In Closing

When initially reading the blog post requirements, I wasn’t exactly sure how it would work. I had questions such as: will individual ideas clash with group ideas? Will everyone actively participate? However, after our first group meeting in class I felt confident that these above questions wouldn’t be an issue. I liked how we set it up, that we would rotate each week on who did the comments and posts. Even though we decided to switch off each week with wrote the post, we still interacted as a group. Each week the person sent the post to everyone before they finalized it. This system worked out positively for our group because it allowed everyone to be included, and up to date, with what we were writing about.

As I stated above, I do feel that our blog group and the system we used worked out. I think the main component that worked out was sending each other our blog posts each week, before we posted them. This way we could give our group members, constructive feedback, and help if we saw needed. I cannot think of anything I would change because, I believe that we worked well as a blog group and we adequately produced posts, expressing our thoughts on 19^th century literature.

Looking back, and re-reading our original manifesto, I noticed we did not follow it entirely through out the semester. We had originally intended to focus primarily on beauty, and it relation to literature. While some of our blog posts did incorporate, elements of beauty and imagery, some did not. However, I do not see this as a bad thing. I like that each of our blog posts were different, and showed the individualism, within the whole of our group.

I recently read the blog post by 372 eco, titled “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” as a parody on Western Fiction. I found this post to be particularly interesting because, we did not have time to discuss this writing in class. It gave me an opportunity to see another opinion on the piece, and take into consideration new thoughts. I agreed full heartily with this piece, in regards to it being a western parody. This blog post points out, that the piece successfully allows readers an insight into the western world, yet it does so along the lines of comedy. Overall, I enjoyed this piece and was glad someone decided to mention it, since we did not have time in class.

Overall, I learned it is possible for four individuals with different literary outlooks, to mesh together and share similar ideas. While we did not write every post together, I can honestly say I agreed with every post written by my blog members. They revealed to me components of literature I had not previously thought of, and I hope I shared my knowledge in the same way.

—Claire

 

I had high expectations when we began this assignment (and I have not found myself disappointed!); I figured that, since we were all in the same upper-division English class, we would most likely be able to find a lot to talk about. I wasn’t completely sure how sharing the burden of writing the blogs would work, but my group mates managed to figure that out pretty quickly (the only thing I could think of was highly impractical–that we would each write part of a single blog entry every week. Why that was what I thought of, I’ll never know). I was looking forward to seeing a variety of perspectives on each text, and I think that the blog assignment as a whole really brought in that component. I think that I would personally definitely do it the same next time–what we did seems to have worked out quite well. I’m not sure how closely we ultimately adhered to our blog manifesto, since we initially sought out to specifically explore imagery, descriptions, and other literary devices that defined the works from the time period we have studied. In fact, in looking back over the blog, we seem to have gotten kind of far from that. But we did go to some interesting places and I think that we all learned quite a lot. Overall, I think that this was a great assignment, and I believe that I improved my abilities to collaborate with other people and think critically in a group setting.

—-Shandra

 

My expectation of this blog, to be honest, was that it was going to be a chore. When I first heard of the blog option before reading the requirements I thought that it would have been something that every person had to do individually. I was so pleased when I read the requirements and realized that we could work in a group as well as divide the work how we as a group saw fit. As with any group work, I know I worry about people actually doing the work and it not all being my personal responsibility. I am so pleased with how the blog, Quadrupeds, actually worked. I knew Taylor and Shandra from a previous class and wasn’t nervous about working with them. Claire was a new addition to our group and she fit in just fine. After her first post I no longer had reservations. Overall I had a positive group blog experience.

—Emily

 

I think this blog assignment has been a valuable tool throughout the semester that worked actually almost exactly I had hoped and as our group outlined at the beginning of the project. As we had discussed, each of our four members took turns completely a blog post and comment each week. With extremely hectic college lives, I think this arrangement worked absolutely perfectly. It is often very challenging to meet up in person with groups, especially with four people, when every individual has different schedules. Also, emailing back and forth amongst all of us would still have left one person with more work to do than the others since we would need to synthesize all the ideas into a cohesive post and comment.

