A Clockwork Orange is widely considered one of the most important science fiction novels of the 20th century, rivaled only by 1984. A Clockwork Orange was written by Anthony Burgess and published in 1962, causing a great stir among many people for its depiction of violence and other unsavory acts. The novels main theme is the choice between good and evil, and what can happen when you remove that choice. Upon its publication, A Clockwork Orange broke new ground in the moral implications of a science fiction novel.
The novel is set in an ultraviolent future, teenagers roam the streets for the next man to attack and the next woman to rape, and yet we still sympathize with the main character, by all means an utterly despicable teen, The characters in this book are very powerful and well thought out, Alex, our main character, being one of the most deep antiheroes on record. Alex and his “droogs” speak in “nadsat” the invented language used by teenagers in this book; it is a mixture of English, Russian, and Cockney slang, producing a highly interesting but sometimes confusing reading experience. Alex, describing a rape scene is as follows, “Plunging, I could slooshy cries of agony and this writer bleeding veck got loose howling bezoomy with the filthiest of slovos that I already knew and others he was making up.” This is a good indication of how widely used the slang is.
The novel is ultimately about Alex’s brainwashing by the government and it’s implications. Near the middle of the book Alex is put through the “Ludovico Technique” in turn forcing him to only do good because he will feel physically sick if he does anything to hurt someone. This is the main moral question of the book, is it better to have a choice between good and evil or always have to do good and have no choice in the matter. The writer seems to be of the opinion that it is better to have choice than be a toy to be wound up by god or the devil, “When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man" The book in the final act, wherein Alex is released into the world, a free man, further explores this moral dilemma. He is beaten and cannot defend himself and he is tortured and still cannot defend himself. Eventually he tries to kill himself to escape the torture, but is unsuccessful in his attempt. Because of this incident he is widely apologized to, and subsequently cured of his inability to do evil, by the government officials who put him through the Technique and given a cushy job as compensation.
It is impossible to refute the importance of this novel; no other novel has explored the issue of choice as skillfully and engagingly as this one. It could be especially useful in the classroom because of its subject matter; A high school student would be much more enthusiastic about reading a novel that has a teenage character who they can sympathize with. During my reading of this novel I felt like Alex felt many of the pressures I do, I don’t have the impulse to rape people but I do feel like the world is run by people who would rather the culture of my generation die out. This book is a fairly extremist way to put across its point but it has been shown time and time again that people respond best to sensationalist tactics.
A Clockwork Orange is one of the most morally ambitious science fiction novels to date. I believe that it should be read by all teenagers, if only for the connection they would feel toward Alex, and the moral questions that would be asked in the process. This book echoes the sentiment of Neitzsche of the importance of choice to humanity. Without choice we would cease to be human, a plaything to those programming our decisions.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess was born on February 25, 1917 and died November 22, 1993. Anthony was famous for his extremely prolific writing career. He wrote an amazing amount of novels and was also a regular contributor to many different periodicals, from magazines to newspapers. He was born in Harpurhey, a northeastern suburb of Manchester. He was mainly self-taught, despite having a full school career. He has lived from Britain to America and even as far as what is now Malaysia, then just called Malaya. A Clockwork Orange is his best known work but many people agree that Earthly Powers is his best novel. When he died he lived in Monaco with his wife Liliana Macellari.
Anthony Burgess’ birth name was John Burgess Wilson, Anthony Burgess is a pen name. For the majority of his childhood he was raised by his father, his mother died of the flu when Anthony was only one year old. Anthony once described his father as, “a mostly absent drunk who called himself a father.” Anthony was raised a Catholic and, despite a brief renunciation of his faith, remained a Catholic for his whole life. He graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester with a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature. He also had a brief stint in the British Military.
Burgess’ early career was as a teacher. At the end of 1950 he took a job as a secondary school teacher of English literature on the staff of Banbury Grammar School. Burgess and his wife, Llewela Jones, called Lynne, were known to consume large amounts of alcoholic cider and oftentimes caused a ruckus. Later he received a job in what was then called Malaya, and moved to Southeast Asia. He quickly became fluent in the native language and had been known to translate literature into Malay. During his residence in Malaya he wrote what is now known as the Mayalan Trilogy.
After living in Malaya Burgess moved back to Britain for a short while where he became friends with William S. Burroughs and was a regular on the BBC. After this brief stint in Britain he moved around from Rome to America and many places in between before finally settling in Monaco. It was during this period of moving around that his wife, lynne, died of liver cirrhosis, within five weeks he had been remarried to Liliana Macellari, with whom he had been having an affair with several years before lynne’s death. His move to Monaco was due in part to an attempted kidnapping of Burgess’ stepson. Anthony moved back to London in the early 1990’s where he died of lung cancer, likely caused by his lifelong smoking habit.
Anthony burgess was an amazing writer and linguist and had seen many of the defining moments of the modern world. He lived from 1917 to 1993 and wrote in inordinate amount. He is known for plays, screenplays, novels, symphonies, and articles, all of which were of high caliber. A Clockwork Orange is one of the most important science fiction novels of all time, let alone the 20th century. He was a man of many talents, a writer, teacher, and composer and was a true world traveler, living from America to Britain to Malaysia to Monaco. Anthony Burgess truly is one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
Anthony Burgess’ birth name was John Burgess Wilson, Anthony Burgess is a pen name. For the majority of his childhood he was raised by his father, his mother died of the flu when Anthony was only one year old. Anthony once described his father as, “a mostly absent drunk who called himself a father.” Anthony was raised a Catholic and, despite a brief renunciation of his faith, remained a Catholic for his whole life. He graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester with a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature. He also had a brief stint in the British Military.
Burgess’ early career was as a teacher. At the end of 1950 he took a job as a secondary school teacher of English literature on the staff of Banbury Grammar School. Burgess and his wife, Llewela Jones, called Lynne, were known to consume large amounts of alcoholic cider and oftentimes caused a ruckus. Later he received a job in what was then called Malaya, and moved to Southeast Asia. He quickly became fluent in the native language and had been known to translate literature into Malay. During his residence in Malaya he wrote what is now known as the Mayalan Trilogy.
After living in Malaya Burgess moved back to Britain for a short while where he became friends with William S. Burroughs and was a regular on the BBC. After this brief stint in Britain he moved around from Rome to America and many places in between before finally settling in Monaco. It was during this period of moving around that his wife, lynne, died of liver cirrhosis, within five weeks he had been remarried to Liliana Macellari, with whom he had been having an affair with several years before lynne’s death. His move to Monaco was due in part to an attempted kidnapping of Burgess’ stepson. Anthony moved back to London in the early 1990’s where he died of lung cancer, likely caused by his lifelong smoking habit.
Anthony burgess was an amazing writer and linguist and had seen many of the defining moments of the modern world. He lived from 1917 to 1993 and wrote in inordinate amount. He is known for plays, screenplays, novels, symphonies, and articles, all of which were of high caliber. A Clockwork Orange is one of the most important science fiction novels of all time, let alone the 20th century. He was a man of many talents, a writer, teacher, and composer and was a true world traveler, living from America to Britain to Malaysia to Monaco. Anthony Burgess truly is one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
Monday, April 30, 2007
a Clockwork orange third response
The last third of A Clockwork Orange is probably my favorite. In the last third of the book Alex is released into everyday life, for better or for worse. When he is released his first destination is his parents house. His arrival is a surprise to his parents who thought he was going to be in jail for quite a few more years. In his house there is an unusual man sitting at the table. It is explained to Alex that in order to help pay the bills they rented out his old room, his parents say that they cannot just kick the man out of the house. Alex then guilt trips his parents, saying that they don’t love him and such, and leaves to find his own way.
