Lessons Learned

Duality was William Blake’s signature—the mix of innocence and experience, of grace and rage; it was what seemed to hold his works together. So maybe the quote at the beginning of John Gardner’s Grendel should have hinted at the duality within the pages, served as a sort of warning for the oncoming headache that was sure to settle deep into our skulls.

But we missed it.

That, however, didn’t make the duality any less present (or keep our heads from, y’know, cracking into thousands of tiny splinters). Innocence and experience, love and hate, good and evil, Dragon and Shaper—there is no set side that Grendel finds himself upon throughout the course of his story. And the best demonstration of this that I can find is that of the Dragon and the Shaper.

Most of my class seemed to claim in various discussions that, in the aftermath of his Chapter Five Meet the Dragon Migraine, Grendel settled into the ancient creature’s mentality. With that, though, I disagree. Even after chapter five, even after meeting the Dragon, Grendel makes comments or acts in ways that just don’t fit with the philosophies he has supposedly taken on. On page 76, Chapter 6, Grendel says “Though I scorned them, sometimes hated them, there had been something between myself and men when we could fight”. Where in that is the Dragon’s mentality of the human’s futility and “crackpot theories”? Where in that is the resignation to let things pass as they please?

Precisely. In that quote, Grendel demonstrates the duality that is so key to Blake’s writing. While he is, for the large majority, given over to Dragon’s pile of gold explanation, he still finds himself believing that there is (or at least was) more to his relationship with man. That he almost misses the feeling of belonging to something in the struggle, even if that was the antagonistic and violent retaliations; that now, with him charmed to the point of near-immortality, something is gone.

“Enough of that! A night for tearing heads off, bathing in blood! Except, alas, he has killed his quota for the season. Care, take care of the gold-egg-laying goose!” (93) is another prime example of Blake’s duality-heavy influence. The phrase “killed his quota” feels akin to the Shaper’s mentality, where there are rules, restrictions set in place like those of war—unspoken, but present nonetheless. There is a limit, a set number that Grendel allows himself to kill, or maybe requires of himself. And in that, we see the Shaper’s influence: Grendel will kill, he will enjoy doing it, but he will respect the balance and do no more than is absolutely necessary. That line however is immediately followed by a distinctly Dragon-esque line making reference to a “gold-egg-laying goose”. Geese sit on their eggs to protect them, to warm them, to guard them—as the Dragon does and tells Grendel to.

We missed the warning, got smacked in the face with Blake-esque duality, and were rewarded with migraines that felt like death, but, if nothing else, we gained one useful nugget of information for future readings:

Always look the quote up first. 

Cliche but Still Relevant (Never Thought I'd Find Myself Here)

The rage, the snap of anger and burning pain and tough-guy attitude, people understand. They can comprehend the chaos, can relate to it. People understand what has become known as the “Chaotic Good,” or even the “Chaotic Evil,” because they can wrap their minds around the assorted emotions that come with each side. Every villain has a backstory, every “big bad” has a purpose—even if it’s not as evident to begin with.

What audiences have a hard time understanding is the borderline-perfect character that still somehow has evident flaws; the one that holds true to their purpose, to their morals, without much visible emotion. A sort of neutral, lawful good.

And I get that—it’s hard to empathize with a seemingly emotionless character. It’s difficult to look at the borderline perfection of someone like Stefan Salvatore (from the CW’s hit TV series The Vampire Diaries) and cheer him on, especially when he’s standing against his love-wrecked, angry, and obviously faulted brother, Damon Salvatore—a fix him upper’s dream.

What people seem to miss, though, is the heart of Stefan’s character and his necessity for order and morality. Granted, without his raving addiction to human blood, it appears that the writers have “successfully cured him of anything interesting about his personality” (Damon, Season 1, Episode 21), but that’s the interesting part. Stefan, unlike most other characters, has two strictly unrelated sides to his portrayal—the good, moral, “uninteresting” Stefan and the blood-addicted, ripper-esque, terrifying Stefan. He’s probably the closest representation of a true addict in the entire series.

