs of Spiderman in action.) Bruce must suffer the snide remarks whenever he misses a board meeting due to a Batman emergency; the drinking makes a handy all-purpose alibi.

Clark and Bruce are restricted by the nature of their secrets. They cannot share the most important parts of themselves with people because criminals could figure out their secrets and use their weaknesses against them. So, they may not be able to form many significant intimate relationships. That plays into a lot of fan fiction on the Internet, which pairs them with each other or other superheroes, as their colleagues would certainly understand the tremendous pressures in their lives.

I go out of my way to help others when I am out. By the time I get home, some days I hate people. Erik, my son, will ask me for something and I will snarl at him because I have used up all of my politeness. Home is where I don’t have to play fair. I do apologize and give fair warning when I am in a mood. Erik knows to ask for favors the next day because I am likely to feel a little guilty at that point. Friends and family know your flaws and love you anyway; they are living proof of grace.

The face that only he sees

The costumed duty and the civilian duty are different roles; we all have different roles to play, that require different actions, words, and attitudes. What about the other aspects of their lives? Clark Kent (according to DC Comics, the text of the Superman movies, and every television series) loves to spend time with his friends and has a genuine affection for people in general. This quality is evident with or without the glasses, so would this aspect of his nature that is shared by both personas be considered only half-real? Bruce Wayne spends a good deal of his time micromanaging employees of Wayne Enterprises and Gotham City’s vigilante population; this man is a control freak no matter what he wears. Peter Parker doesn’t lose his ‘worry gene’ when he slips into costume; Spiderman simply deals with his anxiety by spouting wisecracks, while Peter whines and sulks.

Peter Parker has shown himself to be a man in a mask. In the movies and the comic books, he has removed his mask easily when needed. In Spiderman 2, Peter loses his mask, revealing his identity to Mary Jane Watson, his true love. Even as he is holding up a metal structure that was about to fall on her, Peter addresses her in his own shy tones, not Spiderman’s smart alec manner. Bruce Wayne has revealed in subtle ways the conflict between the two halves of his persona. In an early issue of “Batman and the Outsiders,” the team finds out Batman’s secret identity. One of them (the empath, who can feel the emotions of others) sputters, “But Bruce Wayne hates the Batman,” then covers her mouth with her hand as she realizes what that means. In episode seven of “Batman Beyond,” after being hospitalized by an encounter with a villain shooting destructive sound waves, Bruce starts hearing voices telling him to kill himself. At the end of the episode Terry McGinnis (the next Batman) asks Bruce how he knew that the ‘voices’ came from an outside source. Wayne said the voices called him Bruce, something he never called himself. McGinnis reminds him that Terry is Batman now, not Bruce; Bruce says, “Tell that to my subconscious.” Clark Kent looks in the mirror and sees himself, an adoptee with two identities that belong to him. I married an adoptee, so I understand the dichotomy of two identities in one a little better than I did when I first started reading about the Man of Steel. Adoptees who remember their original family tend to be ‘more royalist than the king;’ i.e., intensely devoted to the new family, who can do no wrong, because they never forget that they can lose this family like they lost the first one.

Clark Kent dons his costume as an act of love and devotion. Superman loves humanity with the fervor of one who has suffered great loss; he leans toward the kind of idealism one finds in bereaved widowers discussing the institution of marriage. Spiderman complicates Peter’s life, but is a necessary complication. Batman is Bruce’s admittedly extreme way of coping with his childhood trauma, an obsession reluctantly supported by his butler and confidante, Alfred Pennyworth. All three of these heroes need two separate identities in order to function as they have chosen.

My role as Erik’s mother is a vocation born of love; I wouldn’t change it if I could. College complicates my life, but it is a necessary complication and I reap the benefits. Writing fiction is my extreme way of coping with a world that seems, at times, too loud, too harsh, and too cruel. No role can be given up without pain and loss; each part allows me to express a vital part of my self. I need the good opinion of my friends. I need the support of my family. They enable me to live my life and express my identity the way I have chosen.

Who am I? Who are you? There is no simple answer.

Religion, Morality, And Authority: The Burden Of Chastity

2012-05-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

Despite the fact that violation of chastity requires male participation, chastity is a burden borne almost exclusively by the female. The Judeo-Christian Patriarchal moral code (an exhaustive set of standards originally intended to segregate the Jewish community from the Goddess-worshippers who surrounded them on all sides (Stone) defines chastity as sexual purity – to be chaste is to only have sex with one’s lawful partner for the purpose of procreation. The male is conspicuously absent from stories of sexual misconduct, both as character and as storyteller. This may be due to a common belief that women are beneath the notice of men unless they have in some way violated the Judeo-Christian Patriarchal moral code and must be punished. This is also linked to the practical concern of identifying the trespassing male.

Females bear the physical consequences of the chastity violation on and in their bodies, from bruises to babies. The Judeo-Christian Patriarchal system’s moral code shifts the responsibility of chastity solely on the female’s shoulders by identifying her carnal desire as the source of sexual temptation. Thus, she is charged by God Himself to submit to the male and desire only him. Women teach girls, through story and living examples, the dangers of chastity violation and how to avoid it. This reinforces the belief that females are responsible for maintaining chastity and excuses males from accountability for sexual transgressions (although, if identified, they can be held accountable for theft of or damage to another man’s property).

Judeo-Christian Patriarchy is founded on the idea that woman exists to serve man. Man must be the source of life and woman merely the receptacle. According to this rationale, the male God created Adam in His own image to have dominion over all other creations, and then created Eve as a helper/companion/pet. Eve was not deemed worthy of God’s companionship; when God and Adam walked off together, she was left with only the snake as company. Eve was merely an afterthought, as women often are in patriarchal systems, until she is out of her proper place (modestly waiting for Adam, right where he left her).

Before Judeo-Christian Patriarchy took root, woman was considered the source of life. Women had babies; men did not. Prior to the agricultural megarevolution, the link between sex and procreation was hazy; men were needed to ‘open’ women, prepare them to bring forth life, but generation of life was exclusive to females. Female deities were the norm, as were fertility rituals (Stone). Family lines were matrilineal and matrilocal, although males were still dominant. Men and women had separate but equal spheres when men hunted and women foraged. Once agriculture became the primary means of food production and men had to work the fields, they noticed that seeds planted in the earth grew into plants. This lead to the theory that was only disproved within the past century; the male seed contained the new life and the female womb was merely the soil that housed it.

When farmers find weeds among the wheat, they do not blame the soil. This is where the analogy breaks down. The Garden of Eden story illustrates the rationale that Eve (woman) is responsible for sexual awareness and the temptations that arise from that awareness. The Eden story is also the first story that features the absent male. Adam is off communing with God (Eve is not invited) when Eve starts talking to the snake, we must assume. Nowhere in the conversation between Eve and the snake is Adam even mentioned in any way; the snake points out that eating the fruit will make Eve like God and convinces her to take a bite. After she does, Eve calls Adam and offers him a bite. Despite his close relationship with God and his inherent superiority over every other creature, apparently Adam is easily influenced. The shame of nakedness emerges only after Adam takes his bite (there is no way of knowing how much time passed between her bite and his but it cannot have been too long if the shame came to them at the same time). Adam now has to work for his food, the snake has to slither and be trampled by feet, and Eve must suffer the pain of childbirth while she submits to Adam and desires only him.

This link between desire and temptation doesn’t make a lot of sense under close scrutiny. Although it is never stated outright, the implication is that males desire females because females desire males. This is probably based on another set of observations by men learning to grow and raise their food. Female herd animals have periods during which they are ‘in heat’, causing them to excrete pheromones that lure every male of their species to mate with them. No male is turned away by a female in heat. So if a human male wants to mate with a human female, then it must be because she is luring him. The system of Judeo-Christian Patriarchy is designed in part to contain human females ‘in heat’ in order to breed her with the designated male.

Of course the males in question cannot be presumed to control themselves any more than the farm animals. Males, supposedly closest to divinity, are still excused when they violate chastity because the codes are formed by men, who understand that sometimes the penis has a will of its own. This understanding and compassion is denied to women. The unstated implication is that women, being higher life forms than bitches, have some way of controlling when they are in heat. The narrator of Kinkaid’s “Girl” frequently inserts this refrain – “like the slut you are so bent on becoming” – into her pragmatic instructions, implying that the girl is making an effort to lure the sexual attention of males. Women’s desires can be concealed, which makes them easier for men to ignore and/or believe in their nonexistence. It also makes men feel better if they have someone else to blame for their transgressions.

This leaves the female in an untenable position. She must protect herself from the lusts of men because she will bear the burden of the physical consequences, from bruises to babies, if she is unsuccessful. If she is damaged by the chastity violation, then she is less valuable to the man who owns her. Prior to the 18th century, it was perfectly legal for a man to beat a woman to death if she belonged to him. So it didn’t matter if she was raped or consented – she was the one who was punished. She might be killed or banished or shunned. What could she do?

Her mother and other women of the earlier generations instruct young girls, through story and example, how to live within this strict hypocritical code. The narrator of “Girl” warns “you mustn’t speak to the wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions” (2335). The young girl is taught how to make sure to go nowhere alone, how to smile at different people, how to avoid men who look too long, and how to blame herself when they do (2335). The shame code is instilled in the young girls by the older women to protect them. Young girls learn to fear strange men. They develop conflicting feelings about their desires and desirability.

Young girls are charged to be attractive, but only to certain specific males. The code mothers teach young girls is any desire they feel is that of a bitch in heat. This desire is wrong and must be kept contained. If any of it is loosed, it is an invitation to violate chastity. Her desire is powerful and dangerous. In the stories men tell, males are overwhelmed by the allure of females. In the stories women tell, men are animals, ruled by their appetites.

Stories like the Hebrew Bible’s “Garden of Eden” and Jamaica Kinkaid’s “Girl” reinforce the belief that females are responsible for maintaining chastity and excuse male from any accountability for sexual transgressions. Women teach girls, through story and modeling, how to navigate the murky waters of this double standard. The Judeo-Christian Patriarchal system’s moral code shifts the responsibility of chastity solely on the female’s shoulders by subliminally identifying her as a bitch in heat, her carnal desire as the fuel of male sex drives. Thus, she is charged by God Himself to desire only the male who owns her, in order to contain the power of her allure. Females bear the physical consequences of the chastity violation on and in their bodies, from bruises to babies to torture and death. Males have no part in stories of chastity violation until it is time for the woman to be punished, as it is difficult to identify the male if they are not caught in the act. Despite the fact that such a violation cannot occur without male participation, chastity is a burden borne almost exclusively by the female.

Works Consulted

Kinkaid, Jamaica. "Girl." The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. 1st. Unknown: Packet, 2006

The more I learn, the more I realize I have yet to learn

2012-02-17T03:00:00.000-05:00

Although the majority of my education was based upon current-traditional writing strategies, my experiences as a student, tutee and observer in the Writing Center have convinced me that strategies based on expressivist writing theory are more effective. I learned writing theory this semester. I want to pass on a set of values to writers, guidelines that they can keep for future reference. Expressivist strategies mirror how people think, in part because expressivist theory values content over mechanics. I learned the craft of writing in workshops that emphasized critical thinking. Expressivist strategies are closely linked to critical thinking skills and focus on the importance of revision. I want my clients to leave with the memory of a positive encounter and a paper covered in written reminders of what they can do to refine their claims during the revision process. Expressivist critical processes are designed to enhance confidence and boost self-esteem. I want my clients to know that they do have something to write that is worth reading.

Expressivist strategies mirror how people think, in part because expressivist theory values content over mechanics. When John Q. Public is exposed to a new set of ideas, he tends to pay attention to the details of interest to him. Next, he forms an opinion based on his new knowledge. Then, as he writes about his opinion or shares it with his friends, his opinion develops into a set of claims. The more he talks about or writes about these claims, the more structured they become, as he adds new evidence to support his claims and defends them against the objections of his audience. Given enough rewrites and/or debates, his final claim may bear little resemblance to his early opinion. This natural progression is mirrored in expressivist strategies like brainstorming, freewriting, and mind maps. If John is forced to structure a paper around the original opinion, to use an outline, gather quotes from source material and compose a rough draft to support this opinion, he will be miserable. By the time he has finished reading the source material, his opinion would have changed. Current-traditional writing strategies force the writer to follow a specific course from start to finish, in order for the powers that be to ensure that the student knows how to form opinions based on research and cite sources correctly. Unfortunately, John may know how to use MLA format, but he is now resistant to the idea of writing research papers, though he may not understand why.