Of course his first stop is the Korova milk bar. He drinks some milk plus and many a psychedelic apparition flit through his mind. When he leaves he is confronted by two police officers, none other than his old droog, Dim, and his old rival, Billy boy. The two recognize him and decide to accost him; they take him out to the country and beat him senseless. Alex then makes haste to a nearby house to seek refuge; this house is none other than the house he visited in the beginning of the book when he raped and beat the wife of the writer who lived inside. Because he was wearing a mask the writer doesn’t recognize him, but he does recognize him from the papers, for his treatment. He takes Alex in and explains to him the organization who he is a part of who is utterly opposed to governmental control, including the Ludovico technique that was used on Alex. the members of this group get Alex a hotel room to stay in, but the writer seems to suspect that it was Alex that raped and beat his wife, who later died from her injuries. When Alex wakes in the morning he hears Beethoven music, which he used to love but because of the Ludovico Technique makes him feel pain as though he was doing someone harm. He realizes that he is locked in the hotel room with no way to escape. He decided that the writer must have recognized him and was playing the music to torture him. He is in such utter pain that the only way to escape it that he sees is to kill himself by jumping out the window. He jumps but is not high enough to die from the fall.
When he wakes up he is in a hospital with many a guest around him. One of the guests is the minister of the interior, who decided to use to Ludovico technique on Alex. he apologizes to Alex profusely and explains to him that he is cured, and will no longer feel pain when hurting people or listening to classical music.
The twenty first chapter, which was left out of the original American publication and the movie version, is probably the most interesting of the book. He is out and about with his new droogs, causing general mayhem as per usual, except this time Alex feels slightly dejected, a little out of it. He decides to walk around on his own and think about things. He goes into a coffee and tea shop to get some tea and sees a very beautiful woman in a stall sitting with a man. He describes the woman as the sort you might want to have a relationship with and not just rape, like most of the women he has had. When the man who is sitting with the girl turns his head Alex realizes that it is Pete, his old droog. He goes and talks to pete and finds out the he is married to this woman and has a regular job. At this point Alex realizes that the less destructive feeling he has been having toward people is just a result of growing up, therefor keeping Alex from being a clockwork orange.
The interesting part about this section of the book is that the reader feels as if Alex has been punished enough and yet he is only punished more in this section of the book, thus making the reader feel sorry for him even more. Anthony Burgess, the writer of this fine book, describes a clockwork orange as something that looks alive and juicy from the outside, like an orange, but behaves like clockwork, to be wound up by god or the devil. in other words a person who doesn’t have choice and is forced to always perform good or evil. Without the last chapter Alex is a clockwork orange, always performing evil and never changing, but with the last chapter he becomes human, with the ability to change. Anthony Burgess has written a culturally relevant book that is one that says something about a very core aspect of humanity, and a warning that only bad things can happen if you take that choice away from people.
Of course his first stop is the Korova milk bar. He drinks some milk plus and many a psychedelic apparition flit through his mind. When he leaves he is confronted by two police officers, none other than his old droog, Dim, and his old rival, Billy boy. The two recognize him and decide to accost him; they take him out to the country and beat him senseless. Alex then makes haste to a nearby house to seek refuge; this house is none other than the house he visited in the beginning of the book when he raped and beat the wife of the writer who lived inside. Because he was wearing a mask the writer doesn’t recognize him, but he does recognize him from the papers, for his treatment. He takes Alex in and explains to him the organization who he is a part of who is utterly opposed to governmental control, including the Ludovico technique that was used on Alex. the members of this group get Alex a hotel room to stay in, but the writer seems to suspect that it was Alex that raped and beat his wife, who later died from her injuries. When Alex wakes in the morning he hears Beethoven music, which he used to love but because of the Ludovico Technique makes him feel pain as though he was doing someone harm. He realizes that he is locked in the hotel room with no way to escape. He decided that the writer must have recognized him and was playing the music to torture him. He is in such utter pain that the only way to escape it that he sees is to kill himself by jumping out the window. He jumps but is not high enough to die from the fall.
When he wakes up he is in a hospital with many a guest around him. One of the guests is the minister of the interior, who decided to use to Ludovico technique on Alex. he apologizes to Alex profusely and explains to him that he is cured, and will no longer feel pain when hurting people or listening to classical music.
The twenty first chapter, which was left out of the original American publication and the movie version, is probably the most interesting of the book. He is out and about with his new droogs, causing general mayhem as per usual, except this time Alex feels slightly dejected, a little out of it. He decides to walk around on his own and think about things. He goes into a coffee and tea shop to get some tea and sees a very beautiful woman in a stall sitting with a man. He describes the woman as the sort you might want to have a relationship with and not just rape, like most of the women he has had. When the man who is sitting with the girl turns his head Alex realizes that it is Pete, his old droog. He goes and talks to pete and finds out the he is married to this woman and has a regular job. At this point Alex realizes that the less destructive feeling he has been having toward people is just a result of growing up, therefor keeping Alex from being a clockwork orange.
The interesting part about this section of the book is that the reader feels as if Alex has been punished enough and yet he is only punished more in this section of the book, thus making the reader feel sorry for him even more. Anthony Burgess, the writer of this fine book, describes a clockwork orange as something that looks alive and juicy from the outside, like an orange, but behaves like clockwork, to be wound up by god or the devil. in other words a person who doesn’t have choice and is forced to always perform good or evil. Without the last chapter Alex is a clockwork orange, always performing evil and never changing, but with the last chapter he becomes human, with the ability to change. Anthony Burgess has written a culturally relevant book that is one that says something about a very core aspect of humanity, and a warning that only bad things can happen if you take that choice away from people.
Monday, April 23, 2007
A Clockwork Orange second response
Luckily for me this book is already divided up into three distinct sections, each one in a different setting. The first is about an unchanged, free Alex, the second about Alex's imprisonment and "treatment", and I have yet to read the third.
In the first part of this section Alex is in a regular jail. Alex has been in this jail for two years and in that time shown himself to be a good inmate, sucking up to the right people and manning the music for the prison church. He seems to be slight friends with the preacher of the prison and greatly enjoys still being able to listen to good music.
The cell Alex stays in is over crowded; there are four people and only three beds. One night the person who is forced to sleep on the floor tries to sleep with Alex, and you get the impression that he also puts his hands on Alex. Needless to say Alex kicks the man out of his bed and somehow all the people in the cell decide to teach the man a lesson. They all beat the other man up and go back to sleep. When the inmates wake up they realize that the man is dead. In true prison fashion everyone blames to crime on Alex. Alex then gets sent to an experimental treatment center where after only a month of treatment he will be released into the free world. Unsurprisingly he is very excited. The "treatment" Alex receives consists of forcing him to watch many films of extremely violent and horrible acts while he is under the influence of a certain drug. This treatment causes him to feel physical pain whenever he thinks about or does a violent act, thus causing him to refrain from violence.
The title of the book, A Clockwork Orange is meant to describe something that looks alive on the outside, such as a sweet and juicy orange, but has no choice between good and evil, like clockwork. This is an interesting moral dilemma, is it better to have no choice and always do well, or have a choice and choose evil? In this part of the book it is clear that Alex is not "cured" of violence because he wants to hurt people and things, but his body is opposed to it. It seems that wanting to do evil doesn't matter as long as you body won't let you do evil.
Another interesting occurrence is the language of this section of the book. Alex still speaks in his russian-british slang but it seems out of place in this sanitary treatment center. Like if you heard someone on a big boat talking like a pirate it wouldn't be too out of place but if you heard a Wal-Mart employee talking like a pirate you might be a little amused.