Viewers seem to cast this aside, however, as if his being a vampire makes his addiction any less valid. Yes, he’s a vampire. Yes, he’s addicted to human blood. Yes, it’s a fairly clichéd characteristic all things considered. But look at the other vampires that the show provides—Damon (who’s got more problems than LOST’s heroin-addict Charlie), Caroline Fell (with her personality issues heightened to the point of insanity), Katherine Pierce (a manipulative, maniacal seductress with more of a sense for self-preservation than for affection). Are any of them as helpless to resist their life source as Stefan? No.

And it’s this addiction, this helplessness, that makes Stefan Salvatore what he is: weak. He puts on a good show, pretends that he’s strong enough to resist his temptations, and does everything in his power to do so, but the fact of the matter is that he’s not what he says he is. He proves this over and over again by taking what is undoubtedly one of the worst routes for an addict to take.  He shuns human blood, completely cuts himself off, and denies himself even the smallest taste for decades. It just takes a drop to send him reeling again.

There’s more to characters than their surface personality, and while the “chaotic” or “bad” ones make audiences want  to learn their story, it’s the “lawful,” “boring,” and “moral” ones that seem to need it more. If the writers have done their jobs properly, then no protagonist is simply moral or a “hard ass” without a reason, no antagonist is “bad” without cause.

Next time, look for it. 

The Top Reason I'm Watching Lost: It's An AP Lit Nightmare, and It's Glorious

As I am in the process of starting JJ Abram's infamous project LOST (thank you Mr. Fortunato, Mom and friends, and the entire rest of the world) I figured it might be best to blog about it. So let's just kick this off with one of my favorite (as of Episode 3) blatantly obvious character and symbol.

John Locke (aptly named, as my mother oh so constantly reassures me) is, for starters, quiet. And I’m not talking we just crashed on a deserted island holy crap shocked sort of quiet; no, this is full-on morally ambiguous, potentially a massive villain quiet. He speaks to absolutely no one for a full episode—and, by the passage of time as we know it, a full day. His plane has crashed, there are (at minimum) dozens dead, and he could be stranded on this island for the rest of his life, and yet John is not fazed.

In part one of the phenomenon’s pilot, the island is drenched in an unexpected torrential downpour and the other survivors—still desperately hoping for rescue—seek refuge under the wreckage. Not John—of course not, right?—no, instead, the ever silent, eye-scarred, bald man plants himself in the middle of the beach sand and waits—rain washing over him. Is it a cleansing? Maybe, but I sort of doubt it. Cleansings don’t typically involve beach sand sticky with blood and fresh tears. They don’t involve a borderline maniacal smile and calm acceptance. No, cleansings are typically all grit and pain and fighting—a walk through the rain, yes, but one that leaves them more worn for the wear despite rejuvenation. But if not a cleansing, what is it? A descent into darkness? (No, that title falls to ex-rocker Charlie. But he’s another blog on his own.) To be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure what the rain means, except that John Locke is not at all what we expect—and he’ll stay that way until the end.

Moving onward to part two of the pilot, though, we see something even more interesting in the (undoubtedly extensive) novel that is John Locke—his first choice of companions is a 10 year old boy named Walter. It’s safe to say that Walter has daddy issues, complete with a lost dog and multiple spats that end in preadolescent rage-quits, which leaves him an open, easy target for another male role model. If we can even call John that. And it all starts with backgammon: “two players, one is light and one is dark” (Episode 2). And in that moment, with John providing both knowledge (starting with pointing out that backgammon is highly superior to checkers) and a secret, we see what is the first, though undoubtedly not the last, loss of innocence.

But of course we have yet to find out what the secret is.

So what, though? Why did JJ Abrams spend so much of his time putting details into this one character? Why waste hours on deciding how the camera pans over the rainy beach and the exact placement of John’s scar? The best and only answer I have as a newfound viewer is this: John Locke’s roll in LOST  is far from small, direct, or easily followed—and Abrams just wanted to give us a little heads up. How considerate of him.

On Why Carl Sandburg is Amazing...

Taking a moment to fangirl, my adoration for Carl Sandburg and his works is kind of absolutely and undeniably insane. He is fantastic and his work just makes me go all dead inside. That being said, "Chicago Poet" is one of dozens of pieces I bookmarked in my mother's copy of his complete works--partially because I love the way it reads and partially because I'm still not entirely sure that I know what it means.

"I saluted a nobody. / I saw him in the looking-glass" (1-2).