Most of what I learned in public school falls under the current-traditional writing theory. My first three years of school, I was given workbooks for each subject. The teacher would give a lesson, and then assign a workbook page or pages as practice. If a student finished early, he or she was encouraged to work ahead. I finished my first grade workbooks halfway through the school year and was passed to the second grade after winter break. My teachers focused on five part assignments: (1) Ask a question, (2) Answer the question, (3) Cite five sources (three supporting and two opposing the answer), (4) Write a rough draft, and (5) Edit the rough draft before turning in a technically perfect final draft. When asked why we must follow this procedure without deviation, we were told that this was what would be expected of us in college. I learned how to categorize parts of speech, memorized rules of spelling and grammar, and practiced identifying mechanical errors. Content was a separate grade, with little or no guidelines as to what the teacher expected.

Expressivist theory values content over mechanics. I want to pass on a set of values to writers, guidelines that they can keep for future reference. As a young fiction writer, I was quite frustrated. Once I learned how to form letters, I wrote at least four stories a week. I gave each one to my teacher, who would smile at me and tell me it was good. Four stories a week for two and a half years and not one single piece of constructive criticism. In third grade, I won a national writing contest under the category of best description in short fiction. From then until my first creative writing class, my fiction was mostly description, as I sharpened my skills in this one area. When I would tell a story aloud, I still focused on my characters and what changed them, but my writing suffered. I am still learning how to write dialogue and action sequences because the two bits of feedback I received were: my stories were good, and the descriptions were what made my stories better than others.

I had a knack for knowing what made a good story. I could hear someone else tell a story that flopped and figure out how to make it better. I could read someone else’s fiction and render first aid. People who took classes with me asked for my help and I gave it. I looked at the writing, told them what I liked (because that’s what I wanted people to tell me), and identified what seemed off, and told them what they could do to fix it. It never occurred to me to teach them how to identify future errors and correct them; I wasn’t completely sure how I was doing it. It is ironic that I made use of Peter Elbow’s theories before I ever read them, let alone understood their basis. I wish I had read Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers in high school. The idea that “a goal for any writer is to control his or her own process and to develop flexibility for approaching any writing task” (Gillespie and Lerner, 13) did not come to me in a flash of insight. The students I worked with asked me how I wrote term papers and I showed them my system, which only worked for me. Most of what I did was intuitive. I was like a singer with perfect pitch, a love of music, and no formal training.

I picked up skill sets from reading every day, writing techniques from my favorite writers, and critical thinking skills from arguing with amateur historians who were too stubborn to let a debate die. I could write journalistic academic papers, write short fiction that read like a travelogue of imaginary places, tell stories like a back-country folklorist, and detect sour notes in other people’s work. I never merged those skills until I took my first writing workshop course. Finally, I learned how to take a piece of writing apart and understand how it was crafted.

Tutors who make use of expressivist theory can help the writer “to focus on the higher-order concerns and put aside editing/proofreading until the very end; and at that very end so that you can help the writer become a more detailed reader of his or her own work” (Gillespie and Lerner, 7). I didn’t learn writing theory until this semester. I was happy learning craftsmanship, something which produced tangible results and honed specific skills. Looking back, I now know that finding the theme in a work of fiction is synonymous to finding the thesis of a term paper and balancing character, plot, setting, and exposition is akin to balancing claims, reasons, evidence, and opinions in a term paper. Discovering variations in writing theory and strategies proved frustrating to me. Why must it be so difficult? Why not find a method or combination of methods and practice them? After all, the point is to teach people how to communicate their thoughts in writing; if current-traditional strategies were unsuccessful, why continue to use them? I needed a teacher’s perspective.

My mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and two cousins are in the teaching profession. The younger generation gave me essentially the same answer I learned in class. They were required to “teach the tests” if they wanted to keep their jobs. A school’s accreditation rests on those test results; the priority has shifted from teaching the skill to meeting the standard. They have so much they must teach by a certain point; they can’t afford to try anything that deviates from the curriculum guide. My mother-in-law taught current-traditional strategies to second graders for four years. Then, she taught special education grade school classes and used expressivist strategies. They worked. She still uses them with the children who come to her in her role as educational consultant. When I asked her for advice about writing consultation, she said that what worked for her clients was: freewriting the topic, followed by mind mapping based on the freewrite, then research, outline and rough draft. She showed me examples as she told me and this combination made a lot of sense. I learned the craft of writing in workshops that emphasized critical thinking. Expressivist strategies, like those demonstrated by my mother-in-law, are closely linked to critical thinking skills. I have learned to adjust my priorities when examining other people’s writing, starting with the central idea and working through the organization before looking at style and grammar.

Expressivist strategies are closely linked to critical thinking skills and focus on the importance of revision. I want my clients to leave with the memory of a positive encounter and a paper covered in written reminders of what they can do to refine their claims during the revision process. I was a writing center client before and during this semester. On my first visit, I was a very nervous recent transfer student trying to find out if the paper I wrote was the paper my professor assigned. Something about the way he worded his assignments confused me, and his verbal answers were not much clearer to me. I expressed my anxiety and showed the assignment and my rough draft to the consultant. He was patient and reassuring throughout my nervous speech. He looked through it and told me it looked good to him. My professor found my thesis unclear throughout my eleven page paper. I took the assignment and the paper to a friend, who told me point by point which parts of the paper were disorganized. Looking back, I can understand that the consultant saw a neatly typed, well-worded paper, based on the first two and last two pages. The underlying problem was that the consultant and I had not developed a rapport (Gillespie and Lerner, chapter seven, 91-97), so he missed what my friend (who had the rapport, if not the technical skill) did not.

This semester, my consultants read the papers I showed them. Each of the consultants I visited greeted me, made eye contact, and gave the impression that helping me was important to them. My first consultant, “C”, seemed a lot more relaxed and experienced, but there are many factors I did not know about. She was a teaching assistant for the professor who would grade the paper I brought in for revision. We were approaching the consultation from similar subject positions, as we shared many common goals and perspectives on the topics we reviewed. She and I moved through our time quickly, going from thesis to outline to style in minutes. She gave me a solid piece of advice to carry with me: don’t forget to loop back to the thesis at least every other paragraph.

My second consultant, “M”, was a bit more nervous; I could almost see her reviewing a mental checklist to see if she was leaving anything out. I admire her insight; her first question after names were exchanged was if I was sent by Ms. Strong. Still, we worked just as fast and as well together. Their style difference showed in how each of them pointed out errors in my rough draft. “M” was hands-on, marking the paper with a fine blue line as she spoke to me. She showed me alternatives and we brainstormed, looking closely at specific areas of the text. I felt good about both of my consultations and left each time feeling as though I had accomplished something with my time. My consultants knew how to put writing theory into practice.

Expressivist critical processes are designed to enhance confidence and boost self-esteem. I want my clients to know that they do have something to write that is worth reading. When it was time to practice writing consultation, I learned another lesson. Observation and rehearsal is necessary in order to learn how to put theory into practice and it does wonders for one’s confidence. Unfortunately, we are all on the same page, speaking the same language, and it means that the practice is not representative of what we will encounter in the Writing Center as consultants. Practicing peer tutoring with people who were working from the same notes was easy. As much as I enjoyed our exercises in class, I know that the client who walks into the Writing Center with a term paper due in three days may not have a clue why I am harping on the central theme. I worry that I will not be able to reassure them as well as I have reassured people who shared my subject position. It is just as important to establish rapport with clients as it is to make sure they leave with sure knowledge of their next steps. Otherwise, they may leave grounded in style and mechanics, with no other values or guidelines to help them in future writing endeavors.

Although the majority of my education was based upon current-traditional writing strategies, my experiences as a student, tutee and observer in the Writing Center have convinced me that strategies based on expressivist writing theory are more effective. I want my clients to know that they do have something to write that is worth reading. Expressivist critical processes are designed to enhance confidence and boost self-esteem. I want my clients to leave with the memory of a positive encounter and a paper covered in written reminders of what they can do to refine their claims during the revision process. Expressivist strategies focus on the importance of revision. If I remember my priorities and concentrate on the central theme and work my way out, then my consultations will be successes for me and my clients I learned the craft of writing in workshops that emphasized critical thinking Expressivist strategies are closely linked to critical thinking skills. In grade school, I learned mechanics. My techniques in fiction were largely self-taught. Expressivist strategies mirror how people think, in part because expressivist theory values content over mechanics I learned writing theory and the underlying values this semester. I want to pass on a set of values to writers, guidelines that they can keep for future reference Putting together what I have learned through formal and informal education, personal experience, and professional observation has changed my perspective regarding writing consultation. The overall experience has changed my perspective, but I still believe that working in the Writing Center will be a series of surprises. The more I learn, the more I realize I have yet to learn.

Work Cited
Gillespie, Paula and Lerner, Neal. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, Second Edition. Pearson Education, Inc., New York, 2004.

Dead White Chickens and Other Examples of Cognitive Dissonance in Kayla Williams’ Biography Love My Rifle More Than You

2011-10-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

“We go on. Suddenly they’re waving dead white chickens. None of us have ever encountered anyone waving a dead white chicken. None of us knows what it means. Are they offering us something to eat? Are they making an obscure reference to something about Americans, the United States, our invasion? Is it a gesture of resistance or of mockery? What the hell is going on?”(95). Kayla Williams had a more difficult job than she understood. She was trained as a linguistic specialist and sent to Iraq, ostensibly to listen to broadcasts and pass along anything relevant and translate when the Army needed to talk to the locals. Cognitive dissonance is present when two cognitions (pieces of knowledge, such as ‘apples are fruit’ or ‘my favorite color is blue’ or ‘the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776’) are in conflict. Translation is an example of cognitive dissonance – one has to think in two languages at once. But how do you translate dead white chickens? Williams described the incident in terms of cognitive dissonance; these smiling people waved dead white chickens to show support, to mock the troops, to show evidence of chemical warfare, to invite them for dinner…believing all of that at once prompted half of the convoy to laugh hysterically. Although Williams recognized this example of cognitive dissonance, her biography is full of examples whose proximate cause is the very structure and protocol of the Untied States Military.

My favorite example concerns the deployment orders. Williams was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Campbell, waiting for orders to deploy to Iraq. As Williams recounted:” “Quit lying to us! A duffel bag with all our extra gear has already gone to the Middle East. We’ve been told to pack personal hygiene equipment for six months! We went to Wal-Mart and spent three hundred dollars on binoculars, batteries, cameras, books, and a solar shower! Extra fucking everything! And you’re trying to tell us we’re not going anywhere?” “Roger that. There is no deployment order for the division.” Then the deployment order for the division was announced on CNN” (62). When my ex-husband was in the Army, he was supply personnel stationed at Fort Bragg, one of the rapid-deployment stations. I knew he was on his way to Haiti for Operation: Restore Hope seven hours before he did (officially). So, in direct opposition to the lesson in critical thinking Williams and her fellow soldiers received in college, they are told to disbelieve the evidence of their own senses and experience in favor of what those with higher rank tell them.

According to the cognition of Chain of Command, those of higher rank are supposed to protect and defend those under their command with their superior self-discipline (read – never show emotion), training and experience. This cognition pairs with the cognition that one must always respect rank. Williams encountered dissonance when she served under a series of ranking officers who were incompetent, insensitive and too sensitive, and did not care about the soldiers they were theoretically supposed to protect. The military had a built-in way of insulting those of higher rank – “retreat into my shell of protocol” (91). Williams, a woman who has shown herself to be a caring and sensitive individual, resolved her cognitive dissonance in this regard by accepting the cognition that ranking officers should have the described traits in order to protect ‘their soldiers’ and rejecting the idea that all officers deserve their rank. When she retreated to protocol with SSG Moss and Moss cried, Williams’ account reveals the change in attitude forced by the necessary resolution: “The Bitch. She’s crying in front of a subordinate, and I have even less respect for her now, if that’s possible. You never cry in front of a subordinate” (91). In other instances, Williams had a friend, Zoe, whose commanding officer fled to safety before ordering his soldiers to safety, an act which resulted in a letter of reprimand for the officer (245). SSG Moss continued to be incompetent in ways that could get Williams and her team killed. A later ranking officer accused Williams of being angry with her because she did not care about learning about the technical aspects and equipment of the job, most of which relied on those aspects and equipment (267). This was acceptable to the military, which had stationed this officer in Iraq when she did not even know where Iraq was located on a world map.

When she wasn’t dealing with officers whose ignorance was potentially lethal to her and her team, Williams experienced cognitive dissonance in her role as translator. She accompanied soldiers on hunts for weapons and had to simultaneously reassure the terrified locals and the twitchy soldiers that everything was okay. She told the locals that the scary soldiers with rifles pointed at them were, in fact, here to protect them but must also hunt for hidden weapons. She told the soldiers that the locals were peaceful people and the shouting and stepping close were part of Arabic culture. When traveling, people were potentially allies and enemies at once. Common trash could be a cover for explosive devices. Prisoners might be harmless natives or terrorists – the Geneva Conventions need not apply.