Overall I have greatly enjoyed this book, there are many ambiguous moral issues that this book faces, and it faces them well.
In the first part of this section Alex is in a regular jail. Alex has been in this jail for two years and in that time shown himself to be a good inmate, sucking up to the right people and manning the music for the prison church. He seems to be slight friends with the preacher of the prison and greatly enjoys still being able to listen to good music.
The cell Alex stays in is over crowded; there are four people and only three beds. One night the person who is forced to sleep on the floor tries to sleep with Alex, and you get the impression that he also puts his hands on Alex. Needless to say Alex kicks the man out of his bed and somehow all the people in the cell decide to teach the man a lesson. They all beat the other man up and go back to sleep. When the inmates wake up they realize that the man is dead. In true prison fashion everyone blames to crime on Alex. Alex then gets sent to an experimental treatment center where after only a month of treatment he will be released into the free world. Unsurprisingly he is very excited. The "treatment" Alex receives consists of forcing him to watch many films of extremely violent and horrible acts while he is under the influence of a certain drug. This treatment causes him to feel physical pain whenever he thinks about or does a violent act, thus causing him to refrain from violence.
The title of the book, A Clockwork Orange is meant to describe something that looks alive on the outside, such as a sweet and juicy orange, but has no choice between good and evil, like clockwork. This is an interesting moral dilemma, is it better to have no choice and always do well, or have a choice and choose evil? In this part of the book it is clear that Alex is not "cured" of violence because he wants to hurt people and things, but his body is opposed to it. It seems that wanting to do evil doesn't matter as long as you body won't let you do evil.
Another interesting occurrence is the language of this section of the book. Alex still speaks in his russian-british slang but it seems out of place in this sanitary treatment center. Like if you heard someone on a big boat talking like a pirate it wouldn't be too out of place but if you heard a Wal-Mart employee talking like a pirate you might be a little amused.
Overall I have greatly enjoyed this book, there are many ambiguous moral issues that this book faces, and it faces them well.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Parkour
In the 1980’s in Lisses, France, a suburb of Paris, there was a young man named David Belle. David wanted to emulate his father, Raymond Belle, a military firefighter. His father was known for his strength and agility, Raymond could navigate urban landscapes as if he had evolved to do so. Raymond Belle was fascinated by the “Method Naturelle” a personal fitness method invented by Georges Hebert. The Method Naturelle grew from the idea of functional fitness, training to aid you in survival. David greatly respected his father and in wanting to gain his approval he started training himself to move quickly and efficiently throughout his landscape. He would imagine emergency situations, such as running from someone dangerous or saving someone in peril. He would act out these situations and try to find the quickest route from one point to another. In order quickly move he would run up walls, vault over low obstacles, and drop from height. On these foundations Parkour was built. The word Parkour comes from the French word Parcours meaning obstacle course. Parkour is usually practiced in an urban setting but people often train in a forest environment.
People often liken Parkour to other urban sports such as skateboarding or BMXing. The major difference between them is philosophy, Parkour has a central philosophy of improving oneself mentally and physically, and of course efficient movement. Many people who practice Parkour have applied a similar mindset to other facets of life, you must break down the steps of a move to execute it perfectly, a method one can use for many people face in life. A male Parkour practitioner is called a Traceur, female a Traceuse. As one can imagine Parkour takes a great amount of Physical strength, and because it uses your entire body you must have balanced strength. There is also a great importance for conditioning, a ten foot drop puts an enormous strain on joints and muscles. Parkour is an individual’s sport, even though many train in groups the progression is with only yourself. There has been some talk of Parkour competitions but because of the individual nature of the discipline most of the community agrees that competition is against the spirit of Parkour.
In the early days David and his friends practiced this discipline around their town never expecting it might one day gain global attention. At the peak of their training they were practicing for 4-6 hours every day. Around ten years into his training David was suggested to video some of his discipline and show it to people. After this he filmed a short video of himself and the word of Parkour soon spread. Soon after there was a report on him in the French news, the news team followed him around his town while he explained Parkour and demonstrated it. It didn’t take long for more publicity to come, there were some very funny Nike commercials he and his friends did. After that the momentum only got larger, the director, Luc Besson, was very interested in him and allowed David to play the lead role in the French motion picture, B-13, which was released on November 10, 2004. The movie was fairly reminiscent of Jackie Chan movies, with a neutron bomb aimed right at Paris.
What really garnered Parkour an audience outside of France was the British documentary,”Jump London”, which featured one of David’s childhood friends, Sebastien Foucan. The documentary, which aired September 9, 2003, focused on foucan and his compatriot Jerome Ben Aoues doing parkour in and on many famous London landmarks. After all this exposure the word of Parkour quickly spread, mainly through Internet forums and videos. Many people joined the discipline in Europe and it still has the largest Parkour community. The discipline is slowly starting to trickle into American consciousness, being featured in movies such as the James Bond movie, Casino Royale, as an amazing chase scene through a construction site.
Parkour is only gaining momentum, with articles in magazines such as TIME and The New Yorker dedicated to spreading the word. Parkour has a very central philosophy of growth and individual achievement. Tracuers are not encouraged to compare their skills, mainly because of the non-competitive nature. A Traceur trains for personal gain, not for the approval of others.
People often liken Parkour to other urban sports such as skateboarding or BMXing. The major difference between them is philosophy, Parkour has a central philosophy of improving oneself mentally and physically, and of course efficient movement. Many people who practice Parkour have applied a similar mindset to other facets of life, you must break down the steps of a move to execute it perfectly, a method one can use for many people face in life. A male Parkour practitioner is called a Traceur, female a Traceuse. As one can imagine Parkour takes a great amount of Physical strength, and because it uses your entire body you must have balanced strength. There is also a great importance for conditioning, a ten foot drop puts an enormous strain on joints and muscles. Parkour is an individual’s sport, even though many train in groups the progression is with only yourself. There has been some talk of Parkour competitions but because of the individual nature of the discipline most of the community agrees that competition is against the spirit of Parkour.
In the early days David and his friends practiced this discipline around their town never expecting it might one day gain global attention. At the peak of their training they were practicing for 4-6 hours every day. Around ten years into his training David was suggested to video some of his discipline and show it to people. After this he filmed a short video of himself and the word of Parkour soon spread. Soon after there was a report on him in the French news, the news team followed him around his town while he explained Parkour and demonstrated it. It didn’t take long for more publicity to come, there were some very funny Nike commercials he and his friends did. After that the momentum only got larger, the director, Luc Besson, was very interested in him and allowed David to play the lead role in the French motion picture, B-13, which was released on November 10, 2004. The movie was fairly reminiscent of Jackie Chan movies, with a neutron bomb aimed right at Paris.
What really garnered Parkour an audience outside of France was the British documentary,”Jump London”, which featured one of David’s childhood friends, Sebastien Foucan. The documentary, which aired September 9, 2003, focused on foucan and his compatriot Jerome Ben Aoues doing parkour in and on many famous London landmarks. After all this exposure the word of Parkour quickly spread, mainly through Internet forums and videos. Many people joined the discipline in Europe and it still has the largest Parkour community. The discipline is slowly starting to trickle into American consciousness, being featured in movies such as the James Bond movie, Casino Royale, as an amazing chase scene through a construction site.
Parkour is only gaining momentum, with articles in magazines such as TIME and The New Yorker dedicated to spreading the word. Parkour has a very central philosophy of growth and individual achievement. Tracuers are not encouraged to compare their skills, mainly because of the non-competitive nature. A Traceur trains for personal gain, not for the approval of others.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
A Clockwork Orange
This is the first of three journal entries on the book A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess.
