SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2006

Hey guys. I'd love to see as many of you as possible before I leave the country on January 12. This Friday, X thought we should all meet at Laura's bar in NE Minneapolis for karaoke - it starts at 9pm. We can hang out and you can sing a song for me (Yes, X, that includes you). Let me know who all is in for Saturday! Chad will be bringing his special friends from the group home:


Oh, wait. Jean won't be there because she's ditching me for Phoenix! - By the way, Jean, thanks for the invaluable suit shopping assistance - you rock! (I can give you Brandon's number so you two can hook up once you get back). I'm going to miss you.

The Children's Hour

Hellman's play sends her heroes on a wicked path of self discovery. This is seen primarily in Martha who realizes that Mary's lie is a truth. She does love Karen (she states she's never loved a man that way). The end of her journey is death- she cannot live with this self-knowledge. The knowledge has ruined Karen as well and her prospects with Cardin. These women are the victims of a virtual witch hunt. Martha's journey is changed when her love is given a name and a different meaning that she was at first willing to acknowledge.

Religion's role in this play has to do with traditional biblical attitudes toward homosexuality. It is sin, deviant sexual behavior. At the time of this play, 1934, the community surrounding the school (parents, faculty and staff) would have held this view. Martha's guilt comes out of this traditional understanding. She cannot live an outsider in this community. This sin is a biggie in the church - people of this religious community can overlook their own sins of pride, slander and gossip because these are peanuts in comparison (although the Bible would condemn these as just as sinful and probably having greater repercussions to more people).

Karen and Martha's status as outsiders is forced upon them. And it happens during the action of the play when Mary tells her grandmother what she's 'overheared.' Parents withdraw their children from the school, Cardin withdraws from Karen - these women are ostracized. Karen is made to feel the shame of a sin she is not guilty of, but Martha feels the greater sense of being outside - unlike Karen, she does posess these feelings and while we assume she's never acted on them (she's never even verbalized them) she cannot even relate to being unjustly accused. She is now cut off from Karen whom she cannot love. For her, death is better than isolation.

Sons and Lovers

Paul Morel's journey is one that takes him away from his mother's control. Yet by the end of the novel, as he walks to the phosphorescent lights of the city, we sense he is about to begin a new journey. His relationships with Clara and Miriam represent aspects of his struggle between flesh and spirit. And yet these two pale in the shadow of mother. In the end even after she is dead, Paul is threatened by her. The ties go beyond death - may even be pulling him toward it. For he says in the end that he will not go her way - and yet after Miriam leaves, Mrs. Morel is the one he misses:

"'Mother!' he whispered - 'mother!'
She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her.
But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly" (416).

Paul continues to want passivity - like Hamlet, he does not want to act. Or doesn't know how to. But in order to even go on the hero's journey he must turn away from Mrs. Morel and make himself move to the lights of the city.

As an outsider, this is a nice image. He loses the women he cannot chose between (or choses not to be with them); he loses his mother despite her powerful will to live - he walks to the city alone. Even after he and Annie have poisoned her, her pull still draws him. The image of the city is not one of a place peopled with humanity, but rather filled with machinery and cold lights. He is walking into the twentieth century. He is part of it, but alone in it.

Religion is key in the story in Paul's relationship with Miriam. She prays first that God will take away her love for Paul (she fears it), then she asks to love him as God the father loved His son Christ. She very pointedly compares him to Christ. Paul realizes this in the end when Lawrence writes: "...or did she want a Christ in him?" Mrs. Morel's belief is strong as well - it suffocates Mr. Morel, and they hate each other. She uses religion like a weapon to guilt her family. To be a martyr. She possesses none of the greater virtues of Christianity. Her religion is typified by rigidity. Miriam's is an almost mystical ecstacy. There is something unreal about it.

Adrienne Rich: "Storm Warnings" & "Diving into the Wreck"

Storm Warnings

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.
(1951)

This poem - in relation to my themes falls nicely into the area concerning the outsider. The speaker seems to represent a type of person (i.e. people who live in troubled regions) and be defining this difference, sets herself apart from others. Although she is identified with a group, she is the sole speaker - the effect is that she imagines and knows others are troubled, but the feeling the poem conveys is more of isolation. Knowing the storm is coming does not prevent its coming - foreknowledge is useless. The speaker does not rely on others during the storm but does what little he or she can do - close oneself in with shutters and hope things arent a wreck when the storm subsides. The parallel of the storm of nature and the storm of the heart is notable for the locational difference: there is a storm without and a storm within - How does one shut out what is inside? Might not the speaker be including everyone (These are the things we have learned to do)? It could be. And this inclusion would still have the same result - the tone here is not "we are all in this together" it's more "We all have interior storms and we each have to learn to weather them." In this reading we are all outsiders to each other. I don't find any overtly religious feeling in the poem, though maybe spiritual. I suppose the storm could represent one's vision of an arbitrary god who is ultimately in control, for there is certainly something beyond the person who is controlling the storm whether it be nature or God.

