The Brothers K.

I really like Hamlet. It's about someone who can't make up his mind; constantly debating whether his efforts will be worth the results. In the play, Hamlet is envious of his friend Horatio's level moods, while he progressively becomes more irrational from inner pain. Hamlet operates in extremes, wildly swinging from one feeling to the next. If The Brothers Karamazov is going to be likened to Hamlet, Dimitri is definitely him. The borderline insane, passionate and suicidal make great heroes since they are more interesting (and better) examples of humanity.

Alexey is definitely "your humble narrator," observing Dmitri, the flawed brother.

Some books are known to have the main character observe the actual hero, like in The Great Gatsby. I'll mention Fight Club as well, since the dynamic character is all in the narrator's head. Sometimes this perspective allows for a more fuller picture. There is actually a line in Fight Club about how Freud said our fathers are our models for God. Hamlet's father is murdered and he is immediately disillusioned. Although I am only on page 357 in the novel, we all know that Fyodor Karamazov will be murdered as well. When Dmitri repeats his brother Ivan's words "everything is lawful" referring to a world without god, he may have been contemplating to commit the murder himself. Freud loved this book, along with hamlet since they are similar stories; the death of the father creating indecisive, troubling times for the son.

I also finished the part where Ivan gets irrationally angry at Smerdykov and was somewhat fascinated by the whole exchange. After considering what could be troubling him, he regrets not expressing himself better to Alyosha and his views on the exsistance of god in the famous chapter "The Grand Inquisitor". But I think the source of anger that Ivan can't put his finger on, is that he sees a bit of himself in Smerdykov. What he desires is credence in his ideas, and certainly has the flaw of pretentiousness about him. He describes Smerdykov as having this "bruised vanity" that he found unbecoming. Both are angry young men, still smarting from not lovely childhoods.

Chloe and Jackie

I bought a rat for my seventh grade science fair project and named her Chloe. She was black on her head and shoulders and white everywhere else. I kept her and actually taught her some tricks; running across my outstretched arm, standing up when held my fingers above her head, and almost could make her fetch sunflower seeds. She died my freshman year. I think it was my fault. I didn't think Chloe was that old, but I suddenly noticed one night that she was rather thin, and lying immobile next to her wheel. Guilty thoughts raced through my mind as I struggled to recall when I last fed her; it had to be the night before. In hindsight she was almost 3 years old which is the typical life span. What follows is semi-embarrassing, because some might say she's just a rat. She was still breathing, so I took some of her food, crushed it up and mixed it with a little water then tried to make her eat it. It was no-go, and a bit panicy at this point I called my mom to come downstairs and help me. My mom didn't really have any other ideas. Then, I heard Chloe exhale her last breath, and it rattled as it left her body. I've always thought death rattles were only an expression, but to witness one is chilling. In my hands, her warm little body went cold then stiff. I now knew what it felt like to have something die in my hands. Chloe now felt as stiff as the rats we dissected in middle school.

A similarly guilty experiance happened with a filly I had named Jackie. I recall the morning I last saw her alive, not really seeing her since I just blindly put her feed in the pan. If I would have looked, I might have noticed that Jackie had a bleeding gash on her neck. When I got home from school, I didn't care to check on her, and went inside. My dad came back from work and said that Jackie was dead in the pasture. I went out and looked at her, lying in the middle of the pasture with her tounge sticking out and felt terrible. Staring at her as my brother and my dad talked, I heard them saying that she must have been bleeding a long time, almost since that morning. Remembering where she was standing when I fed her, I went over to that fence by the pan, and could see it was generously smeared with blood. I must have been standing right next to her when she was bleeding to death, and walked to the bus.

Found Poem

Last Answer

Note the first
the first line deletes a character
inserts a character
displays
an expression
or 2
after an expresssion
is evaluated
scroll-
scroll incorporated message
store the answer up to a point
then clear all memory


I pulled this from my calculator instructions.