At least Williams could count on her fellow soldiers for support and mutual respect, right? “Bros before hos” is the rule, indicating loyalty to the team ahead of loyalty to outsiders. The problem is that it only works if the team one relies upon ignores your gender. Williams spent time with other units in her capacity as translator. They showed her the same respect they showed their own team because she demonstrated skills that helped them to do their job, she did not complain, and she treated them as though they were all boys together. Oddly, this changed when she wore mascara to a concert. Suddenly, the others realized she was female. They started to refer to her breasts and stopped using her name. These same people she was so comfortable with started to make rape jokes. She felt vulnerable for the first time because the cognition that female equals slut, bitch, or ho shattered the cognitions that she was a friend and had worth as a Specialist. The worst part for me when reading this text was when Williams recounted the incident wherein a fellow soldier attempts to molest her. “The next morning I’m writing in my journal about the incident with Rivers when he appears. “Listen, Kayla,” he says, all sheepish. Looking anywhere but at me. “I apologize. I was completely out of line back there. I hope there are no hard feelings. It was dumb, and it was wrong. So I hope you can, you know, accept my apology on this.” And just like that, he’s gone again. This throws me even more. I have all this righteous anger built up. And – wham! An apology? It feels like cheating. Like: This guy steps way over the line, and now he gets to be able to have it all just go away. Because now he’s sorry? (208). Williams unofficially reported the incident and Rivers was reassigned, but he told others that she begged him to let her suck his cock and when he refused (on the grounds that he was engaged), she was terribly disappointed.

She kept her distance from everyone after that. How can you argue with that position? It is one of the biggest, clearest examples of cognitive dissonance. A soldier stationed in a war zone does not turn down an offer of any kind of sex with a willing female – period. A guy who turns down sex due to a girlfriend back home is probably gay or impotent, according to military culture. A female who wanted to have sex of any kind does not have to rely on one person to give her sex – she has hundreds to choose from. So, how does this rumor of rejection gain general acceptance? How does someone who is free and easy with the sex elude a ‘bad reputation’ while someone who behaves becomes the pariah?

By the time Kayla Williams returned home, she had built up so much cognitive dissonance, she could not relate to anyone who did not share her subject position (military stationed in Iraq). Civilian life no longer made sense. Other veterans did not share her specific experience, so she was sure they had suffered worse. At the close of her narrative, she shared housing with two other soldiers who had been stationed in Iraq. She wrote her story to gain perspective. I hope it worked.

Work Cited

2005. Williams, Kayla. Love My Rifle More than You. Norton.

Shylock, In His Own Words

2011-05-14T17:14:00.000-04:00

William Shakespeare wrote a play with a Jewish moneylender as its nominal villain. It is unknown as to whether Shakespeare had any access to Jewish people, Jewish history, or the laws as pertained to Jewish people. This moneylender, Shylock, has only three hundred sixty lines in The Merchant of Venice. He only appears in five of the play’s twenty scenes. Yet, Shylock remains one of Shakespeare’s most compelling characters. He falls short of the satiric comic villain and also fails to win complete sympathy. He is the quintessential outsider, an easy target for bullies; his attitude of contempt makes it unlikely that other Venetian citizens would stand up for him. Shylock would rather see Antonio dead at his hand than gain three times the money he was owed, which further alienates him from the other characters. Pain motivates his need for revenge. Shylock openly hates Christians in general, and Antonio in particular; he feels far more sinned against than sinning. In his own words, Shylock shares the pain and grief and fear that fuel his hatred toward Antonio. Antonio’s anti-Semitism and hypocrisy is balanced by Shylock’s honest forthright contempt; Shylock’s alien status allows him to see the contradictions between Christian values and practices.

Modern scholars must speculate as to what Shakespeare knew about Jews, what sources he drew upon to create the usurer who dared demand a pound of flesh as payment on a debt. The expulsion of Jews from England occurred three hundred years before Shakespeare’s time. Christopher Marlowe, his main rival, wrote The Jew of Malta, the story of an evil Jew who actively plots against his Christian neighbors. Marlowe and Shakespeare may have witnessed (or at least heard about) the trial and execution of Lopez, a Jewish physician accused of poisoning Queen Elizabeth. According to eyewitness accounts, the crowd treated the execution of Lopez as a comedy, laughing at his last words. Gratiano, a character who serves as comedy relief in The Merchant of Venice, delivers a cruel punchline to the judge’s verdict: “In christening shalt thou have two godfathers:/ Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more,/ To bring him to the gallows, not the font “(4.1. ll.414-416). Was the character of Gratiano based on Shakespeare’s (firsthand or secondhand) impression of the crowd at the gallows, many of whom were groundlings at the Globe Theatre? The animosity shown by Gratiano does not seem to surprise any of the characters, including Shylock.

This is understandable, as there seems to be no character in The Merchant of Venice who does not harbor prejudice. The belief that others were inferior due to circumstances of their birth was widely accepted regardless of creed or class.

Shylock is a professional moneylender.
Shylock is an active parent.
Shylock has strong ties to the Jewish community.
Shylock is beaten, insulted and spat upon on a regular basis by Antonio and people who follow him.
Shylock loses his business to Antonio.
Shylock loses his daughter to Lorenzo, a Christian and known companion of Antonio.
Shylock loses his personal savings because Christians incite his daughter to steal from him as she leaves.
Shylock has one opportunity to have his revenge without repercussions.
His need for revenge cost him half of his material possessions, his livelihood, and his ties to the Jewish community.

“So Musical a Discord” – Anachronisms in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

2011-01-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

A Midsummer Night’s Dream must contain the most culturally and chronologically diverse characters in fiction. “The musical discord holds together four different modes of representation: Theseus and Hippolyta, from classical legend; the four young lovers, from every place and every time; Bottom and his fellow English rustics; the fairies, who in themselves are madly eclectic. Titania is Ovid’s alternate name for Diana, while Oberon comes out of Celtic romance, and Puck or Robin Goodfellow is English folklore” (Bloom 166). These characters are unaware of one another at the opening of the play, but soon become involved in the plots of others. Shakespeare could not possibly write a play interweaving such diverse characters and not have anachronisms throughout the work. What makes Dream one of the greatest plays ever written is Shakespeare’s ability to make these anachronisms seem unimportant. How did he manage this theatrical feat? What inspired him to write Dream, one of the three plays out of thirty-nine (the other two are The Tempest and Love’s Labor Lost) in which Shakespeare does not use a primary source?

According to Bullfinch’s Age of Fable, Theseus quietly wed Hippolyta and left her after the birth of their son Hippolytus. Theseus later had a public wedding in Athens, to Phaedra. Hippolyta and her Amazons crashed the wedding to kill the entire wedding party, but Hippolyta was killed in that battle. That might help explain why Hippolyta’s lines can be read to imply hostility or eagerness: “Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;/Four nights will quickly dream away the time”(1.1:7-9). To further complicate matters, Titania is a synonym for Diana, the Roman name for Artemis, goddess of the Moon, the Hunt, and patron goddess of the Amazons. As Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta would have also been her High Priestess. If Titania had grounds for jealousy, it would mean that the Amazon Queen had dared to touch the consort of her patron goddess. Any affair Titania had with Theseus would have had to happen before Oberon was born, as he is the offspring of Julius Caesar and Morgan le Fay. Would they care, these theatergoers, that most of the histories of the characters contradicted each other?

Part of his success is no doubt due to the obscurity of some of the details. Theseus tells Hermia “”if you yield not to your father’s choice,/You can endure the livery of a nun,/For aye to be in shady cloister mewed”(1.1:71-73).Who would know that cloisters were unheard of in an Athens that predated Roman rule and Christianity? Shakespeare concentrated on universal constants to hold the loyalty of his audience. Theatergoers knew (or could imagine) the pain of unrequited love, as well as the thrill of forbidden love. They could also relate to the fear and confusion felt by the rude mechanicals, even as they laughed at Bottom’s predicament. Shakespeare also took care to craft short, fast-paced scenes, shifting from one pair or set of character to another pair of set before the audience would have time to notice any contradictions.

Shakespeare spent a lifetime honing his craft by watching audiences and giving them what they craved. Scholars must speculate as to his motives and interior landscape; he did not leave behind written records of his thoughts. The timing of certain events and successive plays can certainly invite speculation as to the origin and inspiration of William Shakespeare’s works. In the first chapter of the Pulitzer Prize finalist text Will in the World, Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt notes the similarities between elements a series of performances commissioned by Leicester for Queen Elizabeth and elements in Dream. The obvious connection is the description of a platform Leicester built for Queen Elizabeth to view the leap of a mechanical dolphin, later referenced in Dream: “Thou rememb’rest/Since once I sat upon a promontory,/And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back”(2.1:148-150). Shakespeare watched the queen watching the performances, a mixture of classical poetry and rustic folktales, with slapstick comedies and dancing. It was a mass confusion, not allowing complete concentration on any one part; at one point, several acts physically collided. Everyone was surprised when Elizabeth requested a repeat performance. The second performance was smoother, well received by the audience, which included representatives from most walks of life. Shakespeare learned that a successful performance must include something for everyone.

Philip Henslowe, a theatrical agent/owner and contemporary of Shakespeare, kept meticulous records of theatrical performances. In his diary, he notes the performance of a play, Huon of Burdocize, on December 28, 1593. This play was based on the story of Huon of Bordeaux, recounted in the Legends of Charlemagne collected by Thomas Bullfinch. Huon, a knight who inadvertently killed the eldest son of Charlemange, meets the Faerie King Oberon while riding through the woods on a quest. Oberon, the first fairy godfather, takes an interest in Huon, gives him gifts and valuable advice. (In this tale, Oberon is portrayed as the son of Julius Caesar and Morgan le Fay.) Oberon even brings Huon to Avalon and abdicates in his favor, declaring him ruler over the ‘faerie folk’. Faeries rarely give birth, so the issue of succession is often settled by adoption. King Arthur objects, as he believes that if any human should rule Avalon, it should be Arthur; Huon offers to be co-ruler, thus restoring the peace. Oberon retracts his threats to turn Arthur into a werewolf and allows the co-rulership to stand. Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream within three years of the opening of Huon.

Shakespeare knew classical gods and heroes held a timeless appeal. In his day, classical and medieval morality plays were often recycled. He understood the power of folk tales, something he would have seen at least four times per year in Stratford, never diminished by repetition. Puck, a figure straight out of English folklore, would be an alluring character to English audiences. He understood the widespread appeal of physical comedy. The rude mechanicals and their play-within-a-play would hold the attention of the groundlings. He knew that there must be at least one character who speaks for the audience, in plain language; Bottom serves that purpose in Dream. He may well have learned from the performance of Huon that an audience would ignore or forgive anachronistic flaws if the story was sufficiently entertaining. Shakespeare succeeded in crafting a plot so compelling that it not only made the flaws irrelevant, it inspired poets and writers for more than four hundred years.

Works Consulted

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare – The Invention of the Human. Berkley Publishing Group, New York, 1998.

Bullfinch, Thomas. Age of Fable. World Publishing Company, 1965.

Bullfinch, Thomas. Age of Chivalry and Legends of Charlemagne. World Publishing Company, 1965.

Greenblatt, Stephen, et. al. The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford Edition. New York: Norton, 1997.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2004.

Reverse-Engineering Religion – Ideas Raised in Yentl’s Revenge

2010-12-02T17:02:00.000-05:00

Yentl’s Revenge, a collection of essays edited by Danya Ruttenberg, centers around the theme she expresses in the introduction: “Today’s Yentl can, as many Orthodox feminists have begun to do, learn Talmud to extract the sexism from legitimate Jewish law. Or, she can lead workshops on S/M and Judaism. Or she can do both. She can see infinite ways to address women who want to talk honestly about the place of Judaism in real life – who grapple with body image, queer identity and the media’s pervasive role in our culture. Who want to give religion a breath of fresh air – whether through meditation, eco-kosher living or punk rock. Who crave innovation – but innovation that’s genuinely Jewish” (XX). Third wave feminists have grown up with rights as a given, which enables them to see possibilities for active change. Some of the essay topics concern queer identity and the limitation of labels (Dina Hornreich), the confusion and difficulty of being identified as a non-white Jew (Ophira Edut, Loolwa Khazzoom, and Dalia Sofer), and laying claim to exclusively-male ritual (Emily Wages, Karen (Chai) Levy, Jennifer Bleyer, and Haviva Ner-David).