(Okay, okay yes, maybe the concept is a bit cliche but just hold on...)

Beginning with the commonly-used idea of greeting--personifying, even--the reflection, "Chicago Poet" is more than just a reflection on, well, his reflection (didn't plan that very well, did I?). Stating that as the extent of the work's intention is like saying that the sky exists to be blue--it's a complete lie.

"He crumpled the skin on his forehead, frowning . . . Everything I did he did. / I said, 'Hello, I know you.' / And I was a liar to say so" (4-7).

And here's the thing about that--the narrator is watching his reflection, watching himself move in the mirror and yet feeling so separate from the way he looks. It's more than the distinction between self-view and actual appearance--at the heart of it, Sandburg is telling the story of a man who does not know himself.

But Caroline, isn't that a bit of a stretch?

Not really. People identify with their reflection--they know it's them when they catch sight of their reflection. (Most people don't do a double-take when they see themselves in store-window, simply accepting that it's their own image.) But this man? He sees a "liar, fool, dreamer, play-actor" (9). A man who makes his life being fictional, living in a world that is not his own, that cannot see what is right in front of his face. 

Not a writer, not a king, not a lover, a "soldier, dusty drinker of dust" (10). Prove to me that's a man who knows himself.

(And maybe you could; maybe you could argue that the narrator is just a man that doesn't like what he sees, but that's beside the point.)

The most intriguing part of this, though, is that despite not knowing his reflection--himself, his face, his truth--the narrator is none too blind to the intertwined future he shares with the man in the mirror. "he will go with me" (11) "When everybody else is gone. / He locks his elbow in mine, / I lose all--but not him" (14-16). 

There is no way of escaping the man before him--no way of separating the "liar" (9) from the narrator. There is no method of escape.

And okay, yeah, maybe it's not the happiest of themes--maybe it's a little depressing and morbid, but it's incredibly well crafted, if that counts for anything. The inability to separate who you are from who you want to be is something that most people can relate to, even if they'll never tell you--and Sandburg makes it tangible.

(Expect more, lengthier analysis of his other works later. The Complete Works gives me a lot of material to work off of... ;D)

Confused about Tandy...

When I first read through Sherwood Anderson’s “Tandy”, I was so focused on the blatant presence of drunkenness and drinking that a large majority of the rest of the story flew straight over my head. It wasn’t until, actually, until my third read-through of the story that the rest of the symbolism started to flare up in front of my eyes.
“Tom Hard, the father” (Anderson 120).
“…in the struggle with an appetite that was destroying him” (Anderson 120).
“Perhaps of all men I alone understand” (122).
The cadence of the overall piece—the diction, syntax, and imagery—is distinctly biblical. It’s riddled with the words of a man who is angry at the world for falling to Christianity, of an anti-preacher of sorts. And he “never saw God himself manifesting in that little child” (120). The irony, though, doesn’t stop there. Not only does his daughter  have God manifesting within her, but he has a complete stranger tell her to be—what is essentially—more than human.
And she takes it. At five years old this young girl who remains nameless throughout the piece demands to have a different name—she is no longer the girl she was previously, but instead, Tandy Hard.
And that’s where I had to stop and look; there are exactly two named characters in this story, Tom Hard and George Willard. Granted, the story itself is on the shorter side (just over three pages in my copy of the novel), but even within a piece that short, names can be given. But neither the young girl (otherwise referred to as Tandy) nor the drunken stranger have a name.
Change in name symbolizes a rebirth of a person, a change in identity and morals and truths, as it were. But what does a name change mean when the first name is unknown? That is a question that I don’t have the answer to—either as a writer or a reader or an analyst. What do you do with a character who changes names, but doesn’t tell you what they change from?
(So far, all I can really come up with is staring blankly at the book and scribbling really aggressive annotations in my book.)
But if change in name is a rebirth, maybe this is more of an initial birth. Tandy is five years old, but her mother is dead and her father doesn’t pay her much attention—the story seems to give the feeling that the young girl gets what she physically needs but is depressingly lacking in what she could use emotionally. So, by taking hold of the Stranger’s words, of his truth, could it be a birth?
Or is it the turn to a grotesque? After all, it isn’t until someone takes a truth as their own that they become one—or at least, that’s how it works in the eyes of the writer.
Honestly, reading this story analytically almost left me with more questions than answers, and I’m not sure that it’s very helpful, but it’s here… and I don’t know how to explain it.

