My Final Thoughts

In taking the class, Telling the Story Queer I have learned a great deal. I think our final discussion on our readings wrapped up my thoughts about the class. There are many definitions on what queer literature is. There is the definition of touching on the subject of the queer community and what it entails. Then there is the literal “queer” aspects of the literature, meaning odd or unusual. All of our texts fit into the definition that we drew up.

We have read some of the oddest materials I have read ever. I believe that the queerest story that we read was Love Might Be Too Strong A Word. It had both aspects of the queer literature definition. It definitely had the queer community aspects with Mab and yrs tendency to sleep with members of the same social class. Then you have the language and the way it is written that is queer as well. I think this story has set the bar high for the queerest text.

My thinking has changed a lot from the beginning of this class. My definition of what queer is changed to a more broadened one. When I started the class I had thought that it was just going to concentrate on the LGBTQ community. Yet upon finishing the class I know that it has a bigger definition than just concentrating on that one aspect. I loved being able to learn from a wide variety of texts that I do not believe that I would have come across in my spare time.

Final Thoughts

I enrolled in the FYSEM class Telling the Story Queer, because queer literature happens to be one of my favorite topics; whether the text is queer theoretically, sexually, or philosophically I enjoy writings which seek to annihilate limitations, “the arts, whatever their materials, pressed forward by the aesthetics of the sublime in search of intense effects, can and must give up the imitation of models that are merely beautiful, and try out surprising, strange, shocking combinations. Shock is, par excellence, the evidence of something happening, rather than nothing, suspended privation,” (Jean-François Lyotard). Although I don’t appreciate a lot of conceptual art (concept>aesthetic), I have come to be able to appreciate and respect it, for the vitality of art is dependent upon its ability to thwart a stagnant nature. Queer art does not imitate models; it divorces itself from what is thought to be “the best way of doing things” or a normative idea of “beauty”. And I want to suggest only queer art can be sublime, in accordance with Immanuel Kant’s idea of the “sublime”.

The detonation of the word sublime isn’t entirely foreign to Kant’s interpretation and connotation; sublime according to the Webster dictionary is “tending to inspire awe usually because of elevated quality (as of beauty, nobility, or grandeur) or transcendent excellence. A work of art is subjective; some works of art may inspire awe (or sublimity) in only a select few. But personally I do not think a literary work of art is of “transcendent excellence” if it stays within an archetypal story model or doesn’t suggest anything unfamiliar.

Parroting Lyotard, I want to be shocked and surprised; I want to feel my idea(s) of what and what doesn’t constitutes art, not belittled but disputed and altered.

Kant’s interpretation of the sublime is as follows: (when)… the mind feels agitated, while in an aesthetic judgment about the beautiful in nature it is in restful contemplation. This agitation (above all at its inception) can be compared with a vibration, i.e. with a rapid alternation of repulsion from, and attraction to, one and the same object. If a thing is excessive for the imagination (and the imagination is driven to such excess as it apprehends the thing in intuition), then the thing is, as it were, an abyss in which the imagination is afraid to lose itself,” (Critique of Judgment).

Why do I think (in accordance with Kant) only queer literature can be sublime? For me to feel inspired, be in awe of, or describe something with a quality of transcendent excellence I cannot simply be appreciative of a common aesthetic. It is only through a relationship between attraction and initial repulsion this can occur. If I am confronted with something beautiful (Kant’s definition) it does not press against my imagination.

For his audience, Kant writes a formula able to define the sublime, “The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense” and when one experiences the sublime, “ a feeling comes home to him of the inadequacy of his imagination for presenting the idea of a whole within which that imagination attains its maximum, and, in its fruitless efforts to extend this limit, recoils upon itself, but in so doing succumbs to an emotional delight”. Sublimity is relative and ephemeral but differs from the beautiful in that our imagination cannot fully comprehend the extent of its nature; the feelings produced from this experience are sublime.

I’ll leave this idea with a quote, “A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader” (Nabokov).

I particularly enjoyed some of the short stories and Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. And although I initially disliked Shiga’s Meanwhile I came to be able to appreciate it; perhaps I should read it again as it certainly provoked my imagination and ability to imagine. I enjoyed the blogs because in writing I can express with more lucidity what I intend to convey than I can in informal discourse. I am able to develop ideas more thoroughly than while talking, because I can see my thoughts recorded on paper and continue to build upon them while increasing the quality of them through editing. And thirdly I can better draw upon ideas from people across the world and across time; people who were and are more diverse and intelligent than I: people who have experienced things I have not yet experienced and am incapable of experiencing. I also enjoy reading the blogs from everyone on the same text I read, as not every idea a person has or wants to develop is shared within the time confines of class. Some of the most brilliant things I have heard, often come from people who do not usually speak, “A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something” (Plato perhaps).

I know there was some opposition expressed towards Valente’s In the Night Garden but rather than solely criticizing it, I would like to suggest, for those were not fond of the text, to recommend different texts they think manifest better a “queer text”.

I would personally like to recommend Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin; it delves into controversial issues with brutal honesty and outstanding insight while remaining queer as an epistolary novel (contained in or carried on by letters). And while some may have read epistolary books prior to the class, the book remains queer in plot as the writer of the letters is the mother of Kevin, a boy who commits massacre in a shooting at his high school. The very thought of being a mother to such a person, I think constitutes with the idea of Kant’s sublime; it is alluring, repulsive and incomprehensible. Here is but a small taste of Shriver: ““It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness” (We Need to Talk about Kevin).

What does it mean to tell a story queer? Simply stated, I think telling a story queer is telling a story well.

Closing Thoughts

 I want to reiterate what I said at the end of our final class: it has been an honor for me to think about our texts with you this semester. I have learned so much from your thoughts and ideas and appreciate your willingness to be in conversation together about difficult material. You asked for me to post the short, short that I wrote that was influenced by Cloud Atlas. I've pasted it in below. Although I hadn't read "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" before I wrote this, I can see some affinity between the narrators in these two stories. I appreciate feedback, if you've got any. Critical feedback is great; tho' it's always nice to hear when my writing works, I find my writing improves the most when people point out why and where it's not working.

The Carving

Along the top edge of the wooden carving there is a dark sky.   Darker brown, wavy lines depict wind blowing.  Against the dark sky there is a twig and sod hut.  It is where she lived, as a child.  A choppy river runs horizontally through the carving, filling in the bottom half of the block.  Really, all of this is just background.  It’s not what your eyes would focus on if I were to show you this carving.  Instead, what you would see would be a girl.  She sits on the dirt in front of the hut, carving. Her simple dress is sleeveless, her brown arms and legs are muscled.  She is small, petite. Shavings curl around her head, bouncing.  Her eyes, though crafted of wood, are vibrant.  She is a willow tree.  She is flowing water.  She is sap, coursing through xylem, pushing through phloem. 

In the spark etched into her eye is reflected another image, a sketch. At the top edge of this drawing there is a cloud-filled sky.  Against these clouds there is a metal shack.  Where she lived, as a child.  A stony path runs horizontally through the picture.  The stones are large; jagged edges rising up out of level.  Behind the path is a fire.  Really, all of this is just background.  It is not what your eyes would focus on if I were to show it to you.  Instead, what you would see would be a woman. At her feet, a whittled stick turns to coal in the embers of the fire.  The sleeves and hem of her grey dress are torn; her arms and legs poke out from it--harsh, black lines.  She is thin.  Her eyes are dark smudges.  She is a twig clutching one papery leaf. 

