The Book of the Grotesque (part 2)

So the easy part is done: we found out the passage is weird and has a lot of cool stuff in it. Great. Now what?

There are several notable things in the passage, but what do they mean? What do they represent and how do they represent it?

Start with the obvious things: the heart, the name (or lack thereof) the repetition, and the “pregnancy.”

Typically when a character has a heart condition, it represents a greater issue that they have struggled with. The heart is considered the center of emotion, so usually heart troubles are symbolic of an emotional struggle or loss of love—heartbreak.

A name is usually the chief way of defining a person. You know them first and foremost by their name, and then by what personality traits they have and what their role is in life. Here, we are only to determine the personality traits in the role in the world. We have no way of defining this character and can’t make him anything smaller than what he is by labeling him with a name.

Additionally, what he called in the text help us to determine what kind of person we can expect him to be: he is a writer and he is old. The term “old” is typically associated with the terms “frail” and, on occasion, “worn.” However, it is also associated with the word “wise.” Writers typically are intuitive and observant; they see the same things everyone else sees, but they view it differently. From these two descriptions alone, we have a pretty good idea of who this old guy is: he is a frail but wise man that is intuitive and sensitive to the human condition and observant of his surroundings.

And then there is the pregnancy, which can be looked at from two different lenses.

On one side, the fact that he feels pregnant shows that he feels something inside him is alive and stirring. This is a clear contrast between ages; he is old, but something inside him is young. Additionally, he feels this thing the most while in his bed, the time when he feels closest to death. On the verge of death, he feels most alive. The way I interpret this is that the “young thing” is a soul. Though his body is aging, his soul remains vibrant, and through physical death his immortal soul can be released. His soul will be reborn.

The other lense that we can view pregnancy through is the gender lense, which ties the man to the very thing he feel that he is carrying. Reading this almost feels like the old man is experiencing an identity or gender crisis: he is male, but he feels pregnant, and the thing inside him is a woman.

Men are considered to be rational, thinking creatures, while women are the emotional creatures. However, this young woman is wearing a “coat of mail, like a knight.” Where women are traditionally considered weak and fragile, this woman is depicted as a warrior (similar to Joan of Arc, which could be an important figure to keep in mind for the remainder of the book).

This creature living inside the old man could represent the resilience of his soul. We already know that he probably had some emotional issues from his heart troubles. The fact that this creature inside him—something that exists like a soul—is female but is dressed like a knight could show how his soul eventually overcomes struggles and, through death, is released.

Finally, the most important part of the passage is the least obvious thing: the narrator. He is there, he is omnipresent, and from the sound of it, he is struggling with finding the right words to tell the old man’s story.

From the moment you determine there is a narrator you are faced with two troubling questions: can you trust him, and why is he there in the first place.

For me, these two questions are impossible to answer until I read the rest of the book.

Either way, looking back on how much information is in the first chapter of a book is startling to me; you can tell so much about what you are going to read by just reading page one. 

The Book of the Grotesque (part 1)

You can find everything you need of a story in the very first chapter. In my literature class, my teacher had everyone read a book and analyze it. Once we finished, we did a close reading of the very first chapter to see what was there that could help us predict the outcome of the book that we had never picked up on before. Afterwards, the first chapter of my copy of the book was a mess of highlights, ink underlines, and sticky notes. There was nothing in the first chapter that wasn't foreshadowing some later part of the book. 

"The Book of the Grotesque" is the name of the first chapter in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and it definitely has a lot to say. For instance, this is one paragraph from the first chapter that we discussed in class. 

"In his bed the writer rolled over on his side and lay quite still. For years he had been beset with notions concerning his heart. He was a hard smoker and his heart fluttered. The idea had got into his mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he thought of that. It did not alarm him. The effect in fact was quite a special thing and not easily explained. It made him more alive, there in bed, than at any other time. Perfectly still he lay and his body was old and not of much use any more, but something inside him was altogether young. He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It was absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is what the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was thinking about." 

This passage is only two-hundred words, but what it truly tells us can’t even be summarized in so few words. If we were to pull everything out of this paragraph that was strange, it would be obvious that there are several notable things about the passage alone.

Firstly, the person being talked about is not given a name. In this passage, as well as throughout the entire chapter, he is referred to only as "the old man" and "the writer." Additionally, he has trouble with his heart. I have yet to come across a character that had some sort of illness for no reason, especially an illness of the heart.

The word bed is repeated over and over throughout the passage; it is said four times as if to emphasize its importance.

There is something stirring within the old man that makes him feel "like a pregnant woman."

Slightly less obvious things are the paradoxes: "The idea had got into his mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he thought of that." "[Death] made him feel more alive." "His body was old [...] but something inside him was altogether young." 

Even less obvious are the roles of man and woman. An old man feels like a pregnant woman, carrying a young woman wearing armor like a man. The importance of gender is emphasized right down to the words chosen for the passage: "a woman, young and wearing a coat of mail."

Link to "The Witch" by Shirley Jackson

"The Witch" by Shirley Jackson

"The Witch" is a very strange and disturbing story, and I admit that it took me a few times reading it to fully “get it.”  The very brief tale is a simple story of a four-year-old boy on a train with his mother and sister. However, it very quickly becomes complicated when an old man is introduced to the equation. The old man talks to Johnny about his mom and his little sister, and then begins telling Johnny about his own little sister. He says that he loved her more than anything else in the world. That is, before he killed it. It was hard to determine if the old man was a nice guy with a sick sense of humor or if he was a legitimately disturbed killer. Either way, reading the piece and having such a strange occurrence happen under such normal circumstances gave me reason to pause and ponder what I had just read. 