The week by week structure allowed us to bypass these issues and made it much easier to complete the assignment each week. Further, the amount of work didn’t amount to too much to handle since each of us posted once a month. We still collaborated by sending the posts and comments to each other before posting so we could give feedback, maintaining the group project aspect while also being more efficient. This structure was also beneficial in another way though — each member of the group was given the opportunity to address whatever aspects of the texts we read, in whatever context, that we wanted to. While we are all reading the same texts, every person gets something slightly different out of them and pays attention to slightly different things. By taking turns, we were each able to engage with whatever interested us without any persons voice begin marginalized. I would definitely structure this assignment the same way if we were to do it again.

As for our blog manifesto, I feel like our group did an okay job adhering to the ideas we put forth at the beginning of the semester. Our manifesto was focused largely on beauty in literature, in its many different forms, which we didn’t always discuss so directly. However, we did sometimes, and I feel our other posts were still discussions very important aspects of the texts. We also connected the literature to present day issues if applicable which was another major point of our manifesto.

I think these contexts did help us understand each topic better, but I also feel like we could now make the manifesto better having completed the blog and really understanding our roles and the things we focused on in our posts. Overall, I think this blog was a really helpful way to vent ideas about the texts that we were either really drawn to or that we didn’t have time to address in a short hour and fifteen minute class. I also think it was a good tool for developing ideas for papers, so that by the time a paper assignment came around we had already done critical thinking about ideas that interested us in the text. It’s a really good assignment in my opinion because, it not only provides an easy way to boost our grades by simply completing the blog, but it also is a method of outlet for everyone’s ideas that allows everyone else to interact with, but in a setting that is removed from the classroom (where some people don’t like talking in front of the class). It was a very engaging assignment that added another dimension to the class.

— Taylor

 

                We the Quadrupeds are in agreement that this assignment was very interesting and a great success. Our group worked very well together, and each individual contributed some very important and thought provoking issue in every post. Despite not following our manifesto to the t, we still came out with rewarding discussions that we think makes up for it. It turned out better than expected and we would recommend this assignment for future 372 classes. Thanks for a great semester!

—QUADRUPEDS

Kate Chopin—You Go Glen Coco

“She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction… She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.”

-Per Seyersted, 1969 in his biography on Chopin

Kate was born in 1850 and died in 1904. She was born as Catherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. In Kate’s family she was the only one out of five children to live past the age of 25. When she was young her father was killed in an accident, forcing the family to move. They moved in with Kate’s Grandmother and Great Grandmother. All three of the adult women were widows. Farther more Kate’s Great Great Grandmother was the first woman in St. Louis to legally obtain a separation from her (ex) husband (katechopin.org). After the separation she continued to raise 5 children as well as ran a shipping business. Needless to say Kate comes from a long line of successful, driven and strong women. At the time, this was unique; it also carried over into her real live and her literary works. Her characters were mostly sensitive, intelligent women. She was a married woman when she was 20 to Oscar Chopin who was 25. After they were married they moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. Together they had 6 kids before Kate was 28 years old. Kate herself was a widow at 32. Before Oscar died he was not such a good businessman, his business which was involving cotton and supplies like sugar, flour basically a General Store, took a hit. This forced the family to move. Her life in New Orleans had a large influence on her writing. She was known as a color writer and a feminist writer; because of her characters as well as including local dialect in her writing. In 1894 Kate traveled to Western Association of Writers in Indiana (katechopin.org). Here she published an essay, this is a quote from it.

“Among these people,” she says, “are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms.”

“There is,” she continues, “a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it.”

 

“American” Is A Four Letter Word

          Since we didn’t really talk about it in class yesterday, I thought I would write the blog this week on Mary Seacole’s The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. One of the first things that jumped out at me while reading this piece was Seacole’s obvious negative attitude towards Americans. Although she never comes out and says it outright that she does not like Americans, there are certain descriptions she gives, words she uses, and stories she tells that make it pretty obvious in the end. In the only four pages of text from this story that we have in our course pack, she gives no less than nine references to Americans which shows this. The examples I found are as follows, although I’m certain there are more:

“The Americans love show dearly” (44)

“You can scarcely conceive the pleasure and comfort an American feels in a clean chin” (45)

“The floor soon bore evidences of the great national American habit of expectoration” (45)

“It was only the ‘cutest Yankee who stood any fair chance of outwitting me” (45)

“Everybody familiar with the Americans knows their fondness for titles” (45)

“Terribly bullied by the Americans were the boatmen and muleteers, who were reviled, shot, and stabbed by these free and independent filibusters, who would fain whop all creation abroad as they do their slaves at home. Whenever any Englishmen were present, and in a position to interfere with success, this bullying was checked” (46)