In her hands she holds another image, a photo of the apartment building where she lived as a child.  There is no background in the Polaroid.  There is no sky.  The foreground is completely taken up with red, sooty bricks.  The only thing interrupting this expanse of rust wall is a smudged window, through which you would see a woman with curly brown and grey hair and an open photo album.   The album is opened to the page containing the only surviving photograph of the townhouse where she lived as a child.  In this sepia-tinted photo, a group is gathered on the granite doorstep.  If I were to show it to you, you would see that at the very center is a baby, wearing a creamy baptism dress, an open locket around her small neck.  The rest of her family has faded into the background of the fading photograph.  The watercolor contained in the open locket is of the farmhouse where she lived, as a child.  She is standing to the right side of the pale yellow house, her palm held outward, shading her eyes, obscuring her face.  In the creases of her palm is imprinted the memory of the thatched roof cottage where she lived as a child.  On one of the stones that make up the walls of this cottage is a petrogylph of the cave where she lived as a child. 

You would see it clearly.  If I were to show it to you.

Final Reflection

I have learned many things from our first year seminar. Just being in class discussions opened my mind to experience how other people think. I also enjoyed the readings because in a normal setting I wouldn't have read these sort of books.

Presenting my research to the class was a objective that really made me motivated to do well. I didn't want to look bad in front of my peers, so I made sure I knew everything about the subject I researched.

Finally, I thought that the blogs became annoying towards the end of the semester. I think that they should have been graded, but I think it should have been less demanding because we are discussing our opinions.

Overall, I learned a lot from the class, but I am disappointed in my grade.

The Queer Experience

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I heard the title of the course. I wasn’t sure how much I would learn from the class or how much I would gain from the class. I can say that I gained a lot more than a thought I would.

The different texts, especially the ones that centered around LBGT and gender equality, taught me how to be more open minded to different lifestyles. I like to think that I was already pretty open minded about things but this course helped me to become even more open minded.

One course material that really helped me was “Love Might Be Too Strong a Word”. It helped me because I had never really thought about the pronouns we use to describe gender. I was always one of those people that if I didn’t know if something was feminine or masculine I just called it “it” without a second thought about how the word “it” could be hurtful, especially when describing someone. I know see that people can’t always be so easily classified like I was taught in elementary school.

Telling the Story Queer means more to me that I thought it would. To me it describes not just the material taught in class but also the people that took the class. Queer for means something that’s different or can’t be easily labeled and that’s the people in the class for me. No one person in that class can be judged on how they look on the outside. From Piper Passages to the last actual day of class my first impressions of everyone changed drastically.

Above anything else the class taught me not to prejudge anyone or try to place a label on them based off the first impression they give off.

Cloud Atlas

One thing that really intrigued me about this novel is the way the context in which the book was written. I made many comparisons with this book and the books we read in the past. The books that i thought were similar to the Cloud Atlas were, In The Night Garden and Meanwhile. I thought In The Night Garden had the closest comparison to the Cloud Atlas with how the book jumped from story to story. Even though Cloud Atlas's story line was more like a pyramid, I made my connection based on the jumping back and forth to different stories. When comparing Cloud Atlas to Meanwhile, I saw their connection in how unique the concept of the two books where. With Meanwhile being unique in the way that you can choose your own story and destiny in the book. In Cloud Atlas being unique in the way that I have never read a book with a "pyramid" shaped timeline.

However, even though I found Cloud Atlas to be creative and unique I still did no enjoy the read because of the jumping of stories. I found myself having to go back and re-read what I had just previously read a lot.

I did however enjoy the section called Adam Edwing's arch because of how fact that the world was bare and just sitting there untouched. It made me think and wish I could of been around in that time period. imagine being one of the only ones around. that thought fascinates me, being able to live and truly do what you believe in or just want to do. I would really enjoy that

Cloud Atlas

The thing that most intrigued me about Cloud Atlas was the way society was shown deteriorating and then rising again. This is illustrated more literally by the ascending and descending of characters in each arch.

In Adam Ewing's arch, society was at its peak. The world was waiting to be explored and discovered, and this made it possible for people to live how they wanted. Well, except for slaves. That part wasn't so good. But apart from that, society was at its peak. After that things got worse with each new reincarnation until Sonmi-451, where it was at its worst, so then things could only get better and start from the bottom up again with Zachery and Meronym's arch.

I think that the theme of the characters ascending and descending is related to the theme of society's own rising and falling. I think each example of the characters ascension and descention was meant to mirror the rising and falling of the quality of society. Maybe this suggests that each reincarnation's society went through a little different graphing than what Lisa had drawn on the board, but it might have looked more squiggly on the way down. like it goes down, then back up a little, but then drops further for the next reincarnation's society. What do you think?

Cloud Atlas

First, I'll just state my opinion of Cloud Atlas, which is that, although it was a good book, it initially felt a lot like reading the introduction to the first Harry Potter book over and over again. It took a while to get into.

While I would love to say that the topic I'm going to write about is entirely my idea, I could not do so without lying. I did some research on Cloud Atlas while we were reading it, and something I came across was that each story reflected upon "Nietzschean matters of truth and perspective, the will to power, what it means to be a slave or a master, and the different methods by which one might narrativize one’s life."

Rather than analyzing how this is true, because that would be plagiarism, I will instead discuss why I find this so fascinating.

Mainly, I find it incredibly important to be able to understand someone else's ideas in terms of our own, because they will otherwise never become applicable to our lives. Mitchell manages to take Nietzsche's ideas into his own hands to create a novel that illustrates the central idea of eternal return. This is also interesting to me because he used Nietzsche's ideas to prove another one of Nietzsche's ideas, which isn't often done. Generally, we use one (or multiple) person's (or people's) ideas to support someone else's ideas.

I also just found it interesting that Mitchell managed to do this in such an interesting way, because I feel that a lot of people would rather not read a novel that pushes these ideas, but he managed to do so without anyone realizing that he was, in fact, trying to express/explain Nietzsche.

I will conclude this by saying that I'm not nearly as well-versed in Nietzsche's ideas as I could be, so I apologize if any of what I said is completely wrong or off-base.

An Unfettered Howl

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is a novel which says much about human nature; throughout the story, a soul is reincarnated throughout time, however the identities (personality, mannerisms, etc.) of the people, the soul inhabits, are not homogenous but rather like malleable vessels: shaped by nature, nurture, and occurrences in life (“You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” C.S Lewis). But the various people the soul inhabits are human beings; human beings, however different they may appear to be, belong to one species. And every human being is always battling against his or her own nature (natural selection (selfishness). Mitchell rhetorically asks, “Why fight the “natural” order of things?” He answers, “Why? Because of this: - one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw... such a world will come to pass. And although your life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean, what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” (507). Mitchell believes although our lives are limited in power, as a collective whole we can create change; it is possible for Adam Ewing to create a world, “ I want Jackson to inherit,” (508). (Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.”- Lionel Shriver).

Many writers, philosophers, and religious icons dedicated, and continue to dedicate their lives to understanding and shaping human nature. Upon reviewing Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde immediately came to mind. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a novel published in 1886 about a man named Dr. Henry Jekyll, who seeking to separate his immoral desires (Mitchell would describe as the natural) from his philanthropic self creates a potion, transforming him into a malicious and menacing man, free from conscience, named Mr. Hyde. And although Dr. Jekyll enjoys his liberation from morality, he soon realizes he is involuntarily turning into Mr. Hyde when lucid and unconscious in sleep. Unable to concoct the potion which transformed Mr. Hyde back into Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Jekyll locks himself in his laboratory and commits suicide (It is ambiguous whether or not Mr. Hyde or Dr. Jekyll is the culprit of the suicide).