This book takes place either in an alternate present or the future. The technology of this book seems slightly greater than what we have now but it also seems to be written under the context that Russian and British cultures merging to a point. This book takes place in London where the adolescents rule the nighttime streets, stealing and fighting with hardly any interference by the law. Alex, our protagonist, along with his three “Droogs” makes up one of the small street gangs that rape and steal for fun.
The language used in the book is extremely interesting; it is a fictional British slang that merges Russian slang and English to create the vocabulary of the street urchins. The book refers to men as "malchicks", girls as "devotchkas" and "ptitsas", Teeth as "zoobies", milk as "moloko" the face as a "litso" and so on. This language completely saturates the novel, as it is written in the first person from Alex’s point of view. In the beginning it is a little hard to understand what they are saying but the book puts the words in context well so at this point I, for the most part, know what they are saying.
Alex is very definitely the leader of the four-man group that he hangs out with. I get the age that Alex is somewhere around 15-18 because he goes to school during the day and still lives with his parents. During the night time Alex and his three friends, Pete, Georgie, and Dim, cause trouble by stealing and generally harassing the public. One of their regular hang out spots is the Korova Milk+ bar, a bar that serves milk spiked with fictional mind altering substances such as synthemesc. After drinking their milk they go on generally making trouble, stealing money from people, fighting other gangs, stealing cars, and all manner of trouble making.
I find this book extremely interesting, the protagonist is a very intriguing character, a smart teenager who has a good appreciation for the arts but is totally evil. the writing style and fictional dialect do well to help the atmosphere of the book, the setting almost seems post apocalyptic but there was no apocalypse, more off a dystopia than anything. This book is very cleverly written, it is almost reminiscent of jack the ripper's letters, a very smart person narrating his raping and pillaging. The writing style during the action pieces of the book is also interesting, he never lets up on the language of the book causing the scene to seem almost dreamy, as if Alex were watching his fight in slow motion and commenting on it. Overall I enjoy the book a good bit
This book takes place either in an alternate present or the future. The technology of this book seems slightly greater than what we have now but it also seems to be written under the context that Russian and British cultures merging to a point. This book takes place in London where the adolescents rule the nighttime streets, stealing and fighting with hardly any interference by the law. Alex, our protagonist, along with his three “Droogs” makes up one of the small street gangs that rape and steal for fun.
The language used in the book is extremely interesting; it is a fictional British slang that merges Russian slang and English to create the vocabulary of the street urchins. The book refers to men as "malchicks", girls as "devotchkas" and "ptitsas", Teeth as "zoobies", milk as "moloko" the face as a "litso" and so on. This language completely saturates the novel, as it is written in the first person from Alex’s point of view. In the beginning it is a little hard to understand what they are saying but the book puts the words in context well so at this point I, for the most part, know what they are saying.
Alex is very definitely the leader of the four-man group that he hangs out with. I get the age that Alex is somewhere around 15-18 because he goes to school during the day and still lives with his parents. During the night time Alex and his three friends, Pete, Georgie, and Dim, cause trouble by stealing and generally harassing the public. One of their regular hang out spots is the Korova Milk+ bar, a bar that serves milk spiked with fictional mind altering substances such as synthemesc. After drinking their milk they go on generally making trouble, stealing money from people, fighting other gangs, stealing cars, and all manner of trouble making.
I find this book extremely interesting, the protagonist is a very intriguing character, a smart teenager who has a good appreciation for the arts but is totally evil. the writing style and fictional dialect do well to help the atmosphere of the book, the setting almost seems post apocalyptic but there was no apocalypse, more off a dystopia than anything. This book is very cleverly written, it is almost reminiscent of jack the ripper's letters, a very smart person narrating his raping and pillaging. The writing style during the action pieces of the book is also interesting, he never lets up on the language of the book causing the scene to seem almost dreamy, as if Alex were watching his fight in slow motion and commenting on it. Overall I enjoy the book a good bit
Monday, March 5, 2007
for short story three I read the story American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer.
1. I thought this story was very good, it was about a young adolescent during the time of the Kennedy assassination and how she is confused about how she feels about the event. I can really relate to this because I was about the same age during 9/11 and was also confused about the event. the main character has a crush on a new boy in the class and on the day of the Kennedy assassination she is finally going to get to go to his house. her mother is mad at her because she isn't as distraught about the president dying as her mother thinks she should be. I can relate to this because when 9/11 happened I had no idea the ramifications of that event. when it happened I did not grasp the importance of it and could only think about how cool it was that we just watched the news in every class all day.
I also liked the story because the focus was not on how important it was that Kennedy died but how important this boy was to her. many people might thing that the importance is misplaced but I think that is in just the right place. what good does another story about where someone was and what they were doing during an assassination? I think that the story was mainly about young infatuation and it just so happened that the president was killed at the same time that this was going on and the writer portrays this well.
2. the subject of the story is a girl who has a crush on the new boy. the theme love being more important that death. the girl is reprimanded by her mother for wanting to go and study with her crush on the day that Kennedy is assassinated. I think that the love only took precedent, no pun intended, because of her age. at 14 it is very hard for a person to realize the importance of events that do not directly affect them. I am living proof, when 9/11 happened I didn't hardly think anything of it. I think this story was good because it had heart, the main character was a character I could really relate to and I think that is a good bit of what makes someone like a story.
3. "Though I wanted to feel the right thing about President Kennedy's death, I could not fight the feeling of elation that stirred in my chest." this shows how the author could not look past what directly influenced her life, a common trait among children and young adults. I don't think that the author necessarily feels that her study session with Eugene was more important than the president's death, but she is merely telling about how she felt at the time. at one point the gym teacher said,"The president is dead, you idiots. I should have known that wouldn't mean anything to a bunch of losers like you kids. Go home" this shows the differing opnions between the grown-ups and the kids.
4. one of my favorite movies is fight club. the subject of the movie is structured anarchy and insanity. the theme of the movie is the bad things that can happen when a smart insane person can organize a group of people to do whatever he wants them to do. the interesting thing about the theme of this movie is that the storyteller does not pass judgment on this group of people, at least not within the movie. the choice of whether this structured anarchy is a good thing or a bad thing is up to the viewer. this open-ended storytelling is a good way to tell a morally ambiguous story, leaving the moral choice up to the audience.
1. I thought this story was very good, it was about a young adolescent during the time of the Kennedy assassination and how she is confused about how she feels about the event. I can really relate to this because I was about the same age during 9/11 and was also confused about the event. the main character has a crush on a new boy in the class and on the day of the Kennedy assassination she is finally going to get to go to his house. her mother is mad at her because she isn't as distraught about the president dying as her mother thinks she should be. I can relate to this because when 9/11 happened I had no idea the ramifications of that event. when it happened I did not grasp the importance of it and could only think about how cool it was that we just watched the news in every class all day.
I also liked the story because the focus was not on how important it was that Kennedy died but how important this boy was to her. many people might thing that the importance is misplaced but I think that is in just the right place. what good does another story about where someone was and what they were doing during an assassination? I think that the story was mainly about young infatuation and it just so happened that the president was killed at the same time that this was going on and the writer portrays this well.
2. the subject of the story is a girl who has a crush on the new boy. the theme love being more important that death. the girl is reprimanded by her mother for wanting to go and study with her crush on the day that Kennedy is assassinated. I think that the love only took precedent, no pun intended, because of her age. at 14 it is very hard for a person to realize the importance of events that do not directly affect them. I am living proof, when 9/11 happened I didn't hardly think anything of it. I think this story was good because it had heart, the main character was a character I could really relate to and I think that is a good bit of what makes someone like a story.