“[I] found a poor boatman moaning piteously and…begging me to help him. At first I was afraid to open the door…but at last I admitted him, and found that the poor wretch’s ears had been split by some hasty citizen of the United States” (46)

“Against the negroes…the Yankees had a strong prejudice” (46)

“[There was] an angry crowd of brother Americans,…all of them indignant that a nigger should presume to judge one of their countrymen…The Americans seemed astonished at the audacity of the black man, who dared thus to beard them, to offer any resistance; but I believe that the prisoner was allowed ultimately to escape” (47)

         When each of these comments are gathered together, Seacole paints a very unflattering image of what Americans are: Disgusting (they spit on the floor), high maintenance (they must have a shave to be happy), haughty (they must be addressed with exactly the right title), stupid (only the very rare American would be able to outsmart her), violent (they attacked others without provocation and in extreme ways), and prejudiced (they support slavery and believe they’re better than all “negroes”). Not only this, but she sees how Americans are privileged despite the negative traits she sees, as the prisoner was “allowed” to escape even after getting in trouble, and she generalizes making it seem like all Americans are exactly the same in these obscene ways.

          If she uses the word American almost like a swear word, casting Americans as the bad guys, the British are cast as the heroes. It was the British who would step in to save the poor souls being bullied by the big bad Americans. It was almost hard reading this sometimes since as readers in Washington, we are reading this from the American perspective and it almost feels like a personal attack at times. However, while I think she shouldn’t generalize so much because obviously not all American’s are the same, there is good historical reasoning as to why she would have this attitude and I completely understand why she would have this view. As we discussed in class, Mary Seacole treated a large majority of British soldiers which gives her that initial bias towards the British. What I think is most important though is looking at the time period when this was written. Published in 1857, slavery had been well established in the U.S. for many years and in a few short years after this publication, the civil war would be fought. Seacole obviously did not approve of slavery and had relationships of mutual respect with people of color, which would explain why the disapproval towards Americans is so obvious in her tone. Especially when Americans could get away with such barbaric behavior. I can’t say I blame her at all for this attitude when I am likewise disgusted by slavery. Living in that time would only have amplified my feelings of disgust towards people who enslave others and treat them as less than human. I would be interested to see how many similar references there are in the rest of her work.

–Quadrupeds

MORALITY

For this weeks blog post I wanted to discuss Sarah Jewett’s short story, A White Heron. In this story the main character Sylvia is faced with the tough decision of deciding between saving the Heron from the hunter, or letting the hunter shoot the bird. Even though the hunter offers Sylvia a large sum of money, Sylvia decided to keep the birds location a secret.  After reading this short story two questions came to mind: questions regarding morality, and the question what lengths should a person/ character go to, in order to help their family.

 A question often asked is: can it be considered moral for a man to steal a fish in order to protect his family? If Sylvia decided to tell the man about the Heron, she could have potentially helped her family out financially. “He can make them rich with money; he has promised it, and they are poor now” (p. 92). Even if it’s considered unethical by some to take the life of an animal, could it have been justified because, Sylvia would have helped her family financially? To me there is no concrete answer because; it is up to a person/character to figure out their moral code.  In this case Sylvia felt it would be against her moral code to allude to where the bird could be, but I’m sure many people would have taken the money.

 Another question regarding morality raised by this story is: what is the moral responsibility of a child? It is brought to reader’s attention that Sylvia is just nine years old. “Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a birds sake?” (p. 92). This quote portrays that Sylvia is a young girl and that it is also the first time she is truly faced with a question or morality. Is her sense of morality coated with a layer of innocence, and that’s the reason she decides to save the birds life? This is a tough question but, I believe innocence does play a role in a child’s moral code because, quite simply they have not been exposed to ethical vs. unethical, as a more mature character has. It can be viewed that Sylvia being just nine years old, was playing off her emotion rather than her moral code. It is nature of children that they love everything, and regard friendship higher than money.

 Morality and moral codes are a controversial subject because; each character has their own internal value system, and thoughts on how to decipher between right and wrong. 