In Cloud Atlas, the duality of man is manifested metaphorically within the rising and falling in every story and in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde it is made visible through the physical transformation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And if Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is read as an allegory about human nature, than David Mitchell's words, “the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction,” (508) are valid. Mr. Hyde is a consequence of an action, created by a desire; he is not the cause of Dr. Jekyll's death any more than smoke is the cause of suffocation. It is the desire (and failure) to transcend morality which is the begetter of the Dr. Jekyll's death; Mr. Hyde is an embodiment of Mitchell's ideas of human nature (selfishness). And if we attempt to divorce ourselves from a moral sense of life and descend into a character like Mr. Hyde, according to Robert Louis Stevenson and David Mitchell we will destroy ourselves. And the world presented in the chapter Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rthin' After in Cloud Atlas may not be far off.

Thoughts on human nature which vary and/or oppose Mitchell's ideas are prevalent in the world and I don't desire to make a case which implies he is surely correct. C.S Lewis believes, "Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it." The Dali Llama has a similar opinion, “Human beings are not intrinsically selfish, which isolates us from others. We are essentially social animals who depend on others to meet our needs. We achieve happiness, prosperity and progress through social interaction. Therefore, having a kind and helpful attitude contributes to our own and others' happiness.” But there are those who oppose this idea. Nietzsche writes, “ This is the antimony: Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence,” and Marquis de Sade writes, “ Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.” I quote these writers and philosophers to make evident opinions on morality are as varied as personalities within human persons. But like the reincarnations in Cloud Atlas they are strung together by a similarity; they, like all of us, are concerned about morality, ethics, and how to best live one's life.

The last quote I want to leave everyone with (regarding morality) is from George Batailles, “The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil,” Rather than attempting to create moralities, which fans away asphyxiating smoke (not always in the right direction), perhaps we should attempt to locate and extinguish the fire, and its architect. One might argue such a feat is impossible and even if it wasn't, I am but a single person: a single drop of water, a shapeless cloud, or a small tuft of heated air. To which I would reply, have you ever witnessed a hurricane?

Morals in Cloud Atlas

Something we talked a lot about in class discussion about David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" was the concept of cruelty and selfishness found in each of the stories. Not only do these concepts come up a lot in the novel, but society today definitely exhibits these concepts often. It is more than likely that this is what David Mitchell wants the reader to see, that each of the stories in Cloud Atlas exhibit our own human history, present, and future of cruelty and selfishness. Perhaps a never-ending chain that is found in human history.

The first story in the "cloud" of stories in "Cloud Atlas" is that of Adam Ewing. Cruelty here is found in the treatment of the Moriori people by the Maori. The Moriori people are enslaved and treated as animals because they are "savages". However, there is light in the situation found in Ewing's treatment of the Moriori slave Autua. Ewing shows compassion and helps Autua out of slavery.

The second story, Letters from Zedelghem, most of the characters are cruel and selfish and feed off of each other for power. The main character, Frobisher, uses the old composer, Vyvan for power and money. Vyvan uses Frobisher for power and fame as well. Vyvan's wife uses Frobisher, and he uses her. None of these characters have outstanding moral values behind their decisions.

The third story involves murder mystery and nuclear negligence. Unfortunately, in today's society, and in the past, there have been incidents just like this.

Sonmi-451 emulates what are society is on the verge of becoming. Middle and lower class citizens will become the slaves of consumerist society and companies. Such as McDonalds in the novel. This seems to be a representation of the cruelty and selfishness found in consumer society itself.

Our Search for Knowledge

Within the story Cloud Atlas you learn about the story of Sonmi-451. I found this story to be the most interesting out of all of the stories to read. You learn of a society that depends on the servitude of clones. The clones that are named “fabricants” have no rights other than serving the rest of society. They are reduced to being in a pattern of going about their everyday chores and not questioning their purpose in life. Then you learn about Sonmi-451 who wants to learn what else life has to give her. She pushes the boundaries of society and wants to extend her knowledge.

In Sonmi-451’s push for knowledge she escapes from the McDonalds that was her “prison”. She gets exposed to the outside world which she tells the archivist that she had never known that there was such thing as green plants. She also was curious about the insects that were everywhere. Her search for knowledge extended past just the outside world. Soon you learn about her obsession with her Sony. She had a deep thirst for knowledge and this led her to connect with people that would give her access to such. She was given the ability to start attending classes at the university which was unheard of before and there was a shock to society that a fabricant could challenge the boundaries. She started to have the ability to learn about the beauty in the world.

As Sonmi-451 quenched her thirst for knowledge she was wrapped into many different situations that led to her destruction in the end. She immersed herself into the conspiracy theories of Hae-Joo and his people. In learning from him she learned of what really happened to her people. She discovered how each of the old fabricants were demolished as soon as they could not benefit from society. The purebloods feed the fabricants to each other to keep their society running without considering the rights of the servants. When she learned this she finally discovered how messed up the system was and that there was so much that could be done to improve the lives of her people.

What we learn from Sonmi-451 is that in our search for knowledge you can learn things that you never thought were imaginable. You can discover the beauty of the world and increase your appreciation for life and the way the world works. Then you can also be exposed to things that totally tear apart everything you thought about society and make you question whether or not there is hope for your own people.

Cloud Atlas

The way Cloud Atlas was written really intrigued me. The way each story was interupted by a new story kept me interested in wanting to find out more. I thought it was really cool how the story started in the 19th century and peeked in a post apocalyptic future, and then the story seemed to rewind to conclude the remaining stories. I related this part of the book to In the Night Garden and how the stories kept changing. Like I said before I seem to get a new motivation to read when a new story starts. Each of these stories can stand alone as its own, but when all of them are read they reveal the full story put together.

The moral of the stories are somewhat hidden. Mitchell "clouds" his points in a fog of ambiguity. This is why the story was confusing to me. Not because I didn't get the action in the story, but I didn't understand the deeper meaning behind each one. One of these meanings was the theory of recreation. Mitchell proposes that the universe doesn't advance but merely repeats itself.

In class we discussed the topic of reincarnation. This kind of makes me feel that people might not value their life as much if they believe that they can start over. In the novel the characters who were a part of Mitchell's theory of reincarnation they had the same inner beleifs and passions. Although they were different in certain ways they still carried the same beliefs that they had in the group. This brings up the discussion of Karma and what we do in our lives can change our "life after life."

What other morals/theories did you come across that some people might not have noticed.?

Meanwhile

I thought Meanwhile was an interesting book in the way that it lets you choose your own path through the book. The path I chose first was  the vanilla ice cream path, which shortly ended by the boy going home to his dad. So I gave the book another try and chose the  chocolate path which I ended up getting lost at after three pages. I must have gotten the colors mixed up. After I got lost I completely gave up on the book because I got frustrated. I never knew I could get stumped by a picture book is probably the main reason whyI stopped reading. Overall I liked the idea of the book but I did not enjoy it because of the complexity of the lines and where they go to next. Do you just follow them? or do you flip the page and go from there? Those where two main questions that I was asking as I was trying to follow the book. I later found out how to read the book when we went over it in class.

I Think the moral of the book Meanwhile is that you choose your own path in life (like the lines in the book) and you face, deal with, and overcome adversity. In class we argued that about how people were born into less fortunate families and how that made life nearly impossible to succeed in because of where they started. We also said the more fortunate people who are born into wealthy families where money is not an issue have a life on a platter so to speak and do not need to work as hard as the less fortunate.  I strongly disagree, my out look on life and success is: success is  loving what you do and being happy and thankful for everything you have, every single day no matter how much money you make. Success is your personal enjoyment of life and everyone who is involved, like family and friends. Just because you were not born into a more fortunate family does not mean you cant be successful in life. And to say that the people who were born in less fortunate families with not a lot of money are content with a low income job because they believe that they only have that job because of there families wealth during their upbringing? That is completely false. Every single person has the chance in some way or another to prosper in life, the only hard part about this is having the heart, motivation and the "never give up" attitude to find how to too. "there are no secrets to success. it is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure." Colin L Powell            

Reincarnation

Reincarnation is a concept that is present in many of the world's cultures. Perhaps most notably, reincarnation is traditionally accepted in Indian culture and in the religious communities that have their origins in India such as Hinduism. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell uses this concept to weave together the many internal stories.