The essays cover these women’s exploration of what it means (to them) to be Jewish. Some attempted to seek traditional roots, only to find that Orthodox and Conservative Judaism make no room for women to actively participate. Some sought an example in Zionism, only to find oppression of women and Palestinians. Some created their own versions of Judaic ritual, with mixed results. Not one of the essayists waited for change to occur – each acted as her own change agent.

Although Judaism (like any other major religion) was designed and is run as a patriarchal social construct, nevertheless modern feminists can reverse-engineer this construct in order to build a better spiritual vehicle without sacrificing their need to connect to a higher power. Religion is a set of beliefs about life – which created it, how to live it, and what comes after it. Out of this set of beliefs comes dogma – core principles that govern the interpretation of the set of beliefs. Out of dogma comes canon – religious law, undisputed by the faithful. Looked at in this way, religion is a machine, composed of wheels within wheels, whose engine drives the faithful alone the road of life. What if the machine that carries you is uncomfortable? What if you feel as though you are strapped to the hood with bungee cord, an obvious afterthought to the engineers who designed this cruiser? Sure, the core set of beliefs seem to have ‘always’ been there – they show up in every major religion in the world; but the dogma and canon law vary according to principle and setting. But, who made the machine surrounding the core?

Judaism is a religion shaped and controlled by patriarchy. The writings and interpretations of the underlying belief system and its applications have, until recently, been the exclusive domain of male authorities. Women have been excluded from the study and practice of most of the significant rituals involved in Jewish religious life. Until recently, the only choices women had were to passively accept the patriarchal design and shape of Judaism or leave the synagogue (which also meant being separated form family, friends, and community). That is no longer the case. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has this interesting entry: “Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of discovering the technological principles of a mechanical application through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, an electrical component, a software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail, usually with the intention to construct a new device or program that does the same thing without actually copying anything from the original. A telling analogy of RE is that the research of physical laws can be seen as reverse-engineering the world itself.” Now, third wave Jewish feminists can take apart this ‘machine’ and rebuild it in a comfortable fit, without losing any of its functionality.

Several essayists have chosen to wear religiously significant clothing, traditionally reserved for males, in the practice of their ritual prayers. This is one example of reverse-engineering as applied to Judaism. The women examined the rituals requiring a tefillin and broke them down to their component parts, asking what purpose the practice and restriction served, then reclaiming the ritual for their own use. This may mean openly touching the Torah, which means banishment form the synagogue in some cases, or performing the ritual in the privacy of one’s own home. Women today can pick and choose the elements of Judaism that suit their spiritual needs and redesign the daily practice of their faith.

This is in no way easy. Modern third wave Jewish feminists are struggling with defining their identity in terms of faith and cultural ethnicity. What does it mean to be a secular Jew? How does one reconcile the horrors of the Holocaust with the horrors of incest? How does one choose between reclaiming a much-needed safe haven and respecting the people who were living there until your people shoved them out? How does one respect the Law of Moses when it calls you unclean? How can you pray in a temple whose rules demand that you are neither seen nor heard?

Question everything. Take nothing for granted. Yiskah (Jessica) Rosenfeld’s essay examines the way we view Lilith and Eve; her exercise in reverse-engineering reveals a deeper meaning to be found and applied to the story of Adam’s spouses. Women can look at Eve and see a lonely nurturer, excluded from the intimate father/son relationship, whose conversation with the serpent (Lilith in disguise?) leads her to attain growth and knowledge, which her love inspires her to share with Adam. It is a different view from the original (Eve was not submissive, so she was punished) and the feminist version (Eve was spineless and easily led), though constructed from the same materials.

“Once, while in college, I took a friend who had never heard of the joyous, raucous holiday of Simchat Torah to services at the seminary. As soon as we arrived, he was handed a Torah scroll and welcomed enthusiastically into a crowd of euphoric, dancing, singing men. As usual, I had to stand in the back, watching with the women. After an hour, I could no longer control my rage and I simply threw myself into the crowd of men and started dancing, too. A rabbinical student angrily grabbed me and demanded, “Who gave you permission to dance?” Calmly, I replied, “God.” He threw me out” writes Susannah Heschel in the Foreword. Why couldn’t the women dance? Possibly one or more of the men may have made a vow to God to allow no woman but his wife to touch him. If so, why didn’t the man or men in question sit out dances? Why not have dancing circles for women, if one must segregate the sexes? The women were deprived of joy, detached from this holy celebration.

“For many American Jewish women under thirty, the question is not “Is it acceptable for me to wear a kippah or read Torah as a woman?” but instead “Is it possible to be a thinking individual and an observant Jew at the same time?” or “Can I have a personally meaningful spiritual life and simultaneously take part in Jewish tradition?” (161) writes Emily Wages. If one does nothing to alter the components and/or meaning of Jewish tradition, then the answer to the last two questions must be “No”. Thinking individuals inevitably question tradition. I am a recently-converted Catholic and the first thing I did when I heard about the Vatican requesting all Catholics boycott Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was go out and buy two copies – NO ONE gets to tell me what I can or can’t read. I gave one copy to my RCIA sponsor. Does this mean I am not a good Catholic? Maybe, if your definition of a good Catholic requires unquestioning obedience. I don’t think feminists today are capable of unquestioning obedience – and I am glad.

Judaism, like any other major religion, is not the exclusive property of men. A love it or leave it attitude should not apply. If you want to keep your belief system without the baggage of patriarchy, reverse-engineer it; take it apart and rebuild it without the misogyny. As with any other machine, right is running- if it’s running its right. Although Judaism is run as a patriarchal social construct, feminists can reverse-engineer this construct in order to build a better spiritual vehicle.

Work Cited

2001. Ruttenberg, Danya (ed.). Yentl’s Revenge. Seal Press.

Father Figures: A Comparative Analysis of John Milton’s “Elegia Quarta” and “Ad Patrem”

2010-10-26T16:58:00.000-04:00

John Milton was a prolific writer, who composed poetry and prose for a variety of reasons. My own purpose was to analyze, compare, and contrast two of Milton’s works, with an emphasis on structure and syntax. In order to meet my need, I had to choose works that were similar in length and theme. With this is mind, I searched for poems of address. I chose “Elegia Quarta” and “Ad Patrem” primarily because they were both addressed to men who were mentors to Milton, men for whom Milton felt filial devotion. The verses were composed in Latin and sent to their recipients, both of whom were familiar with the dead language. The English translation closely matched the form of the original Latin text. I analyzed the context of each separate text. Then, I compared and contrasted the elements of the poems and their overall effects.

Milton’s “Elegia Quarta” was probably written in 1627, the poet was eighteen years old. He addressed this as a letter to his former tutor, a Scottish schoolmaster and clergyman named Thomas Young, who at the time served as a Chaplain to English merchants in Hamburg, Germany. Young was part of a group of religious reformists who composed tracts under the pseudonym of Smectymnuus. Milton later supported his mentor with two pamphlets of his own. Elegies are commonly used as laments or tributes to the deceased, but Thomas Young did not die until 1665. Milton revealed in the text that Young resided in Hamburg with his wife and at least two children. He also referred to battles rumored to be fought close to Young. During the Thirty Years War, Hamburg was heavily fortified and largely unaffected by armed conflict.

“Elegia Quarta” begins with an apostrophe in which Milton tells the letter itself where to go to reach his former tutor. He next writes of his great affection for Young and laments that three years is too long to go without seeing his soul mate. He apologizes to Young for not writing sooner. He expresses concern that battles are fought close to Young as well as anger that Young could not find a position in Britain, a situation he blames on his mother country. Milton encourages Young to believe that God will protect until he comes back to Britain, wherein he will have the bright future he so richly deserves.

“Ad Patrem” is a mystery in some respects. No one is sure exactly when the poem was written, although the most popular educated guess is around 1637, five years after Milton left Cambridge. Upon leaving Cambridge, Milton resided with his father and pursued an intense program of independent study, mainly concentrating on the classical and historical texts. Milton Senior, musician, poet, and trustee of Blackfriar’s Theatre (famed winter quarters of the King’s Men, the troupe in which William Shakespeare was both playwright and performer), supported his son in his scholarly endeavors, despite an understandable parental concern regarding the path chosen by his son. Milton Senior had been unable to support his family on the proceeds form his poetry and music, so his worry was based on painful personal experience.

Milton (Junior) opens “Ad Patrem” with an invocation to his Muse, wishing that the following poem would be a work worthy of his father. He expresses gratitude for all his father has done for him and offers this poem, as the only wealth he possesses. He explains why he chose poetry as a life’s pursuit, referencing the classical belief that poets were as celebrated as heroes. Milton reminds his father of the grand poetic tradition and begs him to remember that he inherited both his talent for and his love of poetry from Milton Senior. He again thanks his father for his gifts, tangible and intangible, reminds him that there are more important things than money, and ends with the hope that this poem will last long enough for future generations to know what a wonderful father Milton had.

Comparing the forms in the selected poems requires somewhat of a detour. These poems were originally written in Latin. Reading the original verses convinced me that the works were lyric poems, as they have a recognizable rhyme scheme. Milton did not seem too concerned that his words were exact rhymes; it was enough if they were similar, as he was more concerned with the content. The English translation is a near match in rhythm, but reads as blank verse. A verse in “Ad Patrem” scans:

“Nectu vatis opus divinum despice carmen,

Quo nihil aethereos ortus, & semina caeli,

Nil magis humanam commendat origine mentem,

Sancta Prometheae retinens vestigial flammae.”

The English translation, however, scans: “Nothing so dignifies the human mind as its origin, and it possesses yet some traces of Promethean fire.” While the English version retains the style and dramatic philosophical tone, it lacks the lyric flow of the original Latin. In contrast to the musica lyrica of “Ad Patrem”, “Elegia Quarta” is closer to a blank verse chant. Milton writes:

“Charior ille mihi quam tu doctissimi Graium

Cliniadi, pronepos qui Telamonis erat.

Quamque Stagirites generoso magnus alumno,

Quem peperit Libyco Chaonis alma Jovi.”

The English verse scans: “Dearer is he to me than were you, Socrates, wisest of the Greeks, to Cliniades of the stock of Telamon; dearer even than the great Stagirite to his noble pupil, whom a Chaonian mother bore to Libyan Jove.” In translating these works from Latin to English, it was necessary that form be sacrificed for the sake of content.

Milton has a distinctive voice, as evidenced even in his early works. The reader can identify a work of Milton by the long, intricate sentence structure, the nearly seamless blend of Judeo-Christian and classical mythological references, and the selective obedience to the tradition rules governing the structure of specific poetic forms. Milton’s work is a compelling blend of reverence for tradition and scorn for arbitrary rules. For instance, a sonnet is supposed to state a problem, then resolve it, or show two sides of an issue, according to its rhyme scheme. Milton’s sonnets follow the rhyme scheme, but not the content criteria. He wrote elegies as lyric poems addressed to healthy people and included reprimands to authority figures in emotional laments. Milton showed a confidence in his technique at the age of eighteen that most people don’t feel until they reach the age of thirty or older.

While Milton’s underlying voice remains the same in all of his various forms of poetry and prose, his tone changes frequently, even within a single line of a poem. Both “Elegia Quarta” and “Ad Patrem” have overtones of love and gratitude toward the mentors in his life. In “Ad Patrem”, he writes: “I pass in silence over the common kindness of a loving parent; greater matters call me.” These matters concerned the education his father both paid for and encouraged him to expand upon. In “Elegia Quarta”, Milton praises Thomas Young as “my guide when I was first threading the Aonian shades, and the sacred greenswards of the cloven hill; he first led me to drink of the Pierian water, and favored by Clio I thrice wet my lips with Castalian wine.” Essentially, the tone of both works emphasize the value Milton placed on his classical education, especially as it pertained to his study of poetics, as well as his admiration for the two men who influenced the direction of his studies.

The purpose of the verse has the strongest influence on the poem’s tone. In “Elegia Quarta”, Milton expresses admiration, love, loneliness, worry, and reassurance. Its entire construction is emotional, from the apostrophe that comprises the first fifty lines of the poem to the reminder of hope at the very end. Milton, in lengthy sentences filled with emotional angst, compares his relationship with Thomas Young to that of three classical mentor/student pairings, claiming that he loves his teacher as much as these legends did. His phrases throughout the poem (“I am forced to live half my life without him…my eyes were permitted to feast on his face, or my ears to drink in the sweet music of his voice…fix your shy glances…a faithful hand…I thus confess and crave your favor…now love will suffer him no longer to delay”) are filled with emotional resonance. His emotion-evoking word choices (“shy glances…modest lips…faithful hand…trembling prey…cowering victim…ravaging armies…blare of the blazing trumpet…you dwell alone and helpless…resounds the horrors of war…wan fear sends a shudder through your weary bones…radiant aegis of God…high-souled courage”) and repetition of the word ‘dearer’ support my hypothesis that this verse is essentially a plea.