And Now for Something Completely Different

            Our trip to the MASC on Tuesday, October 15 was incredibly informative. Personally, I (Shandra) had been aware of the existence of the MASC for some time, but I had never really understood exactly what it was or what purpose it served. I kind of just thought it had some cool old stuff. I was also under the impression that the MASC served more of a museum function, and that the items stored in there were more to look at than they were to actually use. So imagine my surprise when I realized that we could actually touch and use the texts in there! I’m mostly disappointed that I didn’t find out about this great resource earlier, since this is my last year here and I now have less opportunity to use it. I would have liked to go down into the vault and see what else was down there, but I’m hoping that I will perhaps have that opportunity at another point in the future.

            The main advantage of finally being formally introduced to this collection is that now I feel that I have a definite edge in any research project that I undertake from now until graduation in May. I have to say, being able to use actual primary resources in a research paper or other project will not only make me look totally awesome (which it obviously will), but it will also be more educational to me than simply doing the research online or using a newer edition of a book. As we learned from the particular copy of Jane Eyre that was out for our viewing, as well as the copy of The Inheritance (which is what I believe it was called), we can learn a lot about not only the texts themselves, but about the time and society in which they were printed and bound. For example, the binding and other characteristics of the copy of Jane Eyre that was out in the MASC indicated that the owner of those particular volumes had enjoyed considerable wealth, and was able to have their books bound in such a way that they not only indicated the owner’s wealth, but also matched the other books in their library. However, The Inheritance, which was simply a trade paperback, told us, as observers, a lot more about the time period and society, since that was the kind of copy that most likely would have been sold in book shops and other retail outlets of the time. Overall, I found this little excursion to be quite educational and I look forward to being able to use the MASC in future research projects.

Upcoming: NewSouth Publishing “Huck Finn” Eliminates The “N” Word

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been called a classic by many  famous authors. It tackles all sorts of societal issues.  T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of “all modern American literature.” But why is it banned across the nation? Because of the word “nigger”.  Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.” This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.” Tom Sawyer was selected for 2009’s Big Read Alabama, and the NEA tapped NewSouth, in Montgomery, to produce an edition for the project. NewSouth contracted Gribben to write the introduction, which led him to reading and speaking engagements at libraries across the state. Each reading brought groups of 80 to 100 people “eager to read, eager to talk,” but “a different kind of audience than a professor usually encounters; what we always called ‘the general reader.’ The slur appears 219 times in the book. Publisher Suzanne La Rosa, “was that there Was a market for a book in which the n-word was switched out for something less hurtful, less controversial. We recognized that some people would say that this was censorship of a kind, but our feeling is that there are plenty of other books out there–all of them, in fact–that faithfully replicate the text, and that this was simply an option for those who were increasingly uncomfortable, as he put it, insisting students read a text which was so incredibly hurtful.”

 

This article helped me understand the controversy more because I understand both sides of it. I see the value of having the word “nigger” in the book because it is accurate to the time. By pretending that people did not speak so offensively we deny history and are bound to re-peat it. I am not saying by any means that we have any business saying it in any form in 2013, but we need to acknowledge that it is an offensive word that once held a terrible place in society. I also see the value of eliminating the word “nigger” completely. If we don’t want our youth reading the book to use it why would we include it? Although kids do not always use/ put into action what they read why would we even place this before them.  Jay Z would completely disagree with this. He would say, no we should over use the word and take away its power. My opinion is that by denying its existence and re-pacing it with slave we are giving the word more power. How we teach kids to use the word is determined by parents, friends and environment. What someone decides to say is only determined by that person, no one else.

 

 

It’s a Cold, Hard World Out There

When examining Hard Times for evidence of beauty, it is conspicuously absent from basically all aspects of the book, especially in the first half of the novel,. Darkness, ugliness, and cold, hard facts are the only things clearly evident. The description of Coketownon depicts this perfectly:

“It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like on another.” (p.26)

This quote summarizes the feel of the book very well. Looking at the language here, Dickens uses words like “melancholy,” “unnatural,” “smoke and ashes,” “machinery,” “ill-smelling dye,” and “monotonously.” This place he describes then is an industrial town, composed of machinery and the nasty byproducts of the industrial work. It is a place where the work, the town itself, and the people who live there are all repetitive and dull. It is an “unnatural” place, to use Dickens own word. It is challenging, nigh impossible, to dig out any sort of beauty from this picture he paints for us. Yet, we said in our manifesto that there is always some form of beauty present in literature even if it is not found on the surface. The question arises, then, of where the beauty is present in this novel. When it comes to beauty, we have to remember that it doesn’t come in only a pure visual aesthetic form. There are many types of beauty: beauty in nature, yes, but also beauty of imagination and fancy, beauty of childhood and innocence, and beauty of fun, and more. All of these forms of beauty are sorely lacking from the factual and industrial Coketown, (with the one exception of the circus which is meant to provide juxtaposition for this), and this lack turns the inhabitants’ lives into something exactly like how the town is described: cold, hard, dark, and monotonous. The characters hardly even live. They simply endure and carry on, and not much more. They are not happy and do not enjoy the ride that is life.