Shirley Jackson, who is best known for her unusual and typically terrifying short stories, mimics elements of everyday life in her writing. In “The Witch,” Jackson demonstrates some obvious aspects of life. For example, Johnny and his mother respond very differently to the old man’s story about killing his little sister; Johnny laughs while his mother becomes defensive. This mirrors the way that adults are more likely to feel uncomfortable in situations that are outside social norms, while children are typically very comfortable in them due to their lack of social experience and sheer innocence.

Additionally, the old man could be seen as a commentary on how danger is present in even the most comfortable of settings. He comes to Johnny on a train ride and tells a gruesome story, a story that nobody in their right mind would predict under such normal circumstances. The juxtaposition of him as a malignant force and the setting of the story demonstrate a common observation; danger is not confined to only places that seem frightening. It can be anywhere.

The most unusual part of the story to me was not that the old man described in detail how he murdered his little sister, but rather Johnny's mother's reaction to it. It is quite apparent from the piece that she is fairly apathetic as a parent. She barely pays attention to Johnny and dismisses all of his stories, mindlessly answering him while he, in child-like wonder, is going on and on about the scenery and his made-up stories. Additionally, Johnny's young sister is not properly strapped in; she is strapped in a way that gives her the freedom to move around and entertain herself with a rattle and a piece of toast.

Additionally, after her son has been approached by a man who has just detailed to him how he killed his little sister, she simply says that the man was kidding, gives her son a lollipop, and tells him to go sit in his seat. 

This is hardly the kind of tender affection and attention you would expect from a mother with two young children.

The mother’s behavior is clearly not normal; how many young mothers only acknowledge their children when they are faced with immediate danger, and then act like nothing ever happened less than five minutes later?

This is one element of the story that I have yet to fully grasp. She seems to be a sort of reverse image of the old man; she is inattentive and ignores Johnny, where the old man pays attention to him. She is very rational, while the man is either playful or psychotic.  Johnny’s mother is a very literal person, as she takes the old man’s story quite seriously even though it is most likely not true. The old man seems eccentric, as he easily goes along with Johnny’s fantasies and adds a story of his own.

Personally, I feel that the differences between Johnny’s mother and the old man are demonstrative of another of Shirley’s observations from real life: when denied attention, a child—or any person—will seek attention elsewhere, regardless of who the source of the attention is.

If anyone should read this short story and interpret it differently I would love to hear how you interpreted it.  

"Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry" by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow 
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Source:  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20007#sthash.6sNO8wOm.dpuf

"The Sex" in Frankenstein

For a literary topic, I had to research women in Victorian society in relation to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Though I realized that there are underlying tones of feminism in the text, I did not realize the extent of the tones until doing this deep reading.
The base of the feminist tones found in the text lie mostly in what the author knew of her mother. Mary Wollstonecraft, mother to Mary Shelley and her stepsister, Fanny, was a political activist who advocated for the rights of women in Victorian society. She is best known for her feminist writings, the most famous being Vindication for the Rights of Women. The writings of Mary Wollstonecraft greatly influenced Shelley's writings.
One common feminist argument against Frankenstein is what the creation of the monster represents. In Victorian Britain, women were seen as only having one use: the ability to procreate. A woman who did not become a mother was considered abnormal, and a woman with the inability to have children was pitied. In the novel, the creation of the monster is supposedly a representation of the inability of men to give birth to a human life form and therefore a demonstration of the power women possess over men.
However the theme can be carried even further than this. During a lively discussion of the works of Mary Shelley, a friend of mine briefly mentioned an article she had read which analyzed the importance of Safie in Frankenstein. I had never considered her an important character before; she was in the novel for a very brief period and it seemed as if she had been of little benefit to the monster besides the indirect role she played in helping him learn English.
However, she plays a more significant part than I realized. She is literally the center of the novel; her only mention is in the middle of the second part of a three part series. Additionally, she authored letters relating her tale to her lover, Felix. Though the content of the letters themselves is of little significance, their presence is one of the most important parts of the story. As the monster said, "they will prove the truth of may tale." Of all the stories told, whether it is the story that the monster relays to Frankenstein or the story that Frankenstein relays Robert Walton, the letters that Safie wrote the Felix are the only proof of any journey taken in the story. The letters prove that the monster once found himself under the "protection" of a blind man and his children. They prove that Frankenstein created a human like life form. They are proof that Robert Walton even came into contact with Dr. Victor Frankenstein at all. In the midst of all of these stories, this is the one shred of evidence that supports them, entwines them, and proves them all to be the truth. And the person who supplied the proof to such an unbelievable story, the person who contributed the only existing piece of evidence, is a person who society is the least likely to believe : a woman.
Additionally, a major aspect of the novel is who receives this proof. There is only one character who possesses knowledge of Safie's letters, hears the monster's stories, hears Frankenstein's stories, and hears Robert Walton's story. This character, who doesn't even appear in the book, is the single character who is able to act as a god figure, an omnipotent power who is the final hearer of all confessions. The character that possesses the most knowledge of the entire tale is Robert Walton's sister, Margaret Saville. Mrs. Saville has no speaking part and contributes no information, yet she is the only person who knows every story: yet another occasion in Frankenstein where the only proof of the story is in the hands of a woman.
Though I have not fully assessed the significance of the all-knowing character being a woman, I am aware of two things: her omnipotence, paired with Safie's letters, show women as the possessors of a vast degree of knowledge on which the proof of endeavors rely, and the initials of Margaret Saville are, eerily enough, the same as those of Mary Shelley.