The first protagonist presented is David Ewing, who has a distinctive birthmark. All the protagonists in the following stories have this same birthmark, except for Sloosha's Crossin in which Meronym, not Zachry the protagonist has the birthmark.

This is the main clue that these people are really the reincarnation of the same soul. But an interesting point is that though they have the same soul, they have very differing personalities and characters. But, a recurring theme is that they fight against oppression and evil in some way. This implies that one's personality is temporary and fleeting, but it's core goodness is inherent despite its physical manifestation.

This goodness may be little and insignificant in its time, but it adds up through the accumulation of lifetimes. This is what is addressed in the last line of the book; "only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" What this line essentially gets at is that each life may be fleeting, but collectively throughout time these short lives can truly be of great consequence.

Meanwhile

When reading Meanwhile you get the opportunity to choose your own path. There are many difficult decisions throughout the story. I got stuck in the time travel circle for a long time before I found the right path. Other than the confusing parts of the story, I thought Meanwhile was a good and interesting read.

In class we discussed equal opportunity. It is obvious that some people are given more opportunities to succeed in life. This makes it easier for these people to make more money but that doesn't nessecarily mean that they don't need to work as hard. No one is going to be able to step in and run a business without the knowledge needed to help the company succeed. You can argue that they are millions of other people qualified for the job, but who would be a better canidate than the ceo's son/daughter? They lived their whole life watching and learning how their parent ran the company. People have talents that are unique to them so naturally there can't be equal opportunity. Someone who is seven feet tall is going to have a better chance of being a professional basketball player than someone who is five feet tall.

We also discussed the past and future in class. This reminded me of the movie Butterfly Effect. In this movie he traveled back in time and changed one small part of his life. From doing this his whole entire future was changed. This relates to meanwhile and the discussion we had about free will.

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is definitely a book that either you love or you hate. There is really no in between with this novel. It’s a sort of acquired taste. In my own personal opinion I didn’t like the book. Don’t get me wrong I am in no way saying that the book was horribly written. Even though I didn’t like the book I can appreciate how well it was written. I liked and didn’t like the way it was written.

The plot line and the way there are multiple stories that span almost half a century is sort of a deal breaker for me. It reminded me a lot of In the Night Garden and how there were different stories. It was hard for me to keep track of the different stories and try to figure out ways that each story was connected to another. The same way I didn’t like In the Night Garden for the multiple stories I didn’t like Cloud Atlas for the same reason. As much as I didn’t like the book I can’t say that it was a bad book it just wasn’t my cup of tea in a sense.

Before the in class discussion it was hard for me to see the connections between the different stories but after hearing people's examples it makes a little bit more sense to me. For example the idea of raising and falling throughout the story never really stuck out to me until someone mentioned it during a discussion.

What do you think the purpose of the different stories was?

Questionable Genders

To a lot of people gender seems to be one of the most important things in society that is taught to children. In this story, "And Salome Danced" gender seems to be ambiguous for some of the characters that are involved. The author, Kelley Eskridge wants to enforce the fact that gender is not the most important thing and that character can be built up without it.
Throughout reading the story I was really not sure whether or not Mars was a female or a male. The different characters within the story seem to not give clues on the gender or to point to anything that would give insight to the fact. It is totally up to the reader to determine whether or not Mars is a man, woman, trans, lesbian, gay, etc. When Mars addresses Jo and her gender ambiguity they state, “I don’t really care how they pee or whether they shave under their chins. Gender’s not important.” Throughout the story Mars seems to reinforce that statement by never exactly reveling their gender.
The character of Jo literally changes genders throughout the story. You can never really be sure whether she is a woman that had dressed up as a man one day or vice-versa. When Lucky and Mars talk about her they are not sure how to address her. This makes Mars highly uncomfortable because of the attraction between the two of them. The scene of Jo making love to Mars shows how uncomfortable it is, “Jo making love to me until I gasp and then she begins to change, to change, until it is Joe with me, Joe on me.” Jos ambiguity bothers people that are involved with her because she does not fill a gender.
The author Kelley Eskridge makes it a habit to make her stories characters gender neutral. Her other story "Dangerous Space", has the character Mars as well. Mars in that story also does not have a specific gender. Eskridge seems to enjoy having her readers be able to choose what gender that her characters are. Or it could be the fact that gender is not supposed to be important and having a gender neutral character makes a statement to societies over analyzing of gender as a whole. It relates to the story "Love Might Be Too Strong a Word", because it challenges the way we view gender and makes us realize how uncomfortable we are when we are not able to use the pronouns we have been taught to use our whole life.
We as humans have made gender so important to us. Like Theresa had mentioned in her blog we don’t know how to address people that people that do not claim a gender. Through Eskridges stories she makes a statement that we have to learn how to bend the rules we have set for ourselves as a gender focused society.

Androgyny or Confusion?

And Salome Danced is a perfect example of gender bending. The story shows that someone doesn't have to know the gender or someone else in order for the point of the story to get across. The gender of the character Mars is never revealed so it leaves space for interpretation. I personally saw Mars as woman who is a lesbian. I don't want to encourage stereotypical gender roles but I believe I saw Mars as a woman because Mars was so submissive to Lucky in the beginning and in the end Jo was able to dominant Mars.

During the class discussion however it came up that different people saw Mars differently. There were some who saw Mars as a straight man, some saw Mars as a woman who was a lesbian and there were even some that didn't give Mars a gender. I think Mars is never given a gender so that it can be left to the reader to decide who they want Mars to be.

I don't think the story would have changed if Mars' gender was made more important but I do realize that we do live in a society where gender is a very important factor. We live in a society where we are taught that every thing has a to have a gender specific pronoun otherwise something has to be called "it", which can be highly offensive in some instances or to call something "they". I know in my own personal experience I feel the need to place a gender specific pronoun on something because calling something "they" just isn't grammatically correct for me and I don't want to be offensive by saying "it" either.

The character of Jo(e) is used to show that gender shouldn't be something that's so important as well. The fact that Jo(e) can so easily switch from one gender to the other in a matter of seconds shows that.

One part of the story that stuck out the most to be was when they were all discussing doing the play Jesus Superstar and Jo wanted to play the role of Judas. Someone said she couldn't play that role because she was female and someone instantly said that gender wasn't important. That particular part stuck out to me because I remember my teacher saying that there was once a time where men played both male and female roles and it made me wonder why women aren't allowed to have the same privilege of choosing which role they would want to play.

Do you think gender is something that people will always see and will it always be something that's important in society? If so, why?

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas and The Pragmatical Princess

I wanted to compare "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" to a more recent story, "The Pragmatical Princess." What stood out to me as being similar in the two stories was how the dragon had introduced a new for of religion, Islam, to the Princess. I related this to how the young adults were introduced, or rather showed the boy in the cellar. Once the Princess was introduced to the religion she converted similar to how some of the young adults who were exposed to the boy in the cellar wound up walking away from Omelas. These young adults, like the Princess, changed the beliefs which allowed them to view their surroundings differently. They began to realize that the village of Omelas that was so happy wound up to be unappealing to the young adults after they viewed the starving specimen that was held in the cellar. I also compared the skeletons of bodies that the dragon had eaten to the boy in the cellar himself. These two were similar considering people were sacrificed or held against their will in order to make the lives of others pleasant. The Princess was able to be happy especially when the dragon freed her from the chains, which was like the people of Omelas being freed of a terrible life by the sacrifice of the boy in the cellar.