The character Stephen Blackpool embodies these characteristics. As he describes it in the novel, all lives consist of both roses and thorns, but his life seemed to both lack the roses and have someone else’s thorns. He is always, in his words, in a muddle. His life is hard. He lives in a tiny apartment with a “tainted atmosphere” (p.67), he has a miserable wife who treats him poorly and no one can or will help him be rid of her, and all he does day in and day out is work in the factory without adequate compensation or recognition. And yet, he also barely asks for a thing, not expecting much in return, and simply endures his unhappy condition. All the poor man gets in return for his dedication is undeserved accusations, slander upon his honorable name, and eventually death. There is no beauty in Blackpool’s life and he suffers immensely for it.

All these points seem to further prove there is no beauty in this novel. But I think that is exactly the atmosphere Dickens wanted to create in order to prove a point about beauty itself. His intention with Hard Times seems a direct statement that people need beauty, in all it’s wonderful and various forms, in their lives to make it a full life that they can enjoy. Without beauty, life lacks the essential parts that make it worth living. As Louisa says in replying to Bounderby’s proposal, “What does it matter?” (p.97). She is apathetic even to a decision as seemingly important as marrying someone, because it doesn’t seem to matter. Life as a whole doesn’t seem to matter. Nothing seems to matter without those beautiful components of nature, innocence, fun, and imagination that are missing. Tom Gradgrind realizes this as he sees how miserable Louisa is as a result of his cold, factual, and intentionally non-beautiful upbringing of his children, which is what Dickens wants his public to realize too when reading this novel.

I see this novel as Dickens’ protest to the industrialization of the world that seems to be both taking people further and further away from all those forms of beauty that are essential to life, and replacing that beauty of the world with machines and facts. Hard Times gradually incorporates more beauty as it nears the end, because Tom realizes the truth of these ideas and, hopefully, the readership does also. Although much of this novel is obviously not beautiful, it still contains an important message about it: beauty in Hard Times comes in the form of shining a spotlight on the importance of beauty in the world.

The Fall House of Usher

For this weeks posting I wanted to take a better look at Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. We learned in class that characteristics of gothic literature are gloomy, mysterious, dark, and many other characteristics associated with the darker side. It was with these characteristics in mind that I questioned in a story as dark as the Fall of the House of Usher does beauty still exist? Although Poe’s story is full of dark concepts such as illness and death, a sense of beauty still shines through his writing. For instance, “He stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, in one of the numerous vaults in the main walls of the building”(Poe). Initially reading this is seems utterly disturbing that he would keep the corpse of his sister in his house. However, I think when readers look at it on a deeper level, they can see the love Usher had for his sister and their incredible bond. No matter what type of love, be it family, significant others or friends, love can always be seen as beautiful even at its most tragic hour. The element of mystery in the story supplies beauty as well, it sparks people imagination and curiosity of the unknown. Poe includes lots of mystery in the story especially surrounding the character of Madeline. When reading the story Madeline and many of the other character get portrayed almost as if there not living, as if there just floating along in a daze. Instead of being seen as evil ghosts, I saw each character with immaculate beauty, as if they were floating along surrounded with a white light. Beauty shines through the nature portrayed in the story as well. “While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened, there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind, the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight” (Poe). Beauty can be seen in the power Poe places on the nature. He makes the nature’s power surpass the power of the man. At the same time he gives nature such an incredible power he paints a picture of an illuminated sky for the reader. 

 I feel that beauty can be seen in anything, sometimes its just harder to see. Poe is famously known for his dark and dreary reading but, even still beauty can shine through the pages of his writing just in a different manner. Beauty is not always flowers and butterflies but can sometimes be portrayed in the darkest most dreary situations. This leaves me with the question, is there any piece of literature that contains no beauty at all?