3. "Though I wanted to feel the right thing about President Kennedy's death, I could not fight the feeling of elation that stirred in my chest." this shows how the author could not look past what directly influenced her life, a common trait among children and young adults. I don't think that the author necessarily feels that her study session with Eugene was more important than the president's death, but she is merely telling about how she felt at the time. at one point the gym teacher said,"The president is dead, you idiots. I should have known that wouldn't mean anything to a bunch of losers like you kids. Go home" this shows the differing opnions between the grown-ups and the kids.
4. one of my favorite movies is fight club. the subject of the movie is structured anarchy and insanity. the theme of the movie is the bad things that can happen when a smart insane person can organize a group of people to do whatever he wants them to do. the interesting thing about the theme of this movie is that the storyteller does not pass judgment on this group of people, at least not within the movie. the choice of whether this structured anarchy is a good thing or a bad thing is up to the viewer. this open-ended storytelling is a good way to tell a morally ambiguous story, leaving the moral choice up to the audience.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Hell
I arrived in my destination, Hell. The Vestibule to Hell looks like something out of a heavy metal concert, a giant archway made with the bones of various animals, mainly human. The guards were fifteen-foot tall cloaked and horned sentinels, with necklaces made of human skulls. I was surrounded by undulating hordes of people, some with blood literally squirting out. I smelled a whole gamut of horrid scents; sulfur, phosphorus, vomit, and feces, to name a few. There was a veritable fog of sound, shrieks continuous and non-stopping, and inhuman barks from all order of demons.
Once I got over the initial shock of being in the most dreaded place conceived by man I decided to look around a bit, the River Styx was fairly cool, looking from the shore the surface was a mist with countless ghostlike souls swimming around in the depths. The river went on for as far as the eye could see and, did not flow very fast. The main chamber of Hell was a sight to see, the largest cavern I had ever observed. The lake of fire burned bright, as always, with demon surfers hanging ten on the ten-foot flames. In the very middle of the lake was Lucifer’s castle, the concave cliffs rose hundreds of feet into the air before the castle even began. The castle itself had countless ramparts with frightful gargoyles perched all along the top. Every now and again a gargoyle would swoop off its perch and bite the head of one of the many humans below. The spires of the castle had many a writhing person impaled on their spines, never dying and ever suffering.
The cavern that Hell was located in was very spacious, the ceiling being many hundreds of feet in the air. The walls had cracks running all throughout them, it seemed like rock climbers would love it here. The ceiling had very large stalactites hanging from it, some one hundred feet long. The floor of Hell, most of it at least, seemed high class; stone was perpetually warmed from all the fire throughout Hell, it fairly pleasing to the feet, definitely an oversight on the devil’s part.
I decided to visit the torture chambers next. The first one I visited had an enormous lake of liquid feces. People were submerged in the pool and were made to stay under by demons flying overhead. As you can imagine the smell was horrible. Thankfully, because I was just visiting, they gave me a facemask. The lake had to be at least 500 feet in every direction, the lake seemed to undulate and writhe because of the moving bodies just under the surface. A writhing lake of feces is an extremely disgusting sight.
Hell has countless torture methods, there are the more conventional tortures such as the feces treatment or the pulling of all of your finger and toenails along with hair. There are also the more unconventional methods of torture such as the treadmill that you have to run at full speed all day long and get no stronger, or the really attractive stranger who leads you on but will never return affections. I find these unconventional tortures the most interesting.
The denizens of hell were of all varieties, you needn’t be human to go to hell. the idea of heaven and hell must be universal because there were all manner of non-human entities living out their own punishments. Strangely those without the faculties to interpret the idea of god and the devil cannot be sorted because they know not how to realize the grace of god, they are sent to purgatory. Even with the species difference there seemed to be a general camaraderie among the suffering denizens of hell. Because of the suffering they all have to endure for all eternity they realize how useless it is to hurt, emotionally or physically, other people; making the people who have been there the longest fairly nice people, albeit a bit bitter.
The demons of hell were all of all sorts. Because of the interspecies diversity the demons had to be able to manage all sorts of beings. One type, made specifically for a huge pigeon like species, was a giant translucent wall that the pigeons always seemed to run into. One the more frightening types was nearly 40 feet tall and had horns that were 15 feet tall, these were mainly for a very aggressive horned bear type species. The one for humans was, unsurprisingly, the most frightening, it was slightly taller than the average human, around seven feet tall, had four arms, and carried two scimitars and walked on the other four limbs that were left. I cannot place what made it so frightening, maybe it was the six-inch long fangs or the claws but it was by far the most frightening thing I had ever seen.
After seeing that demon I decided I wanted no more time in hell. I went back to my original home, heaven, and made sure my supermodel wife was still making me sandwiches at home. When I got home she asked if I wanted a whole lot of money, and I decided against it, at that point I realized I was miserable. How was it that having everything you wanted is just as bad as having nothing?
Once I got over the initial shock of being in the most dreaded place conceived by man I decided to look around a bit, the River Styx was fairly cool, looking from the shore the surface was a mist with countless ghostlike souls swimming around in the depths. The river went on for as far as the eye could see and, did not flow very fast. The main chamber of Hell was a sight to see, the largest cavern I had ever observed. The lake of fire burned bright, as always, with demon surfers hanging ten on the ten-foot flames. In the very middle of the lake was Lucifer’s castle, the concave cliffs rose hundreds of feet into the air before the castle even began. The castle itself had countless ramparts with frightful gargoyles perched all along the top. Every now and again a gargoyle would swoop off its perch and bite the head of one of the many humans below. The spires of the castle had many a writhing person impaled on their spines, never dying and ever suffering.
The cavern that Hell was located in was very spacious, the ceiling being many hundreds of feet in the air. The walls had cracks running all throughout them, it seemed like rock climbers would love it here. The ceiling had very large stalactites hanging from it, some one hundred feet long. The floor of Hell, most of it at least, seemed high class; stone was perpetually warmed from all the fire throughout Hell, it fairly pleasing to the feet, definitely an oversight on the devil’s part.
I decided to visit the torture chambers next. The first one I visited had an enormous lake of liquid feces. People were submerged in the pool and were made to stay under by demons flying overhead. As you can imagine the smell was horrible. Thankfully, because I was just visiting, they gave me a facemask. The lake had to be at least 500 feet in every direction, the lake seemed to undulate and writhe because of the moving bodies just under the surface. A writhing lake of feces is an extremely disgusting sight.
Hell has countless torture methods, there are the more conventional tortures such as the feces treatment or the pulling of all of your finger and toenails along with hair. There are also the more unconventional methods of torture such as the treadmill that you have to run at full speed all day long and get no stronger, or the really attractive stranger who leads you on but will never return affections. I find these unconventional tortures the most interesting.
The denizens of hell were of all varieties, you needn’t be human to go to hell. the idea of heaven and hell must be universal because there were all manner of non-human entities living out their own punishments. Strangely those without the faculties to interpret the idea of god and the devil cannot be sorted because they know not how to realize the grace of god, they are sent to purgatory. Even with the species difference there seemed to be a general camaraderie among the suffering denizens of hell. Because of the suffering they all have to endure for all eternity they realize how useless it is to hurt, emotionally or physically, other people; making the people who have been there the longest fairly nice people, albeit a bit bitter.
The demons of hell were all of all sorts. Because of the interspecies diversity the demons had to be able to manage all sorts of beings. One type, made specifically for a huge pigeon like species, was a giant translucent wall that the pigeons always seemed to run into. One the more frightening types was nearly 40 feet tall and had horns that were 15 feet tall, these were mainly for a very aggressive horned bear type species. The one for humans was, unsurprisingly, the most frightening, it was slightly taller than the average human, around seven feet tall, had four arms, and carried two scimitars and walked on the other four limbs that were left. I cannot place what made it so frightening, maybe it was the six-inch long fangs or the claws but it was by far the most frightening thing I had ever seen.