Love Might Be Too Strong a Word

The short story, "Love Might be too Strong a Word," created a setting in which gender did not remain within our own binary concepts. However, I noticed during class that we seemed to be unable to attempt to assign each of the newly introduced genders a binary form. For instance, we assumed that if someone had parts described as "outie" parts, we automatically assumed that person was to be masculine. We also made an assumption that, should someone's gender pronouns end in a similar fashion to "him" or "her," they should keep with our perceptions of male and female.

It was interesting to note this, especially since our class is meant to study the queer within literature. It was indeed quite queer to read a story that created new genders. But it was more interesting to see how difficult it was too discard society's standards of male and female. Regardless of how open-minded each of us in class is, in our discussion, we still struggled to use the proper pronouns instead of "he" and "she."
It might have been difficult to discard these roles simply because of the roles we were shown. It seemed that any character we assumed was male had a leadership position and was generally above the strictly "female" (by our standards) characters, the dailys. Any character to whom the maintenance and less desirable tasks were left was perceived as female.
I also found it interesting that this story showed us a character that went against its gender roles in most aspects of the society. Mab did adhere to gender roles if yr job is taken into account, because y worked as a cleaner, as all the other dailys did. However, Mab became the more bossy member of the relationship between Dot and Mab, even deciding how they would interact sexually. This would be, typically, a task left up to the pilots, but Mab chose to take this over.

The Green Book

In this story I was wondering the whole time whether or not the book really held magic. Did Leuwin just go mad and had an alter ego through the book? When Dominic wrote in the book the girl Cynthia wrote back which changed my opinion somewhat. Or was it Leuwin pretending to be her? Leuwin talked to Cynthia like she was an actual human. He got lost in the translation of a book. I felt like the author was maybe trying to portray how people can fall in love with their books and really lose sight of reality. The one part that made me believe that the book held magic was when Dominic said he couldn't burn or rip up the book.
I liked how the story showed how someone can love something so much even if it might not be real. It shows how strong the brains imagination is. The moral of the story could be beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Cynthia felt beautiful every time Leuwin read her, but when Dominic read her she did not have this feeling. She explained to him how amazing it is for someone to feel that beauty.
I wonder, like Cynthia did, what was the reasoning of the first hand writing in the text. Was there a reasoning behind this? Who was the mistress in the crossroads?
The one part of the text that I was confused with was the sisterhood. Who were they? Did they kill Cynthia?
Comparing The Green Book to In the Night Garden. There was magic in both stories both used for good. I don't believe Cynthia was trying to make Leuwin go mad, I felt like she was there to give company. In the Night Garden Knife was surrounded by magic and at first I thought of her as a witch, but she was helpful throughout the story.

The Pragmatical Princess

The Pragmatical Princess was a difficult read for me. Personally, I have a hard time understanding religious themes in depth because I have little understanding of religion as a whole or specific religions as I don't know their individual practices and beliefs. But I did understand The Pragmatical Princess's underlying theme as religion based. What I took from it was that the dragon said he changed his religion to protect his life and to stay and hang out with the princess forever. If he hadn't claimed that he was Muslim, the king would have had him killed.

The more interesting part of the story for me was the relationship between the dragon and the princess. Usually in fairytales, a princess is saved by a prince and they're then supposed to fall in love or whatever. Instead, the dragon falls in love with the princess and changes his religion so that they can stay together. This is relateable to Valente's backwards and upside-down fairytale telling. She focuses on not-so-traditional relationships (e.g. The Marsh King & the Leucrotta, the Leucrotta & the Beast-Maiden). Both authors put an interesting twist on traditional relationships.

The Green Book and In The Night Garden

"The Green Book", by Amal El-Mohtar, is a story fraught with an air of mystery. It is somewhat suspenseful, has a touch of horror, and leaves the reader in question. The story does not have many apparent morals or themes to it. However, something the reader may gather from the story as a whole is the power a book and writing can have on an individual. It is difficult to say wether or not the Green Book itself really was magically filled with the woman Cynthia or not. If it was, then the reader's imagination is opened up to possible symbols that the book and Cynthia may be. The book may be a symbol for the identifiability of literature. It has the power to captivate many different readers and draw them in. If perhaps Cynthia is simply a figment of Leuwin's imagination then she represents the predicament that comes from too much identification with literature and the unnatural world.
These representations and issues can be related to the use of magic in "In the Night Garden". As "The Green Book" has many different users of the book, in "In the Night Garden" there are many different performers of magic. And as the characters in "In the Night Garden" use magic in different ways, the readers and writers in "The Green Book" use the book differently. Some characters, such as Omir, use magic for corrupt things. Corresponding to this would be "the sisters" use of the book to cast Cynthia into it. However, some good does come out of these corruptions. In "The Green Book", Leuwin and Cynthia are able to fall in love through the casting of Cynthia into the book. In "In the Night Garden", Knife is able to rescue the princess who stays a strong and intelligent woman despite of the tortures Omir cast upon her. As there are evil ways magic and the book are used, there are also good found in both. "The Green Book" is mostly full of not-well-intentioned writing. However, I find that Cynthia has not had bad intentions and has simply been a kind woman. Magic in "In the Night Garden" is used for good often, specifically by Knife and her grandmother in order to save people
A conclusory thought to these things would be that perhaps books and magic can be seen as almost the same thing. They both have effects on people, both good and bad. In relation to "The Green Book" and "In the Night Garden", one can find that regardless of the intention and outcome, both magic and the book are powerful both on the surface and symbolically.

The "Pragmatical" Princess

Nisi Shawl’s The Pragmatical Princess is a modern bestiary: “a medieval allegorical or moralizing work on the appearance and habits of real or imaginary animals,” (Merriam Webster). The prevalent connotation of the word “bestiary” involves an array of different tales; however as noted above a single tale can also be defined as such. Shawl’s bestiary is an ambiguous story concerning a dragon and a Muslim princess. Their identities, circumstance, and conversations are not for the purpose of escapism entertainment or furthering the genre of fantasy; upon scrutiny the story contains pragmatic moralizing concerned with bigotry, feminism, freedom, religion, correlations and causations, education, colonization, wisps of wisdom, and the very notion of living. And while escapism entertainment or fantasy (or any genre for that matter) can never fully escape ideas of morality and living, Shawl’s tale is of a philosophical nature, hence “bestiary”.

The tale begins when a princess, legs and arms chained to stone, meets a dragon and is freed from bondage with his aid. The dragon flies the princess back to his lair; conversing, the dragon learns the princess is an intended sacrifice for him, because her Father the King seeks to conquer the whole of France as a result of his mania (Greek: “μανία" (mania), “madness, frenzy”) and endangers the dragon because of potential colonization (creating a large surplus of food with “an abominably high salt content”) and slaughter.

The princess names the dragon Aegyptus because he is the very seat of reason; his name is important, because it symbolizes reason, “Finally at my age, consuming large quantities of humans is a luxury I simply can no longer afford,” as the princess symbolizes pragmatic thinking, “But in my experience of religious claims they are all ‘true’ and all similarly singular in this truth”… And pragmatically speaking I have been throughout my life a follower of the prophet Mohammed. But now that I am here with you, I should no doubt subscribe to some more dragonish creed.” It is pragmatic to practice another’s religion within their home/culture because there is truth within all religion; such a practice thwarts violence and is respectful. Rational persons have reason, and “the retention of fluids which inevitably results when we succumb is damaging to our delicate constitution,”- when we as people (with reason) continue to wage cannibalism against each other’s lives, ideals we injure and maim our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves. The princess persuades the dragon to convert to Islam so he is not forced to flee and together they drop a scroll at her father’s war camp detailing the dragon’s conversion.