“Ad Patrem”, on the other hand, is clearly a persuasive argument. Milton attempts to put his father’s fears to rest and explain why he is meant to be a famous poet. Milton starts his poem with an invocation, thus inviting his father to read the verses as a scholar. It is a clever way to influence the reader to set aside his emotions and pay attention to the argument. This verse is framed as a tribute to his father, but the content is a list of reasons why Milton Junior made the right decision. He starts of with gratitude and flattery in the first stanza. The opening lines of the next six stanzas (“Scorn not the poet’s song, a work divine…Poems were wont to grace the banquets of kings…Do not, I pray, persist in contemning the sacred Muses; think them not vain and poor, by whose gift you yourself are skilled…Although you pretend to hate the gentle Muses, I believe you do not hate them, for you did not bid me go, father, where the broad way lies open…I pass in silence over the common kindness of a loving parent; greater matters call me…Go now, gather wealth, fool, whoever you are”) read as rebuttals of a debate. The final two short stanzas are more conciliatory, implying (or simply hoping) that Milton Junior won the debate.

Milton used two different rhetorical strategies in “Elegia Quarta” and “Ad Patrem”. Was each strategy equally effective? The answer, for the most part, is subjective. Examining the strategies required several close readings, and I cannot be sure that I have recognized all of the nuances in the texts. Still, rhetoric requires a relationship between the one who composed the text and the one who reads it, so I feel I must include my response to the messages conveyed by Milton’s words. I have a bias regarding Milton’s frequent classical references, as I was raised to believe that showing off one’s education was rude. When Milton mentions the Pierian fountains, I wince as though I saw someone spit in public. Bias aside, I was enthralled by the modulation and rhythm of both verses (although I preferred “Ad Patrem”). I found “Elegia Quarta” to contain many beautiful phrases and little real substance, but I admit to having no emotional stake in Thomas Young’s well-being. “Ad Patrem” was my favorite of the two poems, although my sympathies are with Milton Senior, who had learned the hard way that one cannot eat a sonnet.

Milton had a way with words, in Latin and English alike. In comparing two of his poems, “Elegia Quarta” and “Ad Patrem”, I noted that Milton has a confident and distinctive voice. He wrote the two texts as lyric poems, but they are just as powerful when rendered as blank verse. Milton follows poetic traditions, but breaks arbitrary rules in his work, as evidenced in the fact that the verses in “Elegia Quarta” do not rhyme. His use of lengthy sentences and diction suited to evoking emotional responses worked to convey the poet’s worried plea that his former tutor return home safe. The use of the Muses as a metaphor for poetry as a career in “Ad Patrem” was also well-done, especially as it also serves the purpose of deflecting any residual emotional negativity toward the fictional beings (as opposed to the free-loading offspring). Overall, I learned a lot about how Milton constructed his rhetoric during this comparative analysis.

We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes

2010-08-18T16:49:00.000-04:00

“We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes”: Perceptions of Madness in Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Mrs. Dalloway

Madness is a mystery, only truly and completely understood by those who have experienced a complete break from reason and sanity. Definitions, descriptions, and treatments of the insane vary according to historical period and culture. In primitive times, it was believed that if a person violated a taboo, it weakened the protective barrier woven by the Shaman and allowed evil spirits access to the body. The Shaman or Medicine Man would treat a person who behaved outside of the norm, as such behavior was believed to be caused by evil spirits. The Medicine Man could cure the patient, but the Shaman was needed to evict the evil spirits (possibly sending them to an enemy of the tribe). One who needed regular treatments found themselves trepanned (primitive brain surgery) or apprenticed to the Shaman (insanity was one of the signs of a Shaman).

The belief that madness was caused by demonic possession lasted until the end of the Eighteenth Century. It was not always the dominant theory, but it tended to be the popular one. “Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on (Bronte 424).” (Hippocrates, Plato, and Cicero had various theories about the cause of madness, but they did not agree with each other and none of them gained popular support.) In Moslem dominated cultures, however, this belief was inverted; madmen were considered ‘touched by Allah’ in order to convey some important truth. Muslims treated the insane much the same way Hindus treated cattle, as sacred beings who must be allowed to go their own way unmolested. This is of course an interesting counterbalance to the ‘touched by Satan’ theory that lead to the exorcism method of treatment favored in Europe.

There is an interesting overlap in beliefs that covers the end of the Fifteenth Century to the end of the Eighteenth Century: the birth of the ‘inherited mental defect’ belief. Anecdotal evidence accumulated and people who dealt with the insane noticed that insanity ran in some families. This heralded the building of insane asylums, wherein the mentally ill could be chained like the sub humans they were believed to be, by reason of possession or defect. As the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason changed the way people looked at the world, the ‘inherited mental defect’ theory held more weight. By the Twentieth Century, the mentally ill were upgraded from ‘defective’ to ‘fragile’ in the eyes of the community. This heralded the beginning of the popular ‘rest cure’ – cutting off stimulation because the poor darlings couldn’t handle it.

Ultimately, the label of madness was bestowed upon any person who did not behave within the parameters set by society for their class, culture, and gender. The behavioral expectations for the poor were less strict than the rich, as the poor were considered inferior. The expectations of males and females varied as well because in most cultures males had the power and thus were given more behavioral leeway. Each culture decided how to differentiate between eccentricity and delusion, emotional intensity and hysteria. The observable behavior could be placed on a continuum; there is no paranoid delusion that couldn’t be reasonable under other circumstances, nor is there emotional excess that doesn’t have its place.

If one reads the three works listed in the title, one will find examples all along the continuum, from the prosaic to the hallucinatory. One of the reasons we are so fascinated with the insane is that some part of us realizes that we are only a few steps away from the condition. There is also the allure of letting go, of losing one’s inhibitions in a big way. “When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: (Bronte 151).” Jane Eyre had spent over a decade stifling her stronger emotions; it’s no surprise that the laugh of a woman with no restraints should be thrilling. Jane had lost control twice as a child and had paid dearly for those lapses. The first time, she had finally had enough of her cousin’s abuse and paid him back in kind; that was the result of a slow build up of rage. The second time was the result of sheer terror; she was afraid of being trapped alone with a ghost and had a panic attack; her concussion may have exacerbated the situation. The child has two opportunities before leaving her childhood home to vent her feelings of resentment. Throughout the rest of her narrative, Jane Eyre feels intensely, but has learned not to express it. According to the standards of English society, she behaves like a sane individual, although she must keep constant vigil over her wayward passions.

Bertha Mason Rochester, Bronte’s madwoman in the attic, is at the other end of the emotional continuum. If she feels something, she allows herself the full experience, and she acts upon the feelings with little or no regard for the consequences. Because of this she must be confined, so that she cannot harm others or commit adultery. Although she is definitely mad, as well as excessively passionate, she does seem to have some grasp of reason. Bertha only harms those with whom she has ‘issues’; the innocents she leaves alone.

Edward Rochester has no difficulty expressing his intense emotions, but his excesses are not judged so harshly. This is also the case with John Reed, Jane’s cousin. “He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in a day, but continually (Bronte 5)” and “He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing (Bronte 7).” Yet when Jane defends herself, she is punished for her passionate outburst; John is not. When Jane is grown, she nearly marries Edward Rochester; the wedding is canceled due to the fact that he has a wife. Rochester is upset that Jane might leave him. “’Jane! Will you hear reason?’ (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear); ‘because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.’ His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild licence. I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him (Bronte 426).” No one even once considered locking these two gentlemen away, even though their outbursts were just as passionately violent.

In fact, the only man in the three texts whose behavior is called into question is Septimus Smith, the veteran in Woolf’s classic novel. The irony here is that Septimus, who has visual and auditory hallucinations, definite delusions, and post traumatic stress disorder [“Look the unseen bade him, the voice which now communicated with him who was the greatest of mankind, Septimus, lately taken from life to death, the Lord who had come to renew society, who lay like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun, for ever unwasted, suffering for ever, the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer, but he did not want it, he moaned, putting from him with a wave of his hand that eternal suffering, that eternal loneliness (Woolf 215-216).”], is accused of upsetting his wife and behaving in an ungentlemanly fashion. It is as if Septimus had a gaping abdominal wound and his physicians chided him, “You must stop this bleeding, man, think of the carpet, your wife will never remove the stain.” As a counterpoint Clarissa Dalloway, who also seems to suffer from post traumatic stress [“To see your own sister killed by a falling tree (all Justin Parry’s fault – all his carelessness) before your very eyes, a girl too on the verge of life, the most gifted of them, Clarissa always said, was enough to turn one bitter (Woolf 264)…”She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day (Woolf 200).”], found a socially acceptable way to mask her feelings of alienation and disconnection.

Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich

2010-07-14T16:47:00.000-04:00

Adrienne Rich is a well-known lesbian radical feminist poet. When asked why she never wrote poems about her children, she replied “poetry was where I lived as no-one’s mother, where I existed as myself” (31). Her nonfiction writings explore the various ways that patriarchal dogma permeates society from the law of the land to the subconscious mind of the individual. Of Woman Born is an insightful investigation into the way we perceive motherhood on personal and cultural levels. Motherhood is a nesting ground for paradoxes. Mothers love their children as tiny beings with vast potential and hate the near-constant demands they make of her. Mothers savor the experiences of first words and steps, the feeling of being unique and irreplaceable to at least one person, even as they defer their dreams and parts of their identities which prove incompatible with childrearing. According to the patriarchal mindset, motherhood is a woman’s ‘sacred calling’ that is simultaneously deemed unworthy of pay or notice (unless something goes wrong).

Traditionally, the unborn child has been valued above the mother in medical emergencies by the same lawmakers who condoned exposure of female infants. These paradoxes, according to Rich, may well be born of fear. Pregnancy proves that women can give life; what is given can also be taken away. Rich theorizes that the originators of the patriarchal system had a vision of woman as Kali, she who creates and destroys for unknowable reasons. In their fear, they deny the power of procreation by devaluing everything connected with it, including childrearing, pregnancy, even women themselves. By denigrating a woman’s ability to be anything other than homemaker and caretaker, they reassure themselves that mother isn’t going anywhere – she is bound to the child.

Rich points out the difficulties of raising children in this paradox. All children have some hidden awareness of a mother’s power (‘I brought you into this world, I can take you out’). A mother raises a son who must either learn to disrespect her or become a pariah to his peer group (‘mama’s boy’); this relationship is also a template for his attitudes toward women throughout his lifetime. Either way she chooses, the mother must damage some part of her son’s fragile psyche. Daughters have another set of difficulties; their role models are just as confused as they are. Yes, mothers are often confused and frustrated and badly in need of help. Unfortunately, the same system that denies their inherent worth also denies their need for help. Childbirth is treated as a medical condition to be dealt with by technology. Mothers in crisis are only acknowledged in the aftermaths of tragedies. We must debunk the myth of instinctive motherhood and look for workable solutions to the problems of reproduction, childrearing, and a woman’s place.

Fairy Tale Ethics in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber

2010-04-17T16:46:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, in lands far and near, fairy tales were used as a method of transmitting cultural values from one generation to the next. The conventional wisdom of fairy tales reassured children that there was power in purity and virtue, power that could be used to triumph over evil and, regardless, good and evil always earned a transformation (whether as a reward or as a punishment always depended on the choices made). Protestant ethics were the dominant cultural mores in Charlotte Bronte’s time, so she ‘knew’ that one must work hard, avoid temptation and do the right thing under all circumstances in order to receive rewards in the end. Angela Carter studied Sadeian philosophy, which informed that those who resist temptation have not tried it, everyone is corruptible, and ‘do as ye will shall be the whole of the law’. Drawing on the Protestant work ethic (the Freudian superego), Bronte reinforces the conventional wisdom of fairy tales, while Carter uses Sadeian philosophy (the Freudian id) to call the conventional wisdom into question.

There is power in purity; like any power, purity can be corrupted. The Protestant ethic (superego) defines purity in terms of spirit (i.e., seeking God). Helen Burns, Jane Eyre’s friend from Lowood, had that form of purity. Bronte shows a break with convention by showing that all children are not pure: “Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible; John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before (30).” In Sadeian philosophy (id), purity resides in sexual virginity; the emphasis is on the untapped potential. In the title story of her collection, The Bloody Chamber, Carter writes: “I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away (11).” In a later story, Carter describes the other side of the coin: “He has that special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potential, and furthermore, unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance (97).”