There is little resemblance to Campbell's idea of the hero - although a passage of time has occurred - the we of the poem have learned how to deal with living in troubled regions - there has been a sense of self-discovery.

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our wayback to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
(1972)

It's hard to know where to begin with a poem this rich. But I will try. In terms of the Cambellian hero, there is much here. First, myth surrounds the wreck - the diver wants to dive down to the reality behind the myth. The diver's journey is not unlike the journey of the hero and by the end of the poem - the return - the diver bestows on us, the reader the boon of knowledge and experience. The diver encompasses man and women by the ambiguity of the diving suit - the diver is us. The descent down the ladder from human air to the deep is the begining of the journey (c.f. Beowulf's descent into the swamp to destroy Grendel's mother). The point of the journey is clear - the diver came to see the wreck. It is beautiful in its worn, skeletal state. The journey is one of the soul - the diver encourages us to go back to our wrecks and survey the damage after time has passed. They will still be there for they are permanent. Our journey back may occur for different reasons - we boldly face it or we fearfully return to it in a dependent way.

Sula

Morrison's work offers two very different journeys. We see Nel, whose journey is rather conventional and Sula whose journey is quite the opposite. Through Sula's experience, we see the ways in which Nel maintains a life of safety. Morrison's use of bird imagery gives Sula a sort of monomythic status. When she returns to the Bottom (which is the highest part of town) in 1937, she is accompanied by a plague of robins. She has returned from college and city life with an even greater sense of herself. on page 92 when local women tell her she should return to domestic life, get a husband and a child. Sula's response: "I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself." Sula's constant assertion of self stands in contrast to Nel's adherance to convention. And yet these two are continually associated with each other as if they are one person. Sula's return is a boon to Nel "Although it was [Nel] alone who saw all this magic, she did not wonder at it. She knew it was all due to Sula's return to the Bottom" (95). And further along, Sula is described as never competing, but rather helping others define themselves. Sula is so completely sure of herself, whereas Nel's journey is typified by identity confusion. As a child her mother straightens her hair and puts a clothes pin off her nose. She has so little identity that she is forced to observe that conversations with Sula were really conversations with herself. Later Eva says "You. Sula. What's the difference?" Events like the killing of Chicken-Little, the discovery of Sula with Jude, Nel's final meeting with Sula and then with Eva, and events like National Suicide day, all become chapters in Nel's heroic journey. And they are all woven around Sula. In the end it is a sorrow over the loss of Sula, not Jude, that grieves Nel. In this way the ending is almost exactly like the death of Beowulf. Compare:
'A Geat woman too sang out in grief;
with hair bound up, she unburdened herself
of her worst fears, a wild litany
of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,
enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles,
slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.' (ln. 3150-55)
and:
Leaves stirred; mud shifted; there was the smell of over-ripe green things. A soft ball of fur broke and scattered like dandelion spores in the breeze.
"All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude." And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. "We was girls together." she said as though explaining something. "Oh Lord, Sula," she cried, "girl, girl, girlgirlgirl."
It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

The loss of each hero culminates in a disorder - the boon is no longer available to those remaining.

Sula is an outsider especially when she comes back to the Bottom. Pious women look down on her. She even becomes an outsider with Nel after her encounter with Jude. But Morrison really creates a situation that makes one wonder just who is the outsider. Sula is completely comfortable with herself and what she wants. It is the others who are outsiders to her. Like Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter, Sula is a social outcast - a woman of easy virtue. What is most difficult about her status is that the bifurcation set up in her and Nel is disrupted when Nel refuses to associate with Sula. Oddly it is Nel who is alone at the end of the novel - she is an outsider, but she's gained knowledge.

Religion is one of the means of exclusion. Church-going women use piety as an excuse for their distain of Sula. Religion is usually a reaction to something or behavior is shown in reaction to religion. National suicide day saves Christ the trouble of redemption (16). Helene's piety is a reaction to her mother's profession as prostitute. Chicken-Little's funeral shows how religion is many things for many people, primarily a need to find security in the hand of a God who can destroy those who do not seek refuge in it (65-6). Plum's wish to reenter Eva's womb carries a certain 'born-again' message. Sula and Eva argue about religion - and Sula asserts her right to her beliefs. In the explanation of the differences between Sula and the women of the Bottom, Morrison writes: "...for in their secret awareness of Him, He was not the God of three faces they sang about. They knew quiet well that He had four, and that the fourth explained Sula. They lived with various forms of evil all their days, and it wasn't that they believed God would take care of them. It was rather that they knew God had a brother and that brother hadn't spared God's son, so why should he spare them?" (118)