Sonnet

The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto for "little song" or "little sound". So, a sonnet is something Shakespeare wrote a lot; he wrote about 154 of them. One can even be a "sonneteer" according to Wikipedia. English sonnets are fourteen lines, and are written in iambic pentameter. That means an unemphasized syllable is followed by an emphasized syllable, and this pattern repeats 5 times. Sonnets usually are arguing something, like how more beautiful your girlfriend/boyfriend is than anyone else. Our assignment is to actually write a sonnet, which is cool since it seems like one of those things you would never do unless it was an assignment. I suppose I can think of a couple "sonnet-worthy" people, to use Ashley's Seinfeld-esque word.

only a fadograph of a yestern scene

It is great that we're reading James Joyces's Araby since it illustrates perfectly how awful it is to think that every story must have some easily digestible message. There are so many things going on in this story that to squeeze it into a one statement summation would be tragic, not to mention difficult.
The description seems like what must be echos of Joyce's own memories of early 20th century Ireland. Lighting is huge in early memories, and the way he pays attention to it in the short story Araby is something. Almost like the way Alyosha Karamazov recalls the slanting rays of the setting sun in his beloved early memory of his mother.When the boys are playing in the street "light from the kitchen windows filled the areas". The way Mangan's sister is described and how she is lit accentuates her pale neck and purity. There also are undercurrents of sex (Mangan's sister's white border of her petticoat), money (Mrs. Mercer and the mentions of coins), and religion (the priest who died, and the garden of eden).

I like how Joyce thought commonplace occurrences, like a schoolboy crush, are what bring about epiphanies. First crushes can be exciting, and seem to be a good reason to be alive if not for anything else. For a brief shining moment not everything is as bland as the boy's surroundings. But when his quest to bring something back from the street bazaar to her is spoiled by something as unromantic as being too late, he seems to lose all idyllic romantic notions entirely.

Female Archetypes

So I googled feminine archetypes, and I found this archetype-based tool called The Enneagram Theory of Personality.
It "organizes personal types around spiritual, cognitive and emotional behaviors and tendencies".

One = The Perfectionist

Two = The Caregiver

Three = The Performer

Four = The Tragic Romantic

Five = The Observer

Six = The Devil’s Advocate

Seven = The Epicure

Eight = The Boss, and

Nine = The Mediator.


The female mythic types are:

Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt and Moon—Competitor and Sister

Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Crafts—Strategist and Father’s Daughter

Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth and Temple—Wise Woman and Maiden Aunt

Hera, Goddess of Marriage—Commitment Maker and Wife

Demeter, Goddess of Grain—Nurturer and Mother

Persephone, The Maiden and Queen of the Underworld—Receptive Woman and

Mother’s Daughter

Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty—Creative Woman and Lover.


The set of female archetypes include:

The Boss

The Spunky Kid

The Crusader

The Waif

The Librarian

The Nurturer

The Seductress

The Free Spirit

Eternal Recurrence

I had never heard the term until Sexson went over it in class. Then I realized how many films and stories retell this idea. There's Groundhog Day, of course, because Bill Murray has to relive February 2nd countless times until finally he wakes up and it's a new day. Not before he discovers he can exploit the fact, like killing himself, stealing, drinking or eating as much as he wants without the consequences. Ussually the character must have an epiphany of some sort before the cycle can finally end.

Also in the film Memento eternal recurrence is definitely the plot device, which works almost in the reverse as Groundhog Day. The hero has no short-term memory, due to a head injury. Everyone around him remembers what has occurred, but he must figure it out constantly. He can remember who he his and everything up until the accident, but after that, anything that occurred about fifteen minutes ago is forgotten. Tattoos adorn his body, information gathered to help him solve his wife's murder. Across his chest reads, "John G. raped and murdered my wife". He collects evidence and has to build up trust with everyone over and over again.