Unlike purity (which is innate), virtue (from the Latin virtus ‘valor, merit, moral perfection’ – OED) is a quality that can be earned or lost. Protestant ethics dictate that virtue is purchased through suffering. Jane Eyre turns a corner and gains the strength of virtue only after: “-it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described (418).” Carter, advocating for the id, which identifies with the pleasure principle, implies that virtue is lost through pain: “In the course of that one-sided struggle, I had seen his deathly composure shatter like a porcelain vase flung against the wall; I had heard him shriek and blaspheme at the orgasm; I had bled. And perhaps I had seen his face without its mask; and perhaps I had not. Yet I had been infinitely disheveled by the loss of my virginity (18).” Fairy tales do not try to claim that virtue is its own reward.

Fairy tale endings inevitably feature transformation earned through choice. Protestant ethics (superego) dictate that if one does the right thing, one will earn blessings. Jane’s sacrifice and Rochester’s redemptive penance lead to their eventual happiness. “My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we love most are happy likewise (642).” Carter embraces the superego in her title story, for it is only when the female protagonist gives up her desires for worldly things that she is rescued and rewarded with the happy comfortable household she really wanted. “We lead a quiet life, the three of us. I inherited, of course, enormous wealth but we have given most of it away to various charities (40).” So, Jane is wealth, accepted and loved by the husband she chose. Rochester earns partial sight and marital bliss through hard work and sacrifice. The female protagonist of The Bloody Chamber has earned the husband who truly loves her, her mother’s protection, and some peace. And the fictional characters lived happily ever after (because they did the right thing).

Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Puffin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 1994.

Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber. Penguin Books, London, 1979.

Essay: What stereotypes do people have about the United States and its role as a world power?

2010-03-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

What stereotypes do people have about the United States and its role as a world power? To ask the question in a forward and blunt manner is to deny any chance of an honest and meaningful answer. To answer the main question of this essay, I interviewed twelve people of my acquaintance. By asking non-directive, open-ended questions, I was able to gain insight into the stereotypes my respondents may not be aware they have.

I did not mention stereotypes at all during the interviews, so as not to inspire my respondents to censor themselves. I also took steps to ensure that I did not influence their answers. Unfortunately, this is an election year, so some bias could no be avoided. After gaining consent for the interviews, I sent my respondents written copies of the questions I planned to ask them about living in America, so that they had time to think about their answers before talking to me. Some of those from whom I requested interviews were unable to comply, so I have less variance and diversity in the interviewed population than I wanted. My respondents include: two immigrants from India, two African-American female single parents, two school aged children, three males, two non-heterosexuals, and a retired soldier.

What do you like most about living in America? The children answered that they enjoyed the freedom, food, and fun. When asked, they revealed that they believed children who lived outside the U.S. were deprived of these things, as shown in the ads "Feed the Children," "Save the Children," and other such media releases. Interestingly, the African-American women and Indian immigrants valued the number of industrial and career opportunities most, while the Caucasian women over the age of twenty-one valued personal freedom above all else.

What do you like least about living in America? The men and the children agree that watching political conventions on television is their least favorite part of American life. The females also spoke out against politics, but half of them cited policies of lending support to other nations when our own citizens are suffering, while the rest were disgruntled by the personalities and views of individual politicians. Not one of my respondents compared the U.S. system of government to the government of another country.

What does America mean to you? The children answered "freedom" and did not elaborate. Both men polled refused to answer this question; I am still unsure what that means. The women's answers were variations on the theme of 'freedom of choice'. When further questioned, the women revealed a common belief that true freedom and independence was only available in this country. They also unanimously supported any foreign policy that lead to freedom of choice for other women.

The results of my interviews were not what I expected. People of my own race and gender were more willing to talk to me than those who were not, although I have known most of them for the same amount of time. The children gave me the answers that they were socialized to give, by teachers and media biased in favor of America. The women interviewed were united by their value of personal freedoms, but their views on politics and the U.S. as a world power were divided along racial lines. The Caucasian women supported inroads to the spread of democracy, while the African-American women favored concentration on domestic issues. Part of what makes this so surprising to me is that the women live similar lifestyles, economically and geographically; yet, their answers in the individual interviews deviated in exactly the same places.

Walter Mitty: Behind the Fantasies

2010-02-22T16:03:00.000-05:00

Charlie Chaplin once said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” This may also be true in the case of James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. So much of the reader’s attention is drawn to the fantasies and their humorous intersections with the everyday world that it is easy to overlook textual clues as to the personas of Walter and Mrs. Mitty. Rob Pope addresses this on pages 168 and 169 in the Common Topics section of The English Studies Book. After defining the problem and the terms, Pope provides a possible procedure: “1 – Identify the presumed centre of the text: …2 – DEcentre it so as to draw attention to marginal or ignored figures, events, and materials…3 – Recognize that you have thereby REcentred the text. Weigh the implications of what you have done for an understanding of the text as you first found it. Also notice that you have produced another configuration which can in itself be challenged and changed, and further de- and recentred in turn.” If the fantasies were no longer central to the story, what would the text reveal about Walter Mitty’s life?

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was first published in a 1939 volume of “The New Yorker”. It is the story of a man who constantly takes refuge from the everyday world by indulging in fantasies that feature him as a larger-than-life heroic figure, only to ‘wake up’ and find that he cannot even park a car without help. This short fiction centers on the fantastic daydreams of the main character, Walter Mitty. The word count of the full story is 2083. Without the fantasies, the word count drops down to 1004.

In his first fantasy (with which the story opens), Walter Mitty is the Commander of a Navy hydroplane, respected by his subordinates because of his fierce courage: “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!”…” In his next fantasy, he is the brilliant Dr. Mitty, called upon to treat a V.I.P., who manages to fix a machine that “there is no one in the East who knows how to fix” before performing surgery the other doctors are too craven to attempt. In Mitty’s next fantasy, he is a murder suspect who admits that he could have murdered the victim firing the pistol with his left hand, shelters a beautiful brunette, and when the District Attorney behaves badly, “Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin”. In Mitty’s next fantasy, he becomes a world-weary, cynical, hard-drinking Captain of the Royal Air Force, departing the base to fly “forty kilometers through hell”. As the story closes, Mitty’s last fantasy is of his heroic self facing a firing squad “erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the undefeated, inscrutable to the last”.

Meanwhile, in the real world, as Commander Mitty guides his crew, Walter Mitty is driving an automobile (and increasing his speed). While he imagines himself saving the expensive machine and the millionaire friend of Roosevelt, he is still driving an automobile through busy traffic to reach the parking lot (where he nearly hits a Buick). Fortunately, while he imagines being questioned by the District Attorney, he is only walking along the sidewalk, trying to remember what his wife told him to pick up while he was out. His imaginary stint in the RAF occurred while he was safely ensconced in an armchair. The only danger involved in his final fantasy would be lung cancer (from the cigarette he smoked outside the drugstore).

So, there’s a lot of misdirection. Mitty’s fantasies are more exciting than remembering puppy biscuits or leafing through magazines. Everyone daydreams, so it is also a common thread, used to garner sympathy for the character. His wild imagination is funny, so much so that a film adaptation of the short fiction was made (starring Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty). The daydreams also keep the focus on Walter Mitty as he imagines himself.

That’s where this gets tricky. There are actually two main characters named Walter Mitty. One of them is the henpecked husband who can’t remove the chains from his tires; the other is his idealized self, the Walter Mitty he wishes he could be (or thinks he should have become). Still, the fantasy and reality of this story is all seen through ‘Mitty-vision’ and is therefore suspect. Walking in his shoes, there is much that the reader does not see.

The center has been identified and examined. The next step is to remove the fantasy sections of the text and center what remains. What does the real world text reveal about Walter Mitty? When his wife asks about his gloves, he exhibits passive-aggressive behavior. “He raced the engine a little…He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again.” He is forgetful, despite multiple reminders. “Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out…” He worries how others perceive him. “The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself.”

Mrs. Mitty is more prominently featured in this newly centered text. What does the text reveal about her? Mrs. Mitty does not like to ride in a car moving faster than forty miles per hour. She has a solid routine, one that includes a weekly trip to town to run errands and get her hair done. She tells Walter what to do, often phrasing it in the form of a question, using words and tone one expects in a mother addressing her child. “”What are you driving so fast for?”…”Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?”…”Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?””

Mrs. Mitty, like so many women who marry dysfunctional men, is a control freak. She has to micromanage her husband, tell him what to do, where to go, and what to wear. This level of behavior is often fear-driven. Mrs. Mitty panicked when Walter went fifteen miles over her personal speed limit. Why? Was she aware that he wasn’t paying attention? Had they been in car accidents before, and she was trying to make sure they were never in another one? She panicked again when she didn’t see him in the hotel right away. Why? Did he have a tendency to wander off and get lost, or forget to take her home? Mrs. Mitty has motives, but James Thurber isn’t telling.

What does Walter leave out of his own narrative? He leaves out quite a bit, actually. The subtext (or absence) reveals a side of Walter Mitty that is considerably less than flattering or funny. He does not pay close attention to his surroundings. Three times in the narrative, he is snapped out of a fugue state and told to concentrate on his driving; once he goes fifteen miles faster than he intended, once he misses the change of a traffic light, and once he almost hits a Buick in a parking lot. Is he simply a bad or incompetent driver? Not according to the text: “He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.” He only gets in trouble when he daydreams, but he obviously prefers the fantasies to his real life. When his wife snapped him out of his initial fantasy, “She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.”

Walter seems capable of doing things right, if he can only stay in the moment. But is that entirely accurate? It is easy to lose track of how fast one is driving, or the color of a traffic light. However, in the parking lot he drives in the lane marked ‘Exit Only’ and begins to cautiously back up, but the attendant intervenes, insisting on putting Mitty’s car away. Why? Walter Mitty the narrator never addresses the issue, but the attendant doesn’t call Mitty by name, so my best guess is that the attendant saw Mitty come close to causing a collision as he backed up; otherwise, why would he bother parking the car when he didn’t have to (and it meant leaving his station)?

Walter doesn’t know what he may or may not have done wrong because he didn’t care enough to pay attention. He also doesn’t know how he managed to hook his chains around the axle. He doesn’t ever seem to get his errands right on their weekly trips to town. His fantasies are full of meaningless words and glaring inaccuracies. Why? Why should Walter bother to learn from his mistakes when it is so much easier to escape them, occasionally surfacing long enough to resent the competency of others? His priority is not to learn how to take off chains, but to appear physically incapable of taking them off, which shows that Walter Mitty values image over content.

Without the comedic interplay of fantasy and mundane reality to distract the reader, the gaps in the text are glaringly obvious. A reality-centered text belies the initial impression of the henpecked husband whose sole means of escape is a rich imagination. This new center reveals Walter Mitty as a man who cannot be bothered to live his own life, learn from his mistakes, or take responsibility because daydreaming is much easier and he knows his wife will take charge. Mrs. Mitty is depicted as less of a harridan than a fear-driven control freak who has likely been commanding by default and cleaning up her husband’s messes for years. Close reading of the text proves Chaplin right, as the lives and personas of Mr. and Mrs. Mitty seem tragic close-up.

Epitaph Two Ties Loose Ends on Dollhouse

2010-02-08T23:11:00.000-05:00

Joss Whedon's Dollhouse aired it's series finale January 29, 2010 with an episode titled "Epitaph Two". He ended the first season with "Epitaph One", an episode only aired online. "Epitaph One" took place ten years in the future of the series and showed the consequences of the technology that was the show's construct. This technology, called Active Architecture, Wiping, and Imprinting, was used to replace a human being's original personality with a custom-designed persona. In the series proper, it was used to make the Actives, or Dolls, into fantasy lovers for rich clients. The Epitaph episodes explored the results of using the technology for military and medical applications. Wireless signals wiped the personalities from anyone not shielded; other signals imprinted people with the command to kill. The Epitaph episodes included the main cast from the series, but were not centered on them. It allowed for a wider scope and a natural ending to a well-written, engaging series. I will miss it.

Facebook Confessionals

2010-02-06T13:29:00.000-05:00

Why do people do things they know are wrong and/or shameful and then post about it on Facebook and think it will stay a secret?

Do they not realize that Facebook is a public venue? Do they not remember that the people they are worried about knowing the secret are friends who can view the posts?

I have a friend, call her Tara, who doesn't want her family to know that she is dating. She posts on Facebook about her anticipation, who she likes, and what she's done. She thinks that she has kept her secret by replacing the names of her dates with types of food. The problem is it makes it seem like she is either using food as a euphemism for oral sex or that she is developing an eating disorder.

On other fronts, I have seen posts from teenagers who announce that they are grounded and then post updates on their success at sneaking out to do fun things. I will give kudos to two of this group for staying silent, but then I have to deduct points for being in the pictures posted on another friend's Facebook page.