Candide

Both Candide and his love Cunegonde undertake journeys. These journeys are specific to the characters but the fact that their adventures mirror those of Pangloss and the old woman shows that such journeys are part and parcel with the human condition. Voltaire's work is episodic: each new adventure strips away at Pangloss's philosophy of optimism. Candide continually trusts but questions along the way: "If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?" (12). When Cunegonde hears the story of the old woman, not only is this a foreshadowing of Cunegonde's story, but it becomes a microcosm for the whole book (chapter 11). In Surinam, Candide displays his mistrust of optimism: "Oh Pangloss!" cried Candide, you had no notion of these abominations! I'm through, I must give up your optimism after all." --"What's optimism?" asked Cacambo. --"Alas," said Candide, "it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell." (41-42). Candide's journey takes him from Westphalia to Buenos Ares, back across the sea to France. When they pass England, Martin answers Candide's question about what kind of world they live in by saying "something crazy, something abominable" (56). Once in Constantinople Candide is reunited with the now worn (for goodness sake the woman's been raped and disemboweled throughout the whole epic) and ugly Cunegonde. Pangloss continues in his ideas of optimism by the end, but the others have developed a much more realistic view of the world: while Martin says it's better not to speculate about anything, Candide's conclusion is that work (cultivating one's garden) is the only satisfaction in life.This is the boon - that he is able to live life more realistically.

Candide is an outsider in that his philosophy (or the philosophy of Pangloss) makes him the constant prey of those seeking to take advantage of others. The fact that he is a sort of anti-hero places him outside of things. He is also a receptacle for the philosophies of others: Martin's sense is what prevails and perhaps helps Candide get beyond the extreme nature of Pangloss' theory. He is literally an outsider from the beginning when the Baron kicks him out of Thunder-Ten-Tronckh - he is a wanderer at the mercy of warring countries, pirates, popes, etc.

Religion plays the same part that philosophy and political ideology play. It is a possible approach to life that Candide can follow. The book's imagery is biblical: The castle in Westphalia is edenic in nature. Primarily religion is an object of ridicule and satire. The theory of optimism is a type of religion for Pangloss and Candide - it is an extreme belief that has fatal results because at its worst everything is excused.

Persuasion

Jane Austen's Persuasion is such a mature and accomplished novel, containing neither the sing/song, this and that type of title. It's just a single word: persuasion. And what an evocative word. It's as evocative as the novel's protagonist, Anne Elliot. Anne's journey can be understood in the three themes I've chosen for my AM comp. list even though she doesn't read like a hero - she's the most unassuming hero you'll meet on this list.

Anne Elliot as Campbellian Hero:
I wonder if J. Campbell himself would look at Elliot in this light. The novel contains none of the trappings we usually associate with the hero - with the possible exception of Louisa Musgrove's fall at Lyme Regis. We see a confined, defeated Anne at the outset. The home once run economically by her mother is now in financial trouble. Mr. Elliot and Elizabeth have accumulated some debt since the mother's death. The absence of the mother is an interesting component to the story - Anne herself cannot fill that role though she's best suited, and neither of her sisters is suited at all for the task. But Anne's heroic journey is one of self-discovery - she learns the depth of her own ability to love - even when the love is not reciprocated and there is no hope of it ever resolving in a union. Luckily for Anne, it does resolve happily. She also learns the power of verbalizing her opinions. When she says to Capt. Harville, "All the privilage I claim for my own sex...is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone," she is being her most transparent. The Anne at this point in the novel has returned to life. The events that happen to this point show Wentworth Anne's true character. Louisa's fall is a type of trial Anne undergoes. Her clarity and quick action captivates Wentworth. She passes the test. Another idea that Anne must deal with is one Austen had to deal with. In a letter to Fanny Knight regarding this novel, Jane wrote: "Women have a dreadful propensity for being poor - which is one very strong argument in favor of Matrimony." If Anne doesn't get married - she's screwed. The Elliot estate cannot go to her; her best bet would be to be a governess. So Anne, in her way positions herself to be noticed by Wentworth who still loves her. Anne's entire character - in its quiet way - bestows boons on everyone she comes into contact with. She is a father confessor, a healer, care-giver, and peace maker. She must also learn not to be persuaded by even well-intentioned advice. Her journey takes her from Kellynch Hall to Uppercross, to Lyme Regis, to Bath. In each situation she grows in her self-awareness. Notice the different woman she is with her father and Elizabeth in Bath than at Kellynch. Her assertion of her right to associate with Mrs. Smith and her comment on the prudence of keeping society with someone like Mrs. Clay shows a new point in her development. When she comes to know Mr. Elliot's true reasons for his attention to her - she makes a decision for herself even to the point of disregarding the advice of Lady Russel.