Islam is a religion with currents of misogyny; the shackles chaining the princess to the rock are symbols of these currents. The dragon, representative of reason, yells to the princess, “Patience!” Patience is often a virtue which is often hard to endure amidst oppression, “The Princess Ousmani wondered when, if ever, some other virtue would be urged upon her, such as courage or resourcefulness,”- Nisi Shawl urges the message of patience towards Islamic women and a message of responsibility towards rational people of the world to melt their bindings or else the princess’ “lions will be the battlefield” between malevolent Muslim extremists such as her father and Imam (a Muslim leader of the line of Ali held by Shiites) and Caliph (a successor of Muhammad as temporal and spiritual head of Islam).

One minute wisdoms are everywhere in the modern world: Facebook statuses, billboards, home décor, gas stations, etc. Many are cliché but it is important to remember they become cliché because of universal declaration and acceptance. Shawl’s story contains many: “Though rejecting as false the conclusion that because offerings made to a dragon disappeared, ergo there must be a dragon” “If my perceptions remain unclouded by expectations of any sort, the possibilities inherent in the moment will present themselves to me with much more readiness” “Let us see what wisdom sleep procures” “If breath alone meant life.” These snippets of wisdom are indeed one minute wisdoms, but who of us can say a good night’s sleep doesn’t sometimes help in the formulation of a decision? Within these miniature sentiments there are metaphors, “‘Will you plunder me of my books, then?” “Not I, but mice and insects have made a very good start. You should keep a cat.”’ The books (plays, infidel doctrines, histories) contain ideas, and the suggestion of a cat is the suggestion of an education. An education prevents such harmful pests as bigotry from plundering reasoned peoples of differing ideas and doctrines.

It is useless to examine religion with science, “The princess was not afraid of darkness. But conditions made a scientific program of exploration impossible,”- the princess is pragmatic; she understands religion’s purpose is often to explain the unexplainable in physical and human nature: darkness. We cannot scientifically argue any religion’s truth over another, because religion does not concern itself with science as mythological literature does not concern itself with natural truths: historical accuracies, physical limitations, etc.

Nisi Shawls’ The Pragmatical Princess confronts various problems within Islam and all religions; she offers a “pragmatic” solution which calls for oppressed peoples to be patient, reasoned peoples to aid the oppressed, and conversion towards a differing doctrine when the benefits of doing so trump opposition. Nisi Shawl’s ideas however are not original and are reminiscent of the White moderate within the Civil Rights Movement.

In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter to Birmingham Jail he writes, “I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.” Shawl’s tale deals merely with effects; she does not seek to wrestle with the underlying causes of mania but rather suggests a flight response as opposed to a fight response. King writes, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”Misogynist Islamic extremists will not stop the subjugation against women unless the women and others demand it; Shawl hopes for reasoned peoples to demand women’s liberation and asks the oppressed to be patient. She forgets the virus of apathy within America. How can one ask the oppressed to be patient, “when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society?” The oppressed cannot simply wait out their oppression in hopes the world will utilize their reason and come to their need.

Lastly King writes in his letter, “I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection,” The ideas of the White moderate are very similar to the ideas proposed by Nisi Shawl. The solution is not to be patient; the solution is to demand freedom. The solution is not to convert to another’s religion in their midst for safety; the solution is to learn how to live with another culture’s or persons’ religion in the same setting as your own. The solution lies in the problem of mania; the pragmatical princess and dragon of reason should not adhere to the King’s whims out of fear, because such a solution is neither practical or of reason for the underlying cause will continue to persist.

Nisi Shawl’s Pragmatical Princess is very alike to Catherynne M. Valente’s In the Night Garden. The Pragmatical Princess is queer as it is a modern day bestiary; In the Night Garden is also a bestiary of sorts. It is a collection of tales involving beasts, and the tales are allegorical and moralizing. In the Night Garden addresses Kings, lay persons, life and death, magic, the creation of the world, issues of respect, and differing ideals of morality. It is a bestiary of sorts but not completely; the best definition would be mythological literature.

The Pragmatical Princess is written with fantastic descriptions, “Its irises were formed like slits, as were the nostrils from her own, from which an occasional wisp of steam escaped,” but the descriptions are not purple; they do not command attention to themselves, causing a distraction between reader and text because within the description there is action whereas Valente’s descriptions dictate the action and go on with “like.” The reader can easily bypass a simile in Valente’s sentence formulations, losing only a description not necessary to the story but to the mood. If one skips Shawl’s descriptions, they lose vital information necessary to the story. Her description indicates the physical nearness between the Princess and the Dragon.

The Pragmatical Princess is philosophical in intention and therefore unlike any other text we have read in class. The graphic novels addressed many issues as did Shawl, but in the manner of a long story with illustration. And The Arabian Nights was inspiration for Valente’s In the Night Garden. However the length (4690 words) and philosophical nature of The Pragmatical Princess allows it to carve out its own niche within the texts we have read for class.

Omelas and In the Night Garden

Though both In The Night Garden and Omelas are fairy tales, there are several stylistic differences among them.

First, In The Night Garden has a complex plot that intertwines several story arcs into one. Omelas on the other hand is plotless. The story could be considered more accurately as a vignette, albeit a long one. A vignette is "a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object" (I got that definition from wikipedia; don't judge me). It can be argued that this piece is a vignette of the setting of the land of Omelas. A related point is that Omelas lacks any specific characters. All characters in the story are known by their station in the society.

One thing I noticed is that this short story very obviously has a moral theme, but it is embedded and must be deciphered by the reader. In the Night Garden on the other hand does not directly give the impression that it has a moral, but its themes are much more easy to decipher. I'll put it a different way. ITNG addresses themes such as sexism and classism, but doesn't make it obvious that themes are being addressed. In Omelas it is very hard to figure out what the meaning is, but it's obvious that there is something larger being addressed.

Another thing I noticed is that ITNG has a very varied geography; the story moves throughout radically different lands and cultures. Omelas on the other hand has a stationary setting. The story remains in the land of Omelas and the climate and culture is generally homogenous.

Though both fairy tales, these two stories are written very differently.

In the Night Garden

While I thoroughly enjoyed In the Night Garden, I do have a complaint about her gender roles. I understand why she chose to switch gender roles, of course. It was very interesting to see a story in which women were heroes and men were damsels and/or antagonists. However, I noticed that many people said that she had discarded or ignored gender roles by allowing this to happen. I do not agree with this.
It seemed to me that she took a fully stereotypically feminist stand on her story. A stereotypical feminist is defined in this blog as the feminists that are represented in caricatures: stubborn, butch, and completely hateful of all men.

Rather than being strong or heroic, men are completely helpless. They need women to guide them and they are usually completely idiotic. For instance, the young prince who had to find Beast's skin: He believed that everyone would take care of him and help him along his journey, but when he actually had to do things for himself, he was completely incapable. The only men who were not represented as horribly were Beast and the Marsh King, both of whom had very feminine characteristics, rather than attempts at being masculine.
I think the story would have been more interesting had gender roles been discarded. While I will note that the majority of readers would likely assume that the heroes were male and the damsels were female, I think it would have been a refreshing change from a story in which there are relatively rigid gender roles.
Even more interesting would have been mixed gender roles, where women were antagonists, damsels, and heroes, and men assumed the same roles, depending on the character and the situation.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. However, I have grown tired of stories which many claim have pushed gender roles, when, in reality, they simply seemed to have replaced every "she" with "he" and vice-versa.