“Let It Go”: A Writer Looks at Jack McDevitt’s novel Infinity Beach

2009-04-09T22:56:00.000-04:00

Emily Brandywine went on an expedition to attempt to find proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, accompanied by Tripley, Kane, and Yoshi. The mission failed – or so they claimed. Emily was never seen again after the mission, leaving a younger clone-sister to grieve. A disastrous 'accident' involving the remaining three crew members made a small town unlivable and added Yoshi to the list of missing persons. Tripley and Kane kept their silence, taking their secrets to the grave. The next generation, comprised of Tripley's son, Kane's daughter, and Emily's clone-sister, deal with the fallout when Yoshi's last living relative starts asking questions and sharing his concerns with Kim Brandywine. What the expedition really found and what they did in response could potentially cause an interspecies war if the status quo is maintained. Yet, the only character who seems to consistently want to resolve the problem is Kim.

"Let it go."

These words are spoken by nearly every character with lines of dialogue in Infinity Beach. Every forward motion in pursuit of a goal is preceded by someone's request to drop the line of inquiry. The main protagonist, Dr. Kim Brandywine, wants to know what happened to her clone sister Emily after the woman disappeared. She also wants to fulfill their mutual dream of achieving first contact with an alien race. These are ambitious goals for a single person and they seemed to have consumed Emily's life, possibly even causing her death.

Kim, however, takes a more passive stance at the start of the story. She has the background and credentials of a physicist, but chooses to use her talent for persuasion as a fundraiser for the institute responsible for underwriting SETI expeditions and outreach projects. In this way, McDevitt shows her intense passion for the dream of confirming the human race is not alone in the universe (most of the rest of humanity is giving up on the idea), while providing an rationale as to why she has not started an investigation prior to the beginning of the narrative. When her old professor, Yoshi's relative, calls her and asks her to visit the deserted township where Yoshi went missing during the 'accident', she is reluctant to get involved. As far as she knew, Emily disappeared after taking a taxi from the spaceport and was the victim of street crime.

Once Kim and her pilot friend Solly visit the scene, she is no longer sure the old man is mistaken. She decides to investigate. After that decision, a minor one at this point, Kim encounters resistance. She gathers evidence (the record of the last voyage, a mural depicting an alien spaceship, and a sighting) and conducts interviews with Tripley's son and Kane's daughter. Kim meets resistance at every juncture. Kane's daughter wants to bury the past, Tripley's son wants to protect his father's reputation, and Kim's bosses at the Institute are feeling pressure to end this inquiry from powerful authorities, so they pile censure upon censure until she is fired and facing criminal charges.

Everyone has reasons for wanting to bury the investigation into what really happened on Emily's last voyage, even after finding definitive proof of Yoshi's death, alien artifacts, alien AI, and the original records showing a violent encounter with an alien microship. Only Kim, reluctant at first, but rediscovering her reasons for wanting to make contact in the first place, regains her clarity.

It is unusual to see the down-to-Earth lives of individuals in hard science fiction. Kim wants to keep her job, have a boyfriend, see her name in the history books, stay out of jail without going on the run, and find closure for her sister's death. She's even attracted to one man while in love with another – very human. Her opponents don't want their lives to change, so they see her investigation as a threat to the status quo. They ignore the flaws in their logic. Kane and Tripley suffered more for their silence than they would have had they reported the incident upon their return to Greenway; by covering up their unfortunate accident, they only highlighted the cover-up itself, creating an atmosphere of suspicion that followed them the rest of their lives. The authorities who learned of the alien encounter rationalized that no one was likely to travel through that specific sector of space again, so why should they warn anyone? They refused to consider that they did not know where the aliens came from, nor could they truly guarantee no future encounters with aliens who were going to regard humans as hostile.

Let it go. Ignore it and it will go away.

The only thing Kim let go throughout her journey was the alien artifact. She and her crew return the microship to the aliens with an apology and an offer to have a nonviolent first contact. It wasn't perfect, but it did work. Kim used the skill she knew best, persuasion, to reach her goal and take her place in history. The world moved on, resuming a variant of the status quo, with Kim regaining her job and freedom, getting a new boyfriend, and learning about the aliens. McDevitt ends the story with this restoration of order in everyday life and I think it works better than a grand sweeping statement of how the world changed.

“Not With a Bang”: A Writer’s Look at Greg Bear’s 1987 novel Forge of God

2009-03-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper"

T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

One lovely July evening, a scientist named Arthur sets up the telescope for his son Marty to view the stars. Before he has the chance to take a look, he gets a call from an astronomer friend, Chris Riley, who says Jupiter is missing a moon. His son tells him the same thing. He looks for himself, sees the hole where Europa belongs, unmistakable. Later that evening, Arthur's wife Francine asks him if the disappearance of Europa frightens him. He says it doesn't, though he is sympathetic about Francine's obvious fear. She compares it to a mountain suddenly missing, which Arthur says would scare him (because it is close to home).

That is the opening of Bear's apocalyptic story of alien judgment and subsequent destruction of Planet Earth. Arthur Gordon, the main protagonist, is the President's Science Advisor, but that is not his primary role. He is first and foremost a family man. His friend Henry, another renowned scientist, is a cancer patient who loves his wife and is heartbroken that she must watch him die. The geologist who finds the desert cone is with friends; they spend their time together, from initial adventure to forced confinement by government agents to staying with Stella when they could have gone their separate ways. Trevor Hicks, a former science writer turned novelist, starts his journey alone, but becomes involved with groups of scientists and government officials when he learns about the Guest (dying alien construct). Reuben, the 'spider aliens' representative, is also alone, but has strong ties to his family (he is grieving for his dead mother).

The only loner is the 'mad' President of the United States, who loses his advisors, his friends, and his wife when he succumbs to despair far too soon. In fact, it plays out like ritual shunning, in that he is only left alone after interventions by the people who leave him.

There are no riots, no screaming to the Heavens, no global anarchy. People try to figure out what it means that two alien objects, each containing a communicating life form, land less than three months after Europa disappears; they do this by talking it out with each other.

There are no right or wrong answers. Some people accept their fate with dignity, while others seek revenge. Both reactions are human.

We never find out why aliens who had no difficulties destroying a planet-sized moon in less than one week draw out Earth's destruction. The reader can only speculate as to the motives for designing biological machines to create a diversion while the planet-destroying fuse burns. Bear creates a mystery without solving it.

Yet, when I finished reading, I did not care about unanswered questions. I cared about the pacifists facing their doom in Yosemite. I cared about Marty's helpless rage, when he vowed to give Earth's destroyers a reason to fear humanity's children. The story starts with a father and son looking at the stars with unaccustomed fear and ends with a boy looking closer at the stars with a familiar fear. The world has ended, not with a bang but a whimper. Earth is gone, but humanity will never forget.

Bear jumps from viewpoint character to viewpoint character, yet he forges a strong emotional connection with each one. This way, he creates a global story that is also personal. I will remember this when I write.

This Is Not an Alien Love Story: a Writer Looks at Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris

2009-03-09T22:48:00.000-04:00

Solaris is the story of humans attempting to understand a being so alien as to have no common frame of reference. Scientists attempt to understand its nature, only to fall victim to their own inner flaws.

Lem does not give the reader the alien's point of view at any point in the novel. The alien is the ocean of Solaris. At various times, it creates wave formations; they do not initiate contact, nor do they refuse. The alien is also responsible for the creation of the visitors to the Solaris station. These visitors are solid recreations of people who engendered the strongest feelings within the scientists assigned to study the entity. None of these alien outgrowths or byproducts reveals initial motivation of any kind. Physically, they are the creations of the alien entity, but their content is generated by the humans with whom they interact. Alien characters are a staple of science fiction, but the readers know they are alien through use of language and movement that demonstrate their confusion when faced with humans and hint at their motivation. Do they ask too many questions about table manners and troop movements? Do they smile when they should frown, or tilt their heads too far to one side? Does touch repel or fascinate them? These cues are all missing from the story and I think it is deliberate.

The viewpoint character Kris Kelvin is a psychologist, the latest in a long line and wide variety of scientists to study the living ocean of the planet Solaris. He represents humanity's values, the need to understand, to label and quantify, to solve mysteries because the unanswered question is far too threatening. He reads and refers to research done by others in the century since discovering a planet that defies the laws of physics. Solaris was uninteresting until it defied human reasoning by acting contrary to previous human observations, challenging scientists to find answers that explained this contradiction. The unusual orbit was explained by the living ocean, but the living ocean could not be quantified. It behaved neither as a wise spiritual being nor as an idiot savant, defying category. It could not be studied outside of its native habitat, confounding the biologists, ecologists, and others representing the hard sciences. Frustrated in their attempts to study its body, scientists turned to its mind.

Kelvin is the only character with an alien visitor who explains their mutual history and why this person was important. The other characters, driven to alcoholism, madness, and suicide through exposure to their visitors, kept their secrets. Kelvin faces his demons, confronts the reasons why his former lover's appearance causes him so much pain. This confrontation seems to change the nature of his visitor from someone who is a lesser reflection of the lover he remembers to his ideal of the person she would be had she lived to face this situation. Her content is still a creation of his mind, as her solution to her problem is suicide, the same solution his lover chose when faced with the pain of his rejection. There is nothing alien in her reaction; it is still his psychodrama.

Lem shows us the alien through negative spaces in the text, by showing us what it is not. He leaves us with the mystery.

Ending the world with optimism: a Writer Looks at Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End

2009-02-24T20:31:00.000-05:00

Childhood's End is one of the best early examples of apocalyptic science fiction. It is the story of Earth's invasion by a supervisory alien race, the 'Golden Age' of life under the Overlords, followed by the mutation of all human offspring into bodiless parts of a hive mind. The final phase of the mutation causes a chain reaction that destroys the Earth, but humanity had already died out, save for one interstellar traveler who returned in time to die with his planet. Clarke violates one of the prime directives of fiction writing by using more summary than scene. He tells the story more than he shows the events. I believe this was deliberate, the only convincing way he could write the story of the end of the human race and put a positive spin on it.

Stormgren, George, and Jan provide the reader with human viewpoints within the text. Stormgren dies before the Overlords reveal their appearance, certainly long before the world ends. He is a sympathetic character who has shown a great deal of concern for others. Clarke also made him an old man, so that his sympathy for those who had trouble adjusting to the new world order wouldn't carry over to the 'lost' within the Golden Age. Had he been alive when humanity reached the endgame, the reader may have been distracted from the story's message. When Stormgren exits the narrative, he is still optimistic about the future under the rule of the Overlords, so much so that he is unconcerned about the nature of Supervisor Karellen's physical appearance. His confidence feeds the reader's.

George is the character who struggles with the dark side of the occupation, from the stunted creativity to the hidden agendas of the Overlords. He is the one who asks the tough questions. He is the one unhappy about the answers, about the extinction of his species. So it should come as no surprise that George is a jerk. He is rude and opinionated, prone to throwing tantrums over minor things, cheats on his wife in an age where staying married is not necessary or expected, and he finds the tasks of caring for his children annoy him. Jerk. The reader is positioned to not like George before he starts his dialogue with the Overlords, predisposed to side against him. If he is an example of humanity, maybe they need to go. When he describes his son and daughter's mutations, he is emotionally distant enough to lessen the impact of the loss of Earth's children. Had this section been shown through the viewpoint of his wife Jean, it would have been emotionally devastating. The reader may not have been quick to embrace the change, if seen through a mother's grief.

Like Stormgren, Jan is a man with a single dream. For Stormgren, it was one world government. For Jan, it was to visit another planet. When Supervisor Karellen said the stars were not meant for man, Jan rebelled, stowing away on a shuttle to the Overlord home world. He was gone from Earth for eighty years, during which time he was shown why man was not ready to see other worlds. Still, he had the single dream and no strong attachments to human beings who would still be alive upon his return. Once he got back to Earth, it was all over but the last days of packing. Karellen explained the plan and endgame to the one human being without a vested interest in their survival. He was ready to die, not bitter, even a bit curious. By this time, the mutated children were only marginally human, so could be viewed with the necessary scientific detachment. He was accepting of humanity's fate in a way that even Karellen couldn't achieve.

Humanity's children reached space and were made welcome. From Jan's point of view, it was a happy ending.

All You Need Is (Martian) Love – A Writer’s Look at Selected Stories from the SF Hall of Fame

2009-02-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

Scientific romances like H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds inspired a fear of the 'alien other'. It stands to reason that at some point there would be a backlash against that attitude. Where Wells showed readers the power of fear and its effects on both individuals and civilizations, the authors of these five short stories show readers the awesome and terrible power of love in its four forms.