After seeing that demon I decided I wanted no more time in hell. I went back to my original home, heaven, and made sure my supermodel wife was still making me sandwiches at home. When I got home she asked if I wanted a whole lot of money, and I decided against it, at that point I realized I was miserable. How was it that having everything you wanted is just as bad as having nothing?
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
I read the story "It Can't Be Helped, from Farewell to Manzanar" the story is written in the first person about a Japanese girl in the 1940's who is sent to a Japanese internment camp. The story doesn't go into the conditions of the camp at all, which I was disappointed with; it was more about the effort to keep her family together, and because the main character was a child she can do nothing to help keep the family together, it is a story about someone else's struggle. I did not like this story much because it was a very everyday sort of story. The story doesn't seem to go anywhere, only that they have to move a good bit and in the end go to an internment camp. There is nothing she is trying to achieve and the protagonist is completely helpless to change what happened to her, the story has no good or bad to it; things just happen.
There is no noticeable struggle in the story, which makes it uninteresting. There is no moral or meaning to this story, I did not gain any insight as to the living conditions of these internment camps because the story ends right when they get there. Unless you wanted back-story on the author, for instance at one point she says, "Instead of saying ba-ka-ta-re, a common insult meaning stupid, Terminal Islanders would say ba-ka-ya-ro, a coarser and exclusively masculine use of the word which implies gross stupidity" this does not make for very interesting narrative unless you are reading the story to see different japanese insults, which I care nothing for. The story does not reveal any information that would make you think about anything and that is essentially what books are for, to reveal information the reader cares about or tell an engaging story, and this story does neither.
I think the author’s purpose for writing the story was purely an internal one. The author does not show us much more hardship than we all have to endure. I think the author wrote this story so she could really organize part of her life. The story does not reveal anything that could have social significance, and I think it was written to better help the author figure out what she thought of her own circumstance at the time. for instance at one point she says, "One of his [she is referring to her father] threats to keep us younger kids in line was,'I'm going to sell you to the Chinaman.'" this only serves to illustrate the hostility between the chinese and the japanese, and nowhere in the story does this come into play.
I think it is important to read about other people's lives to expand our own understanding of the human condition. Through an autobiographical format a person can convey the idea and feelings they were experiencing much more accurately than in fiction. Many autobiographical works are intriguing because it tells of events, which we will never witness, with accuracy that only a person who actually experienced the event can convey.
There is no noticeable struggle in the story, which makes it uninteresting. There is no moral or meaning to this story, I did not gain any insight as to the living conditions of these internment camps because the story ends right when they get there. Unless you wanted back-story on the author, for instance at one point she says, "Instead of saying ba-ka-ta-re, a common insult meaning stupid, Terminal Islanders would say ba-ka-ya-ro, a coarser and exclusively masculine use of the word which implies gross stupidity" this does not make for very interesting narrative unless you are reading the story to see different japanese insults, which I care nothing for. The story does not reveal any information that would make you think about anything and that is essentially what books are for, to reveal information the reader cares about or tell an engaging story, and this story does neither.
I think the author’s purpose for writing the story was purely an internal one. The author does not show us much more hardship than we all have to endure. I think the author wrote this story so she could really organize part of her life. The story does not reveal anything that could have social significance, and I think it was written to better help the author figure out what she thought of her own circumstance at the time. for instance at one point she says, "One of his [she is referring to her father] threats to keep us younger kids in line was,'I'm going to sell you to the Chinaman.'" this only serves to illustrate the hostility between the chinese and the japanese, and nowhere in the story does this come into play.
I think it is important to read about other people's lives to expand our own understanding of the human condition. Through an autobiographical format a person can convey the idea and feelings they were experiencing much more accurately than in fiction. Many autobiographical works are intriguing because it tells of events, which we will never witness, with accuracy that only a person who actually experienced the event can convey.
Monday, February 5, 2007
The call of cthulhu and other weird stories
This book is a seires of short stories By the early 20th Century horror writer,
H.P. Lovecraft. I chose to read the Shadow Over Innsmouth.
H.P. Lovecraft's writing style is fairly nondescript, the reason being is that the terror his protagonists feel is from things they cannot describe or he has no idea why he is so horrified. His stories are typically about the sheer insignificance humans have in the universe. his stories are littered with beings that are indescribably horrifing with names the human speech organs cannot pronounce, such as Cthulhu. There is an otherworldy nature to some of his stories, such as, in one story, an island of black tar that comes out of the ocean one night under a man stranded in a boat. In another story a man has to traverse a giant antartic mountian range.
Mind you that I do not do the horror of this story any justice in this entry.
In this story our main character goes to a fairly rundown town in Rhode Island, inhabited by people who look, ever so slightly, like fish. Their fishy appearance is very horrifing to our main character, so he decided to ask some of the more normal looking people. He gets wind that a drunk in town knows a dark secret about the appearance and cult behaivaors of the townspeople. there is a surprise ending that I can't reveal.
Lovecraft has a somewhat antique way of writing, he uses intracate language mixed in with phrases that were out of use even for his time, like electric torch instead of flashlight. the writing style is similar to poe, one of his greatest influences. Overall the story was very enjoyable and I do like the language he uses, it makes some of the science fiction seem antique. the indescribable nature of most of the horror is more like how the mind works, it is most often very hard to describe what makes something truly terrifing. I would recommend most of Lovecraft's stories to fans of science fiction and horror.
H.P. Lovecraft. I chose to read the Shadow Over Innsmouth.
H.P. Lovecraft's writing style is fairly nondescript, the reason being is that the terror his protagonists feel is from things they cannot describe or he has no idea why he is so horrified. His stories are typically about the sheer insignificance humans have in the universe. his stories are littered with beings that are indescribably horrifing with names the human speech organs cannot pronounce, such as Cthulhu. There is an otherworldy nature to some of his stories, such as, in one story, an island of black tar that comes out of the ocean one night under a man stranded in a boat. In another story a man has to traverse a giant antartic mountian range.
Mind you that I do not do the horror of this story any justice in this entry.
In this story our main character goes to a fairly rundown town in Rhode Island, inhabited by people who look, ever so slightly, like fish. Their fishy appearance is very horrifing to our main character, so he decided to ask some of the more normal looking people. He gets wind that a drunk in town knows a dark secret about the appearance and cult behaivaors of the townspeople. there is a surprise ending that I can't reveal.
Lovecraft has a somewhat antique way of writing, he uses intracate language mixed in with phrases that were out of use even for his time, like electric torch instead of flashlight. the writing style is similar to poe, one of his greatest influences. Overall the story was very enjoyable and I do like the language he uses, it makes some of the science fiction seem antique. the indescribable nature of most of the horror is more like how the mind works, it is most often very hard to describe what makes something truly terrifing. I would recommend most of Lovecraft's stories to fans of science fiction and horror.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Short story project
I decided to do my short story project on a story called Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft.
1. The character begins the story by telling us that the day he is writing this story is the last day of his life. He has been driven mad by what he saw and experienced and became a morphine addict in an effort to ease his madness.
He starts the story by telling us that he was held prisoner aboard a German man o war, the security was lax so he was able to escape on a small lifeboat with some food and fresh water. He was stranded and saw no land or even any sign of land for a few days. One day he woke up and was in a large black mire, his boat a small distance off, with no sign of water in any direction. This strange black mire gave him some vague sense of horror he could not place. That night he slept in his boat.