Outsider: Anne is completely at odds with her surviving family; they are all self-absorbed while Anne, while self-reflective, is essentially selfless. Her almost wallflower quality places her on the sidelines - she is liked but not often considered on her own account.

Religion: By accounts, Austen was religious, yet religion seems to play as a cultural device in her novels. Characters may be guided by spiritually inspired morals, but no faith or reliance on God is seen. Religion is primarily seen in characters who become clergymen - some sincere, some silly. Perhaps Anne's religion is Frederick Wentworth or even more abstractly, love - the thing she hangs onto when all hope is gone. There is also a certain self-reliance that is present in Anne. She realizes her family is ridiculous - so she makes her own quiet way for herself. That statement about love being her god is silly of me and doesn't play out. Deeper than that is the moral codes that Anne obeys - she lives among silly people whose values lean toward the superficial. Anne's spiritual growth comes when she sticks to her principals in spite of what goes on around her. Her development into a whole person is spiritual - everything she does is guided by these principals. We cannot imagine Mary or Elizabeth visiting a Mrs. Smith or helping a fallen Louisa, or nursing Mary's own child back to health.

Beowulf

Okay. This is the second time I'm posting this entry. The last one didn't take. Where's Hrunting when I need it? I'm gonna take the three themes of my list and apply them to this work:

Campbell's idea of the Hero: Works well here. Beowulf does go on a cyclical journey battling three monsters. His successful defeat of each monster does provide a boon to the communities he serves (Heorot and his own kingdom). His cycle is part of a larger cycle of which he occupies a middle spot - we have aged Hrothgar, too weak to defend his kingdom, Beowulf who in his prime is the hero, and later Wiglaf must assume the future role of protector of the kingdom. Beowulf himself undergoes three decisive battles that play into his development as hero. The first pits him against Grendel in Heorot - this battle shows his ability to fight a cause not his own - it's not his own kingdom. His pivotal battle with Grendel's Mother takes him through a symbolic death and rebirth ritual. He plummets the depths of the swamp (death) to defeat G'sM in her lair. The killing of this mother figure makes the battle more personal - it is the killing of a tie to humanity and earth. It is also a symbolic striking out on his own. Untying the strings that hold him to youth. When he re-emerges through the bloody (virtual amniotic fluid) swamp - his rebirth is signaled. He's defeated a monster and garnered honor for himself. In old age, his battle with the dragon is a way of passing on and passing off of his heroic role to a more youthful replacement. He, like the hoarding dragon, must die physically. His death serves as a beacon to future heroes. This is the boon he bestows on his weakened kingdom - it is not material in this case.

Outsider: By token of the fact that he's a hero, Beowulf already stands out from his community as an outsider. The reader even has trouble relating to him on a human level - he doesn't seem to have any visible weaknesses beyond the the physical ones that come with age. His first battle physically places him on the outside as he is battling for a kingdom not even his own. Each battle (with the exception of the final one) is fought alone. He must defeat each monster on his own. The battles are for others, but personal to himself. Beowulf is ultimately unknowable.

Religion: The poem has all of the accoutrements of religion - praises to the Lord, reliance on God's strength, but these apparently were an Anglo-Saxon addition to the poem. Its Nordic beginnings ground it firmly in paganism. Beowulf's death only holds symbolic afterlife - he will be remembered along with other heroes. The blood revenge is another pagan attitude present in the story. Yet there is something distinctly spiritual in the poem. Each of the battles Beowulf faces take on spiritual significance for the hero - he must destroy an aspect of himself in each of the battles. The death/rebirth imagery of the second battle resonates with Christ's discussion with Nichodemus "ye must be born again." The funeral pire acts as a sort of symbolic ressurrection. His example will point the way for others. There is a certain Christ-like sacrifice in his final battle - he knows that this battle will end his life, but save others.

What this is about.

This is my prep for my am comprehensive exams. I will write entries musing on some unifying themes within a particular set of literary pieces. The unifying themes are:
1. Religion and the human experience
2. The outsider in society
3. The Campbellian view of the hero

The first two are fairly clear, but the third may need explanation to those unfamiliar with the work of Joseph Campbell. I am taking his definition of the monomyth from The Hero With a Thousand Faces to describe the hero's journey.

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man" (30).

So, entries in this blogger will take a piece of literature from my list (which includes all periods of World, British, and American literature) and look for apsects of each of these three themes within them. We'll see how it goes. Those reading this blogger are more than welcome to participate by commenting on my musings. If poetry is your cuppa, try my other blogger: www.pmcomps.blogspot.com and read and react to poems by Christina Rossetti. I've commented on them, now it's your turn to react - agree, disagree, whatever you want to do.