Agape is the selfless love for others. This kind of love saves an Earth explorer from certain death in Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" and the human race from genocide in Frederic Brown's "Arena". Agape is a difficult kind of love to depict on the page without alienating the reader. The capacity for self-sacrifice in order to aid a stranger is something we often aspire to but rarely achieve. Carson the protagonist of "Arena" is forced to take part in a fight to the death against an alien to decide which species will survive. Since the species includes his family, friends, and co-workers, Carson has a strong emotional motivation to win. Brown made Carson more heroic by showing the alien as driven by hatred to the exclusion of all else. The glimpses into the alien's mind allowed Carson to kill it without losing reader sympathy.

Carson's agape was easier to relate to than Tweel's. In "A Martian Odyssey" the narrator is the human being who owes his life to the alien called Tweel. Humans travel to Mars to explore and one of them gets lost, only to be saved by a Martian native. Jarvis, the narrator, is a likeable character and storyteller, an average man who had an extraordinary adventure. Tweel was obviously Jarvis' hero, but was too perfect. He learned English while Jarvis was struggling with basic Martian sounds. Tweel recognized the nature of every danger they faced before Jarvis even knew he was in danger. Tweel chose to face certain death with Jarvis rather than escape, since he could not take Jarvis with him. Unlike Carson, the reader gets no understanding of Tweel's motive for self-sacrifice beyond an implied 'can I live with myself if I leave this poor dumb thing to get killed'. Weinbaum's obstacle to reader Martian admiration is he gave the entire struggle to Jarvis, in my opinion.

Philia is the love between friends. This kind of love saves the human and alien races from mutually assured destruction in Murray Leinster's "First Contact". Tommy Dort, the protagonist, is another average man in extraordinary circumstances. Tommy is present when his ship encounters signs of an alien ship, causing a standoff; neither species can trust that the other species will not follow them back to their home world and lead an army to destroy it. Tommy's communication with Buck, his alien counterpart on the other ship, leads to philia and Tommy's conviction that the aliens are 'just like us'. This inspires the idea of trading ships, putting both races in equal danger, but showing equal levels of trust. Everybody lives because Tommy made a friend.

Storge refers to familial love. This kind of love leads to the murder of every member of the Earth rocket crew in Ray Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven". Another rocket ship filled with explorers from Earth lands on Mars, only to find a stereotypical American small town. In this small town, the crew finds solid versions of their dead families. Every crew member leaves the ship to reunite with their families and there is much rejoicing. In fact, it is only when he is ready for bed that the captain of the ship considers the possibility that the telepathic Martians assumed these forms to lull them into carelessness, making them easy to kill. His notion comes too late to save his life or those of the crew. Everybody dies because their love of family is stronger than both common sense and survival instinct.

Eros involves the emotional need to elicit physical love and affection from the one you love. This kind of love saves the Martian race from extinction and dooms the savior in Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes". This is not a first contact story, but it includes the first look at the culture outsiders were not allowed to see. The protagonist, Gallinger, is socially inept and misses subtle nuances in interactions. Thus, he is able to translate their holy verses into English language poetry without truly understanding their religious convictions. When he falls in love with the temple dancer, he softens toward others, but still doesn't learn to read 'people'. His love disappears because she is pregnant and he rescues her through a poetic reading of Ecclesiastes which trashes their belief that it is time for their race to die. It is a shock to discover this was foretold and the dancer was doing her duty when she was with him. He cannot live with that knowledge. Everyone lives, but not happily ever after.

Bradbury and Zelazny use the skepticism of their viewpoint characters to drop hints of what is really happening in the narrative, while convincing readers it is not important – until it is. It is an entertaining and effective way to retain the element of surprise. I plan to use that in my work.

Sympathy for the Martians? A Writer’s Look at H.G.Wells ’ classic novel, the War of the Worlds

2009-02-02T01:20:00.000-05:00

H. G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds is a deceptively simple story of a complacent society facing an invasion for which they were utterly unprepared. Is this a tale akin to the Fall of Rome, the society is blind to its own corruption and ripe for destruction? Is this the story of a society too civilized to recognize approaching danger? Who is meant to have the readers' sympathy?
One way to try and figure that out is to look at the narrator and the characters he meets. They are nameless through most if not all of the novel. Any character named is only named once. Most writers are careful to refer to characters by name so as not to confuse the readers. What is repeated is not the name, but the occupation. The narrator refers to the artilleryman, the cleric, the Martians, and even his brother is the doctor. Only Ogilvy, the astronomer, retains his name and identity. Perhaps Wells was saying they could have been anyone, even the reader or someone the reader knows. So, is Wells setting an "us against them" scenario? Are the readers supposed to 'root for the home team' as it were?
If so, then why start the novel with the Martian plight? Wells explains that the Martians need to find a new place to live before their planet can no longer sustain life. He even restates the issue several times, making it clear to the reader that the Martians must invade if they want to survive. If that wasn't enough to sway the reader, the narrator notes the invasion of Tasmania happened for similar reasons. How can one blame a race that is only doing what we have done? Aren't the Martians a more sophisticated evolved version of us?
If so, then why are they bug-eyed monsters? How many readers are willing or able to identify with a grotesque monster? Why do the Martians shoot first? Why do they kill women, children, or animals (all signs of villainy)? Why have they left the green fields of England red with blood and alien grass? Wells does not shy away from depicting the casual violence of the alien conquerors. Does he want us to sympathize with them, or hate them? Shouldn't the reader support anyone who wants to take up arms against an unfeeling enemy?
How can we support characters whose best acts are passive? This is part of the dilemma Wells sets in this novel. The narrator spends most of the novel running or hiding; none of his actions make a difference in regards to the invasion. When the narrator does act, it is to borrow and return an escape cart, beat a curate senseless because he is risking exposure, and start to dig a tunnel. The cart is essentially a plot device and is overlooked. By the time the narrator begins the beating, the reader does not blame him for what he does; the curate is clearly insane and his religious mania only leads to him becoming a Martian entrée. Digging the tunnel seems proactive only until the narrator and reader understand it is a half-baked fantasy the artilleryman thought of when he was bored.
Who saves humanity? Is it the narrator's physician brother? No, he is saving individuals. Has Ogilvy found a solution? No, Ogilvy has found more Martians waiting to invade. The Martians are not killed by a weapon, but by a cold germ. Wells shows the story through the eyes of a man who is rational but passive, which sees both sides of the issue, and has sympathy for all involved. As a writer, I note the way Wells slants the story by creating distance through the narrator. His narrator misses most of the immediate action, avoiding the emotional impact. If I want my reader to have divided loyalties, I need to insert distance or time between the event and the reader. As Wells did, I need to show more aftermath then battle.
To answer the main question, I have been fighting three separate viruses for more than two weeks, so at the moment my sympathy is for the Martians.

Reader Journal

2008-10-28T18:48:00.000-04:00

The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
Tzvetan Todorov

"Poetics can help us to see the literary quality in bumper stickers, or, conversely, the lack of literariness in the classics themselves. Poetics, truly understood, is a liberation from prejudice, an opening of the mind, creating new opportunities for readers and writers" (vii-viii).
Todorov interprets Aristotle's Poetics as an early form of structuralist theory. He applies a scientific analytical approach to texts in his effort to define the fantastic as a genre. When reading, he searches for principles operating within the texts, rather than specifics. At the start of research, one formulates the question: What defines the fantastic as a literary genre? This raises other questions, such as must one read every work in the genre in order to study it, and how many genres are there? Todorov states his intent to read broad sampling of the works and use the scientific method to make deductions and test hypotheses to verify theories. He further states genres are relativistic, akin to binomial classification. His initial conclusion is theory of genres cannot be strictly confirmed nor invalidated.
That stated, Todorov posits his theory of the fantastic as ambiguity. "The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event" (25). This definition breaks down into three conditions: (1) the reader must presume the fictional world obeys the same scientific laws as objective reality, so hesitates between natural and supernatural explanations for the story events; (2) a character may also hesitate between the two possible explanation; and (3) the reader will not mistake the text as poetry of allegory. The last defining characteristic of the fantastic in literature is its transitional nature.
At or by the end of a fantastic tale, the story enters the realm of the uncanny or the marvelous, leaving ambiguity behind. The hesitation is over. The uncanny is the realm of the natural, as evidenced by rational explanations for the event. The marvelous is the realm of the supernatural, as evidenced by explanations most often found in science fiction. While there are several types of marvelous, their commonality is based upon the idea that such factors could exist, but do not. Poetry and allegory differ from the fantastic in that there is no hesitation between possible explanations because the situation is at least one degree from acceptable consensual reality.
The main reason poetry and allegory don't work as examples of the fantastic is readers don't wonder about explanations for events in an unreal world. Reader perception is key to the fantastic. The reader must hesitate between the possible explanations as much or more than the characters. Writers of fantastic fiction make this happen by using diction and the speech acts of narrators and characters. Diction allows the writer to make the figurative literal ('go to Hell – there's the door'), to exaggerate for effect, and use figurative language ('if', 'seemed' 'would') to heighten doubt. Literature allows no test for truth, so the writer's responsibility is to craft a tale with validity and proof of internal coherence. When the reader looks back, he or she must be able to see the clues add up to the final explanation, with no contradictions. Writers can work around this through utterances of narrators and characters. The 'I narrator stands for the confused reader. This means, in all but a rare exception, the statements made by the 'I' narrator are not lies. The most popular exception is the narrator in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . Thus, the narrator doesn't lie, characters can lie, and a character who narrates can lie. Overall, the syntactical aspect only works once, as is the case with mystery novels; once you know the answer, you no longer question. There is no tension.
Todorov maintains the themes of fantastic fiction are those of the self and those of the other."The self signifies the relative isolation of man in the world he constructs…The other, in contrast, refers precisely to that intermediary, and it is the third relation which is at the basis of the network. The opposition is asymmetrical; the self is present in the other, but not conversely" (155). Themes of the self center on the relationship between man and his environment via perception. Reality is more subjective than objective. This is often represented by glasses and mirrors. Themes of the other center on man's desire for what is outside of himself. He may not be aware of his desire, but it drives him, transforms him, and becomes increasingly excessive. He wants the other, but he can never have it. A part of himself is missing and he'll never get it back. Still, he desires them and those desires drive the quests of the fantastic.
Why write stories of the fantastic? This genre allows you to write about the forbidden, the taboo, without alienating the reader. The fantastic is a safe zone, were readers can look at racism, bigotry, and other dark aspects of their society from another perspective. When a writer creates a world of the fantastic, the fantastic swallows the world and the reader with it. The writer can raise any question, so long as he or she does not answer that question too soon.

Reading Journal – On Writing

2008-10-25T19:41:00.001-04:00

On Writing
Stephen King
Paperback, 2^nd Edition
This text is part autobiography, part instruction manual, and part manifesto. As he does in his fiction, King ties the elements together in an intricate weave. Ultimately, it is a love story. King loves stories, the ones he read as a child too sick to attend school, the ones he imagined and wrote when he was learning how to put words together, and those written by popular authors. King loves the language, the way you can string twenty-five words together and create something profound. King loves his wife, who also loves the language.
Are there universal constants for writers? As with King, my earliest memories is of imagining and I read early and above my age level. The stories we read the most as children influenced what we wrote as adults. We tried to copy good stories. We read a published story and walked away convinced we could write a better one. We encountered the philosophy that writing is equivalent to taking dictation from a higher power and rejected the idea. We blend two or more ideas to form the inspiration of a story. We don't always like our story people but the readers in our lives can persuade us to write the story anyway. We are passionate, obsessive, and a high risk for addiction. We are amateur mentalists, attempting to communicate the vision unfolding in our heads as we write to the reader separated from us by space and time.
King uses the metaphor of a toolbox to describe what a writer needs. His first advice is to bring the whole toolbox, not just the tool you think you will need. King's toolbox has four levels: top shelf – vocabulary and grammar; second level – style and paragraph building; third shelf- write real fiction, one paragraph at a time; and fourth shelf- not described, perhaps customized by individual. King emphasizes two differences between writing fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, the most important parts of a sentence should be at the end, but the reverse is true for fiction. In nonfiction, the basic unit of writing is the sentence, but in fiction, the basic unit of writing is the paragraph.
King shares his belief system, as applied to writing. "The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one" (136).
To be a writer, one must read a lot and write a lot. Every book teaches a lesson. This book restated advice I already knew, but with explanations that made sense. This book also provided advice I wish I had known before entering the Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University because it would have made my life easier. I will apply what I have learned to future work and rewrites of the novel I am writing. At present, I am writing my first draft with the door closed, but I feel like I am on Closed Circuit Television.
My advice: Readers, buy this book and be entertained. Writers, buy this book and learn from a master craftsman, then do the exercise on pages 167-170.