Swift to Give Instruction

I hereby apologize for the punny title—I couldn’t resist (and also couldn’t come up with anything distinctly better). Hopefully you chuckled a little.

But onward to the topic: Kate Swift.

A subject of Sherwood Anderson’s short story or novel or what have you, the schoolteacher is an interesting character from start to finish. She is introduced as nothing less than an object of sin—of want and sexual desire and passion, of something corruptible and corrupting—and yet becomes something of a Christ figure. (At least in the eyes of Reverend Curtis Hartman.) She is “not known in Winesburg as a pretty woman” (134-135) and yet proves to be viewed sexually by at least two men within the work—Reverend Harman, as previously stated, as well as George Willard. (“He began to  believe she must be in love with him… You wait and see” [132-133].)

Kate Swift, similar to Frankenstein’s Margaret Saville, seems to be a less-prominent female character with a lot of meaning to her existence—and despite all that, or maybe because of it, I found her conversation with George Willard to be the most intriguing part of her characterization.

In “The Teacher,” Swift is more than passionate with her former pupil as she talks with him about his potential future. “ ‘If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words,’ she explained. ‘It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now is the time to be living… You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they are saying’ ” (137).

I’ll go ahead and take a moment here to admit to extreme bias: I would consider myself a writer; maybe nothing particularly wonderful, but a writer all the same. This is the third year I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of AHS’s Literary Magazine staff and if I’ve learned one thing over the years (Thank you, Mr. Fortunato), it’s that writers write. Of course, there’s always the dreaded Writer’s Block and times that a break from writing is healthy—I know, I know, shocking—but to simply not write “until you are better prepared”? It’s a notion that I don’t understand.

Now maybe Kate Swift is trying to explain another phrase I’ve heard for countless years, in AHS 2013 Fortunatotion terms, “When you waste words, God kills a puppy.” Comparatively, I think Mr. Fortunato and Ms. Swift may be getting at the same thing—there’s a difference between writing and writing well.

But here’s my question for Kate Swift, and anyone else who wants to answer it: how do you get better at writing without practice? The quick-and-easy answer is you don’t. It’s like anything else, subjected to the age-old cliché “Practice makes perfect.”

I’ll wholeheartedly admit that this specific quote stood out to me because of who I am and what is important to me as such, but I still firmly believe that this passage is vital to the order of the story.

George Willard, the only constant character—and potential narrator (I’ll blog about that later)—is told to stop writing until he is older.

Did he take Ms. Swift’s advice? 

Why Wordsworth's Words?

Mary Shelley cites William Wordsworth’s “Tinturn Abbey” near the end Frankenstein’s eighth chapter, writing that “The sounding cataract / Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock, / The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, / Their colours and their forms, were then to him / An appetite; a feeling, and a love, / That had no need of a remoter charm. / By thought supplied, or any interest / Unborrow’d from the eye” (19-140).

Ironically, within the context of Wordsworth’s original work, this sample of the piece is used as a description of his former reflection upon a place that he’d been as a child—a sharp contrast to Clerval, who simply seems to find himself wrapped up in the beauty of the countryside, so new to his eyes. Even more interesting than the quote itself, I believe, is the part left out: “That time is past, / And all its aching joys are now no more, / And all its dizzying raptures” (84-86). These lines immediately follow the ones Shelley quoted and, I believe, extend a hand in explaining why she chose that specific quote. In the scene that Victor Frankenstein uses Wordsworth’s quote, he is describing his friend Henry Clerval not long before his death. “That time is past” (84). Is Victor Frankenstein not hinting at what is to come for his friend, whose life ends in a violent turn of events? So innocent and childlike, full of a writer’s passion and eye for detail, the young man is enthralled with the beauty of this waterfall (ironic because Henry was strangled and thrown into the waves to wash up on an Irish shore).

So, I suppose, it could be said that Mary Shelley uses “Tinturn Abbey” as a sort of warning or prophecy for the knowledgeable reader, a hint that Henry Clerval’s time of childlike innocence is soon to be gone—not just gone, in fact, but obliterated by the cruel hands of adulthood and rage.