Turritopsis Nutricula

The theme of morality is prevalent through Catherynee M. Valente’s In the Night Garden. It is a common motif in mythological literature and fairy tales, to subjectively portray characters as either inherently evil or inherently good in relation to the culture of the story’s origin. Valente transcends such a motif and privies the reader with personal histories, circumstances, and thoughts of the story’s antagonists, “‘You stole her from us!” Imogen cried out miserably, like an infant bird falling from the nest. “She is our mother, not yours, and you took her away! We were happy before we came to this awful place! And now she has another baby- she will forget us completely!”’ (In the Night Garden 131). Iolanthe’s two daughters, Isaura and Imogen, are upset with Magadin, because their mother spends more time with her stepdaughter than her biological daughters. Isaura and Imgoen are not inherently evil for betraying Magadin to the wizard; inflicted with irrationality resulting from their feeling of abandonment, they do what is necessary to omit the source of pain in their lives. Whether or not morality is innate or relative, is a problem philosophers have attempted to answer since the formulation of the question within the human mind. And I believe it can be said with certainty every human being, at some moment in their life, has pondered the question.

The idea of eternal return is an idea which Nietzsche calls “the heaviest of burdens” for it states that, “‘All that is straight lies,”… "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle…. "Behold," I continued, "this moment! From this gateway, Moment, along, eternal lane leads backward: behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can walk have walked on this lane before? Must not whatever can happen have happened, have been done, have passed by before? And if everything has been there before – what do you think, dwarf, of this moment? Must not this gateway too have been there before? And are not all things knotted together so firmly that this moment draws after it all that is to come? Therefore – itself too? For whatever can walk – in this long lane out there too, it must walk once more,’” (Nietzsche, Zarathustra).

The idea of eternal return is indeed burdensome as it excludes morality. According to such a philosophy we cannot condemn any action as all things are momentarily in transit and will return; however, if every action we make is bound to reoccur, it inflicts upon us a responsibility of extreme weight. If circumstances within Valente’s In the Night Garden are addressed with the idea of eternal return, in what manners do our opinions on them differ as opposed to an initial reading with no premeditated goal of action?

Valence addresses morality within a monarchy, “‘Oh, my son, my son. How do you think I became King? I, too, cut out my father’s heart while he slept…”… And so we all begin, determined to better our father’s performances, knowing we can change the very nature of humanity, make it better, cleaner. But then daggers strike in the night, and peasants revolt, and all manner of atrocities become as necessary as breakfast. Only Princes believe in the greater good. Kings know there is only the Reign, all things may be committed in its holy name, “(In the Night Garden 205, 222). The king cares not for morality and is in allegiance to Machiavelli’s quote, “‘It is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”(The Prince).The King acknowledges he too sought to change the world for the better but in the position of a ruler it is necessary to disregard morality for the sake of one’s ruling territory. What would occur if the King or the Prince accepted the doctrine of eternal return?

Nietzsche asks, "Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"

The King and the Prince could be changed or crushed; hence the idea of free will is irrelevant within the idea of eternal return. I don’t believe the King would be changed drastically, as it seems he already has a loose understanding (unarticulated) of the idea of eternal return. It is the Prince who would be changed or crushed. In his action of attempting to murder his father for evil committed, it can be inferred he acts upon a sense of morality. But if free will does not exist, morality is dead, and time is a loop, would his actions differ? I don’t believe so. Not only is his sense of morality thoroughly ingrained in him, it is logical to argue although theoretically morality may not exist, it exists within our world and one cannot escape it as one cannot escape aging.

How does our opinion on their actions change within the idea of eternal return? In my opinion, in relation to the idea of eternal return, neither of the characters are inherently good or evil and neither of their actions are good or evil; their actions are ephemeral and pre-prescribed. The idea of eternal return allows us to transcend morality and focus on other issues often eclipsed by thoughts of morality. I would personally focus on a searching for identical actions previously committed in history, if the idea of eternal return is true and the world has existed long enough for its implications to be seen.

The idea of eternal return cannot be proven, but it is a fascinating one to ponder within any piece of literature whether it be a typical or queer text; any circumstance whereby action is committed, is capable of being looked at in relation to morality.

What do you all think? How does your opinion change of the characters in relation to the idea of eternal return? And if it doesn’t change, why is it? Would you live a different life, if every action you commit has been committed and will continue to be committed throughout time? Or would apathy grow? Is it possible the world can accept such an idea? What might the world look like? Would it be changed or crushed? Would it change at all?

In The Night Garden

I wouldn't say that In The Night Garden was a horrible book just because I didn't like it. There's no way that I can say it was badly written and it was a waste of my time to read because it was complete opposite. It was nicely written and it wasn't a complete waste of my time to read. It was hard for me to get through mainly because of the flowery figurative language. There were so many metaphors and smilies that I wasn't use to hearing that it took me while to get use to having to read them and stop to think about what Vilante meant by it. The way the stories intertwined together didn't make sense until someone pointed out during one of our many discussions that maybe the girl was telling stories about royalty in order to teach the prince something. When that point was made everything just sort of clicked for me and I somewhat began to like the book as a whole. At first I didn't like it because it was based off of Arabian Nights but I couldn't see any connections and once that connection was made I began to like it.

Irony

The traditional fairy tales of the Western World and overwhelmingly male driven. They reflect the norms and standards of gender relations of the time they were written. Valente subverts these norms to ironic effect.

One thing that is mocked is the traditional hero archetype. This is the basic flow of the vast majority of our fairy tales. Much simplified, a hero goes on a quest, faces obstacles to fulfill his destiny, and causes good. At the end, he (as they're always male) defeats the antagonist, reaches apotheosis, and then returns to where he came. Scholars have posited that this plot is nearly universal in our culture's myths.

Valente takes this and turns it on its head. For one thing, most of the protagonists are female, and most of the antagonists are male. This causes irony at scenes like on page 122 where Knife, upon reaching a tower to rescue a damsel cries, "Woman! Come out! I have-' She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. 'I have come to rescue you,' she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils." This scenes causes humor for the reader because it is highlighting the disparity between what the reader has been trained by our culture to expect, and what the book depicts.

Another irony in the book is that the women are often portrayed as wiser and more rational than the men. Reason is an attribute that has been usually considered male; women were historically considered irrational, impulsive, and hysterical. In fact, hysteria is derived from the Greek word "hystera" which means uterus. Hysteria was considered a female trait.

In Valente's book In the Night Garden, the males, especially the rulers are generally portrayed as less intelligent and wise than the women. An example of this is when Prince Leander impulsively leaves his castle and blindly goes on a quest. He happens upon the home of Knife, who is the one who must inform him and give him purpose. Another example is when King Indrajit unwisely conquers the acolytes of the Serpent Queen. She decides to use him, but he fails to follow her only preconditions and is destroyed because of it. It also did not help that he trusted the counsel of an inexperienced and male Omir the Wizard.

Valente uses her book to bring us fairy tales that are not nearly as male dominated as we are used to. This causes irony, and sometimes humor as we read them.

In The Night Garden

  In the Story The Night Garden, Valente includes many different characters with many different personalities in all of the stories, some good and some evil. But what i like most about her writing is how she puts all of the personalities of the characters and makes a connection to all of them through out the all of the stories. The short story i enjoyed the most was The Goslings Tale.