 

Poe, Edgar. “The Fall House of Usher”. 1839. Rpt. in English 372: 19th-Century Literature of the British Empire and the Americas. Comp. Donna Campbell. Pullman, WA: Cougar Copies, 2012. 4-6. Print.

The Sublime Passion of Victor Frankenstein

In considering Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the reader must confront and evaluate what their own idea of beauty is and whether their idea of “beauty” is universal, or if any idea of what creates beauty can be universal. When Victor Frankenstein has first created the monster, the first (and, since the monster has no personality or character traits yet, only) thing he notices is how hideous it is. Frankenstein exclaims, “Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips” (Shelley 39). No, Frankenstein’s creation is not remotely beautiful — in fact, his visage is described to be positively grotesque, which is what leads to his ultimate exclusion from society. Though Frankenstein and the rest of society’s evaluation of the monster is nothing more than simple physiognomy (judging someone’s character or personality from their outward appearance), their rejection is enough to send the monster into abject despair, and, desperate to be loved and accepted, he lashes out against Frankenstein by murdering those who Frankenstein holds most dear.

Because of this, Frankenstein’s sole purpose for being becomes either appeasing or defeating the monster, which brings me to my point: though neither the monster or this story are beautiful in any sort of traditional sense, the aesthetic idea of the sublime is very much at work in Shelley’s story. One of the components of Edmund Blake’s evaluation of the sublime is the notion of a “painful idea [creating] a sublime passion” — and is this not exactly what happens when Frankenstein becomes consumed solely with getting rid of the monster, one way or another? Whether it’s building a female monster for companionship, or tailing the monster into the Arctic in order to kill him, Frankenstein becomes obsessed with and possessed by the idea of finishing off the monster once and for all. And though, between the murders, Frankenstein’s near-constant illness (brought on by guilt and anxiety), and the general bleak overtone provided by our narrator’s increasing depression, we do not see much traditional or conventional beauty within this novel (the sole exception being the supremely-described natural settings, which seem to be the only thing in which Frankenstein takes solace), we see Frankenstein’s “sublime passion” overtake his entire life — and, indeed, in the end, this passion is what kills him, in a roundabout sort of way. And, in a way, that seems to be almost the only way that a story which relies so heavily on the idea of the sublime can end.

Can I Get A Hero?!

 “Q: How do you find out the true nature and character of a hero? A: Ask his or her children” (Alexie, 138). A hero, in my opinion, is someone who rises above expectation and surpasses the social norm of what is happening. A child represents the innocent part of society. They are sponges absorbing actions around them. Kids often say the most off-the-wall things — first, simply because they feel like it, and second, the filter that society wants us to have isn’t there yet. Instead of interpreting actions in the context of what was happening they look at how the ‘you’ and how ‘you’ behaved. It would be so easy to label someone a hero after something marvelous happens. But not all things are marvelous. Superman doesn’t often land a plane safely after a meteor strike, from a planet outside our galaxy took off one of its wings, with only just one hand sometime around lunch. A hero is shown through actions, real actions. Superman does save people but that is his only motivation. He does it because he has the ability to. He felt an obligation to save the plane full of people because they could not save themselves. A few more heroes that represent society’s emphasis on self-sacrifice, helping others without gain and overcome adversity: Batman wears a disguise and moves with stealth and purpose only in the cover of darkness. Jackie Robinson was brave enough to be silent in the face of atrocity and let his ability/actions speak for themselves. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger only thought of his passengers when landing the plane he was flying in the Hudson (huffingtonpost). He responded to the media that he only was able to do as he did because of his years of experience and training. A hero from the reading who stood out in contrast to the heroes we hold in such high regard was Manfred. Act II, Scene II, showed an arrogant and cocky hero who once cared about a girl but is not with her now. He has the power to help those who need help or cannot otherwise help themselves, but he has no moral responsibility to do so. With all the expectation placed upon heroes, this portrayal has another take. It makes me question what would I do if I had powers? Would I go out of my way to save people? Would I interrupt my life or would I view myself above others?

Sources

Alexie, Sherman. “Estelle Walks Above.” Ten Little Indians: Stories. New York: Grove, 2003. N. pag. Print.

 Baram, Marcus. “CHESLEY B. SULLY SULLENBERGER, US AIRWAYS PILOT, HERO OF PLANE CRASH.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 15 Jan. 2009. Web. 04 Sept. 2013.