The next day he notices a portion of land that is slightly taller than the rest of the land surrounding it and decides to walk toward it. He walks for a few days, at which point the ground has hardened and once he reached the hummock he realizes it is much larger than he realizes. Too tired to climb the large hill he camps at the base of it. His dreams are very wild that night and when he wakes from them he decides to sleep no more. Realizing that it is much easier to travel at night he ascends the hill at the top of the hill there is a very large valley and he can see nothing inside the trench. As the moon rises higher into the air he notices that the climb down the valley wall is not at all as bad as it originally looked.
He descends one side of the valley once he gets to a smaller slope he sees a large white monolith. There is a body of water at the bottom of the chasm that separates him from the pillar. He observes the pillar from across the water and notices a system of hieroglyphics he has never seen, based on sea creatures, some known to man and others not known. He also notices extremely large carvings of creatures which look like a cross between a man and a fish, this sight is one of the most horrifying things he has ever seen.
Something then slides out of the water, the thing is very large and he describes it like the Cyclops from the odyssey. This is the point at which he believes he went mad. Only half conscious he travels back to his boat and somehow gets to the ocean. The next thing he remembers is waking up in a san-Francisco hospital. Now he sees the vast thing when the moon is large in the sky, he tried morphine but instead of helping him it only drew him in as a "hopeless slave" and at this point in the story decides to kill himself.
I enjoyed this story, as I do most Lovecraft stories but his relative inexperience at writing shows. This was one of the first fiction stories he wrote as an adult and the extremely basic plot does exemplify that fact. The main character arrives in a vast desert of black muck, travels to a hill, descends a cliff, sees some scary creature, goes mad, runs back to his boat, somehow gets to water that he does not know the location of, and arrives at a hospital. Lovecraft doesn't describe things in extreme detail, instead saying they were terrifying in a way completely indescribable, leaving things to the imagination.
2.There is really only one character in this story, and since he is writing from the first person you never learn his name because he is always speaking of himself in the first person. This character does not do too awfully much to describe his character, he is curious enough to descend a cliff and walk for days to get to a high point of land but other than that his personality traits are not divulged much because there is no appreciable interaction between the main character and other humans in the story. He is obviously a slightly learned man because he knows of the fish god, Dagon and this quote, "the writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me and unlike anything I had seen in books" inferring that he knows something about hieroglyphs and reads some amount of anthropological material. The portion of the story in which he is mad is too short to gain any appreciable evidence of personality traits when he is in human society.
3. The author uses indirect characterization because the story is in the first person and people usually don't describe themselves at the beginning of a story they are writing about themselves. As I said in the previous entry he is curious as shown by this quote, "dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of a scientist's or archeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely." this shows that even though he is frightened he still proceeds because his curiosity gets the better of him. He is also a smart man as is shown by his inferred interest in hieroglyphics and slight knowledge of the Piltdown man which was uncovered as a hoax after the writing of the story.
4.
simile: a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds using as or like
metaphor: a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity
personification: the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, and forces of nature
allusion: passing reference or indirect mention
hyperbole: a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
irony: incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs
5. " Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness." this is an allusion to the story paradise lost.
"Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith." this is a simile, describing the large beast like a monster only seen in dreams. It is also an allusion to Polyphemus, the Cyclops from the odyssey.
1. The character begins the story by telling us that the day he is writing this story is the last day of his life. He has been driven mad by what he saw and experienced and became a morphine addict in an effort to ease his madness.
He starts the story by telling us that he was held prisoner aboard a German man o war, the security was lax so he was able to escape on a small lifeboat with some food and fresh water. He was stranded and saw no land or even any sign of land for a few days. One day he woke up and was in a large black mire, his boat a small distance off, with no sign of water in any direction. This strange black mire gave him some vague sense of horror he could not place. That night he slept in his boat.
The next day he notices a portion of land that is slightly taller than the rest of the land surrounding it and decides to walk toward it. He walks for a few days, at which point the ground has hardened and once he reached the hummock he realizes it is much larger than he realizes. Too tired to climb the large hill he camps at the base of it. His dreams are very wild that night and when he wakes from them he decides to sleep no more. Realizing that it is much easier to travel at night he ascends the hill at the top of the hill there is a very large valley and he can see nothing inside the trench. As the moon rises higher into the air he notices that the climb down the valley wall is not at all as bad as it originally looked.
He descends one side of the valley once he gets to a smaller slope he sees a large white monolith. There is a body of water at the bottom of the chasm that separates him from the pillar. He observes the pillar from across the water and notices a system of hieroglyphics he has never seen, based on sea creatures, some known to man and others not known. He also notices extremely large carvings of creatures which look like a cross between a man and a fish, this sight is one of the most horrifying things he has ever seen.
Something then slides out of the water, the thing is very large and he describes it like the Cyclops from the odyssey. This is the point at which he believes he went mad. Only half conscious he travels back to his boat and somehow gets to the ocean. The next thing he remembers is waking up in a san-Francisco hospital. Now he sees the vast thing when the moon is large in the sky, he tried morphine but instead of helping him it only drew him in as a "hopeless slave" and at this point in the story decides to kill himself.
I enjoyed this story, as I do most Lovecraft stories but his relative inexperience at writing shows. This was one of the first fiction stories he wrote as an adult and the extremely basic plot does exemplify that fact. The main character arrives in a vast desert of black muck, travels to a hill, descends a cliff, sees some scary creature, goes mad, runs back to his boat, somehow gets to water that he does not know the location of, and arrives at a hospital. Lovecraft doesn't describe things in extreme detail, instead saying they were terrifying in a way completely indescribable, leaving things to the imagination.
2.There is really only one character in this story, and since he is writing from the first person you never learn his name because he is always speaking of himself in the first person. This character does not do too awfully much to describe his character, he is curious enough to descend a cliff and walk for days to get to a high point of land but other than that his personality traits are not divulged much because there is no appreciable interaction between the main character and other humans in the story. He is obviously a slightly learned man because he knows of the fish god, Dagon and this quote, "the writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me and unlike anything I had seen in books" inferring that he knows something about hieroglyphs and reads some amount of anthropological material. The portion of the story in which he is mad is too short to gain any appreciable evidence of personality traits when he is in human society.
3. The author uses indirect characterization because the story is in the first person and people usually don't describe themselves at the beginning of a story they are writing about themselves. As I said in the previous entry he is curious as shown by this quote, "dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of a scientist's or archeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely." this shows that even though he is frightened he still proceeds because his curiosity gets the better of him. He is also a smart man as is shown by his inferred interest in hieroglyphics and slight knowledge of the Piltdown man which was uncovered as a hoax after the writing of the story.
4.
simile: a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds using as or like
metaphor: a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity
personification: the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, and forces of nature
allusion: passing reference or indirect mention
hyperbole: a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
irony: incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs
5. " Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness." this is an allusion to the story paradise lost.
"Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith." this is a simile, describing the large beast like a monster only seen in dreams. It is also an allusion to Polyphemus, the Cyclops from the odyssey.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Carson's short narrative
If you didn’t know, airport coffee tastes like the boiled remains of a dead rodent on a hot summer day, and it seems that all other consumables contained in airports share the same predicament. Thankfully I did not have to endure this for very long. I was in this airport for the same reason that many are, I was leaving on vacation, to Peru. This particular airplane would take me to Peru, but not to any airport.
I boarded the plane and soon after leaving the runway I was fast asleep. I woke up to hear about some slight turbulence that we would be undergoing. I didn’t think much of it at the time and soon after the announcement the plane started to shake very slightly. After a few seconds of this turbulence there was a loud clang and a free falling sensation; at this very moment everyone started screaming and the plane erupted into chaos. I had an odd feeling of calm, even as this tragedy unfolded around me. I heard another, louder, clang and felt a sharp pain on the side of my head, then everything went black.