In the short story, The Gosling's Tale, The goose has to deal with being an outcast. The Goose knew she was not a bird, she just tried to fit in with the others that were "normal." Being an outcast she had to teach herself how to survive because without no mother or friends, eating and living was an everyday struggle . That all changed one day when " A bird bigger than any other, bigger than a falcon, found me up in my tree, my wings pulled up over my head." the Firebird inquired what was wrong and offered her the opportunity come with him so neither of them would be alone. The Goose lucked out but the Firebird, who is also known as the "Zhar-Ptitza" and they were "the best of all possible birds. I really enjoyed how the Firebird opened up the the goose and put the goose under its wing. He cared for the goose showed her and helped her learn new things while also telling her stories. I enjoyed how the Firebird took on as a leader and looked out for the Goose. In addition, I feel that I can relate to the Firebird my my life by being a leader and captain in hockey for many years of my life. Similar to what the Firebird had done for the goose, I had to take first year teammates and take them under my wing showing them the ropes and daily routines. For example, I would drive some of them home because they were not old enough to drive and i also would invite them to hangout with me and the older guys on the team to help them, make them feel welcome, and introduce them to new people so they could make new friends.

not only can i relate myself to the Firebird, i can also relate our group discussions in class. During our group discussions we always have five main contributors to the discussion. These five help and guide the others would do not contribute as frequently (myself included) by simply asking our opinions of the topic at hand. I believe this helps in the way that it breaks the ice to the quite people in class (and to the people who may not have read) by them showing their interest in our opinions. Them asking us questions gets us involved and makes up more involved in the discussions.

Marsh King and Leucrotta's Relationship

In the story In The Night Garden, Valente slowly reveals how each character is related to each other. She shows the reader how each of her characters interact and how they are important to each other. Their relationships are abstract which fits into the rest of the stories, yet you are surprised by them constantly. There are several instances where the relationships might be what you would think of as queer especially between Leucrotta and the Marsh King.
The relationship between the Marsh King and the Leucrotta is especially odd. In class we had the discussion on whether or not their relationship was more than just a friendship. In the Marsh King’s reaction to Leucrotta’s love for the Witch you can see that he has feelings for him. He says, “At any rate I think you like her better than me. I don’t recall you ever giving me your skin, even when I wanted to kill that wretched salamander.” You can hear his jealousy because the Leucrotta is in love with the Witch who is a human being and is unnatural. Though the Marsh King has those feelings for the Leucrotta they are not returned in the romantic way. He views their relationship as more of a deal where they take care of each other. He seems to be more willing to keep the Marsh King satisfied by saying things that keep him at bay. When he says things like, “Poppet! You know I like you best of all. I chose to be your courtier.” With the nicknames he throws out he shows that he genuinely cares about the Marsh King. Then he follows up with the statement that he chose to be his courtier, which is a person who is often in attendance in the court. So he views their relationship as more of his commitment to serving him and respecting his rule. There is obviously a difference in their tone of how they view each other.
The relationship between the Leucrotta and the Marsh King is just one of the many that are odd in this book. There are many other instances that you might not expect from an interaction between two people. The Leucrotta and Marsh King was one that especially stood out to me because of their living arrangements and how they react to each other in a bantering way.

In the Night Garden

While reading In the Night Garden I was intrigued by all of the different stories. When it changed from story to story I wanted to keep reading in order to find out what happens next. It reminded me of a movie with multiple main characters. The challenge of following every story and how they related to each other really motivated me. At some points of the book it was hard to follow every tale. The most confusing part for me was when Knife's grandmother was telling Knife the story of the wolves. I was hoping to find out what happens with the girl in the garden telling the stories. I didn't read the whole book, so I wonder if the short stories come back and relate to the girl in the garden at the end of the novel.

Growing up you always hear of fairy tales where the man is the hero who saves the women in distress. I found it quite interesting how the roles were switched in this book. When the prince kills the goose (Knife's daughter) it was his duty to journey off and fix the situation. Also, from the Native American myths that I have heard it is always the men who see the magical visions. Comparing this to In the Night Garden, Knife's grandmother has the vision of the fox and the wolves. This is when she gains the power to transform Knife's daughter into the goose. It did not bother me that the roles were switched. I found it rather interesting to see it from a different perspective. I wonder why she felt the need to switch the roles around, when the common myth has the male as the hero.

After we discussed the pictures in class, I went back and took a second look at them. My imagination drew up a completely different image of the horse and the fox while reading the text. I was confused in this part of the story so the image helped me understand what was going on in the text. The reading described the women as a fragile and scared person when she encountered the massive horse. In the picture it was almost as if she was fasinated by such a beautiful creature, and it looked like she was fearless. The images were a small part of the book but in someway they helped me. Overall, I really enjoyed the reading.

In the Night Garden and Omir the Wizard

The novel In the Night Garden, by Catherine Valente, there are many different characters. The reader is allowed to understand almost all of the characters very deeply and intricately because of Valente's descriptive language and the time she takes to use said language to describe each character. This being said, some characters can be known more than others, and some characters can be found more interesting. The character that I found the most interesting was Omir the Wizard. Omir is a very manipulative and possibly evil character. However, Valente gives him a relatable and interesting past that makes the reader not only more interested in his character, but also more empathetic towards him.
The chapter on Omir's childhood is entitled "The Tale of the Boy Who Found Death". It is quite the disturbing chapter. Valente describes Omir's illness quite brutally, and in less flowery fashion than the reader is used to from her previous descriptions. When describing the Wizard's condition, she writes; "From the time I was born, my skin peeled and paled, sloughing off as though I could not wait to be out of it..." I find this hard to imagine, and when I do, I become grossed out. Regardless, Omir the child suffers with this terrible illness, and his mother ties him to the wall because of it. Through this suffering, Omir believes he has become to know exactly who and what death is. As a child, he will take every metaphor about death that his parents say literally and he will subsequently have outlandish perceptions of death. Omir believes death is a man, that has always been close to him. Because he believes death, the man, has always been near him, he believes that death should have taken him. When he does not die, he thinks that death owes him. This is the beginning of Omir's "power trip" so to say. It is the beginning of his power trip because he feels he is owed something and this therefore gives him power over death. When he travels to find death and instead becomes a "doulios" for another collared wizard, his power trip grows. This is because he is learning to manipulate nature and subsequently feel power over it. Through these power trips, Omir's evil grows. Yes, he did come from a very humble and ill background. However, the power he finds at the end of his illness and through his training causes him to become evil. He is evil because he manipulates people, and physically maims and harms them. He starts small, by simply learning to help people. However, throughout the novel the reader learns of more and more crimes he comits and lies that he tells.

In the Night Garden

It is obvious that Valente tried specifically to go against what is considered normal in writing In the Night Garden. She makes the main characters and the heroes of the stories female, as opposed to the traditional male character hero. The male characters who have some sort of power tend to exist just to make blunders and to be antagonists to the plot. Prince Leander screws things over by breaking his half-sister's neck, King Raja walks in on the Snake Star and ends up killing her and all of his children. The women in these stories make up for these blunders and end up being the heroines. Knife teaches Prince Leander a lesson and also revives her daughter, and the Snake Star removes King Raja from power by killing his feared army. Valente's In the Night Garden goes against the traditional fairy tale formula of "the Prince saves the helpless Princess and they fall in love and live happily ever after." Valente purposely discards gender roles for the sake of breaking fairy tale norms.

Short story reflection

When reflecting on the short stories and comparing it to Fun Home and Persepolis, I found there are big differences between the texts. Starting with Fun Home and how its about Alison s life, what she encounters throughout her life, and how she overcomes and deals with those encounters. In addition, Persepolis is also about Margi's life story and the assortment of things that she encounters during her life. Both of these novels are about individuals different encounters in their own life experiences. Unlike those two novels the tales from arabian nights was about an assortment of stories. Not only was it about different stories, all the stories connected in a way and  portrayed a message or lesson that contributed to the previous stories. I really enjoyed reading the Tales of Arabian Nights of its story change and how it connected most of them to each other while given a life lesson or point across there point across. This kept me intrigued because you had to pay close attention to not only understand the stories but to keep track or the wisdom and lessons being told. You have to pay close attention because the lesson or wisdom that you read might be from another previous story. Fun Home and Persepolis are two similar novels because of how they are about ones self encounters in there life. On the other hand the Tales of Arabian Nights is multiple stories that are combined and woven together to get a better understanding of each of the stories.