Even this movie that recently came out called "Moon", seems to contain elements of eternal recurrance. It is about a guy who works alone on the moon in a space station, and has two weeks left of his 3 year shift. Major plot spoilers follow, etc. One day he goes out in his rover and has a crash and dies. The next shot shows him getting suited up, going out again and finding the overturned rover. It turns out that he has been cloned every three years instead of being returned home. When he finds the cargo hold where the bodies are stored, the room stretches out beyond what the eye can see. That he figured it out now, after countless times repeating this cycle, brings to mind many questions. One almost wonders if he can remember his past as the previous clones, as if they aren't completely a different minds. Like the Jungian concept of a collective unconscious.

Which is why the Misfit looks familiar to the Grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find", and not only because it dawns on her that the Misfit's her son. And why Arnold Friend tells Connie "Sure you saw me before, you just don't remember."

It is like the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the you watch the ape messing around in a pile of bones. He stops and stares at one, scrutinizing it for a fragile moment, then scoots toward it. There has been generations of his species and he is the one who picks up the bone and starts whacking it triumphantly on the ground.

Groundhog Day

9:30 woke up. Didn't remember that I was supposed to be extra observant today until I walked in to the bathroom. The radio cheerfully said "....happy Groundhog Day!" as I got into the shower. It then played "I Got Friends in Low Places". I thought about Gannon weddings, where this would ussually be one of the last song of the evening. At this point, the overweight brother would be wasted and dancing his ass off.
10:30 Went down for breakfast.
11:00 Crossed the street towards the duck pond, and I wasn't paying too much attention but it seemed that two cars narrowly missed me.
11:15 Walked into math
left the room and sat down at the couch by the window in wilson hall. Liz walked down the stairs, saw me and said what's up. Told her I was waiting for my anthropology class.
12:10 Switched couches and a girl sat down across from me, and said "Doing the reading for class? Me too."
Minutes passed, and I asked how far she was. She stared at me for a second as if she originally expected me to be inanimate or something, then said "oh, halfway through the second chapter."
Stared at two guys on their cell phones outside. One was leaned against a pillar, the other was doing slow deliberate steps back and forth on the sidewalk. Only under the guise of intense conversation, could one do that without looking really odd, I thought.
12:40 walked into class and sat next to a girl who talked to me once
watched a powerpoint about the professor's trip to the Congo in 1985
1:40 entered the shwag. Jesus/Charlie sat down next to me.
2:00 got to my dorm and had to pour out my backpack to find my key. Have no idea why I put in there instead of my pocket.
Walked in and threw down my stuff, then crashed on my bed. Layed there for a while thinking, and irrational worries swirled around my head settling in my stomach.
3:00 read some cinderella stories. Alex came in and we talked a bit, then I played bass
4:00 -5:00 Played more bass
5:30 Went to dinner then attempted to work on my blog in the south hedges computer lab. Jessica came in and pulled up a chair next to me.
6:00 Went and got coffee with her
7:30 Jessica persuaded me to stay in the 1st floor lobby for the free self-defense class.
8:30 Managed to slip away
9:30 My brother called and we had a hilarious conversation
10:15 Went on my roommate's computer. Looked around wikipedia, and read Roger Ebert's new movie reviews. Talked to CJ on facebook.
11:00 Read the first two chapters of The Brother's Karamazov
1:30 Went to bed

Earliest Memory

The earliest memory I have is being in Oklahoma for some trip. I was three. We we were outside a bar, and it was very bare country around us. My dad was pulling my hand towards the car and on the concerete lot in front of the bar, I saw a turtle. To me at the time, it was the size of a dinner plate. I shreiked "Turtle!" and it took a while for my dad to actually turn and acknowledge my excited tugging. A young-ish couple were outside, and the guy picked it up, turned it over and let me stroke its shell.