When I regained consciousness I was laying on the edge of a strangely red lake. I sat up, while wondering what happened, I saw the origin of the coloring of the lake. There were hundreds of dead bodies all floating on top of the lake, with the tail of our airplane the only thing interrupting the bodies. The horror of this catastrophe suddenly replaced the calm I was feeling earlier. I ran away, horrified, into the jungle bordering the lake. I ran for what felt like days, until my muscles burned and I could run no more. I fell down. lost in my delirious state I could hardly grip reality, much less navigate a Peruvian jungle; so I slept.
When I awoke there was a group of people surrounding me, dressed like tribesmen, but unthreatening. These people took me to their village, one of thatched huts and ancient customs. The village was only made up of around 10 or 15 huts, ranging in size from 10 feet in diameter to somewhere near 50. The largest hut sat atop a hill, obviously the tribe’s leader lived here. The villagers led me to a small hut decorated with animal bones and feathers of every hue. I tried to tell the tribesmen of my predicament but, unsurprisingly, they could not understand.
They took me to what I figured was a medicine man. He hastily bandaged my wounds and gave a murky, purple-brown, syrup. I tried some but it was very bitter, the shaman urged me to drink and would not take no for an answer. I drank it to get it over with and afterward drank much water to remove the taste from my mouth. The man made me lie in a bed made of some sort of grass; after sleeping in the jungle even a rudimentary bed was extremely appreciated.
Soon after lying down a strange feeling came over me. Within I felt completely and utterly changed. I was seeing things that I couldn’t imagine could exist but they looked and felt more real than anything I had ever felt before. The bitter drink he made must have been ayahausca, a drink that shamans use to try and heal emotional trauma through psychedelic experiences. I was walking through the jungle, a jungle ever more complex in sights and sounds than anything I had ever experienced. As I walked small black bugs poured out of the trees and advanced toward me; I could not let these insects touch me. I knew, as if in a dream, that if they touched me I would be forever lost in insanity. As the insects were about to engulf me a lady approached, dressed in green and holding a torch that burned all of the colors of the rainbow. The bugs were repulsed by the purity of the light and scuttled back to their hiding place.
The woman approached and signaled me to follow her. I followed by the light of her torch to the lake where the airplane was, but instead of dead bodies there were only the passengers floating toward the heavens. I realized that I should not mourn the loss of all these people but instead look forward to how I was to assure my family of my wellbeing. I learned that I cannot worry about things in the past but instead only worry about what is happening now and in the future, only looking to the past for reference.
When I came out of the trance I felt extremely nauseated and vomited in a bucket provided by the shaman. I spent the night in that same bed and in the morning decided that I had to somehow figure out a way to communicate that I needed to get to some mass civilization. I went to the largest hut in the village. I tried to communicate with the chief about my situation but he interrupted me by asking if I spoke English. This was very surprising but he explained that Amazonian explorers often visited his tribe and he learned the language to help the explorers navigate the jungle. I explained my predicament and he told me of a small town to the east.
That afternoon a tribesman led me through the jungle to the settlement and there I was left. I asked around and was told of a bus to the capital, Lima, where I could find a way home. When I arrived in Lima I contacted my family and assured them of my wellbeing and told them of what happened. They urged me to come home immediately but I had already decided to stay with the tribe the rest of my scheduled vacation, and perhaps even longer.
I boarded the plane and soon after leaving the runway I was fast asleep. I woke up to hear about some slight turbulence that we would be undergoing. I didn’t think much of it at the time and soon after the announcement the plane started to shake very slightly. After a few seconds of this turbulence there was a loud clang and a free falling sensation; at this very moment everyone started screaming and the plane erupted into chaos. I had an odd feeling of calm, even as this tragedy unfolded around me. I heard another, louder, clang and felt a sharp pain on the side of my head, then everything went black.
When I regained consciousness I was laying on the edge of a strangely red lake. I sat up, while wondering what happened, I saw the origin of the coloring of the lake. There were hundreds of dead bodies all floating on top of the lake, with the tail of our airplane the only thing interrupting the bodies. The horror of this catastrophe suddenly replaced the calm I was feeling earlier. I ran away, horrified, into the jungle bordering the lake. I ran for what felt like days, until my muscles burned and I could run no more. I fell down. lost in my delirious state I could hardly grip reality, much less navigate a Peruvian jungle; so I slept.
When I awoke there was a group of people surrounding me, dressed like tribesmen, but unthreatening. These people took me to their village, one of thatched huts and ancient customs. The village was only made up of around 10 or 15 huts, ranging in size from 10 feet in diameter to somewhere near 50. The largest hut sat atop a hill, obviously the tribe’s leader lived here. The villagers led me to a small hut decorated with animal bones and feathers of every hue. I tried to tell the tribesmen of my predicament but, unsurprisingly, they could not understand.
They took me to what I figured was a medicine man. He hastily bandaged my wounds and gave a murky, purple-brown, syrup. I tried some but it was very bitter, the shaman urged me to drink and would not take no for an answer. I drank it to get it over with and afterward drank much water to remove the taste from my mouth. The man made me lie in a bed made of some sort of grass; after sleeping in the jungle even a rudimentary bed was extremely appreciated.
Soon after lying down a strange feeling came over me. Within I felt completely and utterly changed. I was seeing things that I couldn’t imagine could exist but they looked and felt more real than anything I had ever felt before. The bitter drink he made must have been ayahausca, a drink that shamans use to try and heal emotional trauma through psychedelic experiences. I was walking through the jungle, a jungle ever more complex in sights and sounds than anything I had ever experienced. As I walked small black bugs poured out of the trees and advanced toward me; I could not let these insects touch me. I knew, as if in a dream, that if they touched me I would be forever lost in insanity. As the insects were about to engulf me a lady approached, dressed in green and holding a torch that burned all of the colors of the rainbow. The bugs were repulsed by the purity of the light and scuttled back to their hiding place.
The woman approached and signaled me to follow her. I followed by the light of her torch to the lake where the airplane was, but instead of dead bodies there were only the passengers floating toward the heavens. I realized that I should not mourn the loss of all these people but instead look forward to how I was to assure my family of my wellbeing. I learned that I cannot worry about things in the past but instead only worry about what is happening now and in the future, only looking to the past for reference.
When I came out of the trance I felt extremely nauseated and vomited in a bucket provided by the shaman. I spent the night in that same bed and in the morning decided that I had to somehow figure out a way to communicate that I needed to get to some mass civilization. I went to the largest hut in the village. I tried to communicate with the chief about my situation but he interrupted me by asking if I spoke English. This was very surprising but he explained that Amazonian explorers often visited his tribe and he learned the language to help the explorers navigate the jungle. I explained my predicament and he told me of a small town to the east.
That afternoon a tribesman led me through the jungle to the settlement and there I was left. I asked around and was told of a bus to the capital, Lima, where I could find a way home. When I arrived in Lima I contacted my family and assured them of my wellbeing and told them of what happened. They urged me to come home immediately but I had already decided to stay with the tribe the rest of my scheduled vacation, and perhaps even longer.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Carson and his school oriented adventure.
Carson Walls, a self proclaimed recent historian, all around scholar of unnecessary facts, and one of slight insanity. Born and raised in Athens, Georgia, Carson walls has been in school all of his cognizant life, from preschool to highschool thinking has been his singular occupation. Thinking, primarily, about things he takes no joy in nor cares enough to succeed in. Carson only thrives to stop thinking about joyless activities such as quadratic equations and other algebraic functions (don't tell Mrs. Scott).
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