I had this dream when I was four or five. I think I must have been wondering if I remembered being born. In the dream I was born and I got off the steel table thing and started walking around. I was wearing a diaper. The doctor was wearing a ponytail. I walked down the hall, and sitting on a chair was a woman with curly black hair and a green coat. She was holding a ziplock baggie with chocolate chip cookies. She smiled, gave me one and I woke up.

I was stung by a bee on the eyebrow when I was four. We were running up the steps to my aunt Elaine's house in Great Falls and there was this bush with a perpetual droning of bees. Because of this, it was customary to run as fast as possible into the house and this time I was last and happened to get stung. I erupted in tears, and my cousin Lannie got me in the house and put this white goop from an orange container on my eyebrow. I remember having to walk around County Market this way. The next day i woke up to watch cartoons and noticed that my eye had swelled shut. So the whole day I ran around pretending I was a pirate.

I remember one day staring at the piano and thinking about how two years ago, the year was 1994

I remember this one baby sitter when I was four. Her name was Vida and I really disliked her. She cooked this lunch (if you can call it such) that was a mixture of hamburger, corn and ugh. There was muffins for dessert and she told me I could have one, but I couldn't have two unless I cleaned my plate. I tried to tough it out, but I soon gave up. She gave me a muffin, and when I finished it, I chewed on the wrapper so greedily, she said "that's disgusting" and ended up giving me another one.

On the first day of kindergarten I remember wondering why we all had name tags when none of us could read...

Smooth Talk

Joyce Carol Oates is a better writer than Joyce Chopra is a director. It is usually futile to argue that the movie should have presented a story exactly how it was written. However, I think the way the ending was written in the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is actually very filmable. While it is ambigous, the final three shots of the movie "Smooth Talk" leave some things unclear anyway. For instance,the way the audience isn't sure if Connie was raped or not. The absotutely jarring thing, is the way the film simplifies the Arnold Friend character. In the movie, since Connie returns alive and her death isn't up to debate, his status as a fantastic character is no more. He is reduced to "some creep". Arnold Friend is supposed to be "the imagination, the devil, death, and all that" according to Oates herself. It is much more satisfying to speculate, then to have it in your face and somewhat obvious. Perhaps I shouldn't rag on it though, when I have only seen select scenes that were shown to us in class.

Why the little e's?

e.e. cummings poem "in Just-" describes a scene that is ambiguous and has an interesting juxtaposition of childhood play and foreboding descriptions of a certain balloon man. At first reading I did take the balloon man as a somewhat benevolent figure. Yet, as I looked over it again, the words "goat-footed" , "queer", "lame" of course do not signify good things. "goat-footed" definitely gives you the image of a cloven-hoofed fiend like in the previous story. The nature of the words set against the backdrop of such innocence only makes the children seem more and more like prey. I have read posts where some have taken this purely as a portrait of joyful springtime. I disagree, yet is it perhaps a comment on the duality of our perceptions? Is the balloon man a benign creature, or a sinister monster?. It could be left unclear because it would reflect how such a suspicion would actually play out; you'd never know.

Where are you going, where have you been?

This story made me think about the Nirvana song "Rape Me". Although it is actually an anti-rape song, at first I thought it was about being desperate to the point of desiring such a thing. Connie is sure of herself; she is aware of her mother's jealousy. Yet as with any 15 year old, she is riddled with insecurities. She is actually attracted to Arnold Friend in a way, despite how obviously sinister his demeanor. She is attracted to someone who is attracted to her, especially so brazenly as Arnold Friend. I read a post where someone argued that Connie was to blame since she went along with Mr. Friend. While this claim seems a bit simplistic and irrelevant, it did make me think about the attraction aspect.
I overheard a conversation once at the lunch table in high school between two girls, where one of them remarked, "Well, I'd be getting raped. You would be having sex with a stranger."

Its very cool how Arnold Friend's name can be written as "A. Friend" and is only one letter away from "An old Friend". There's actually a story called The Three Brothers by J.K. Rowling where the wisest brother greets death "as an old friend." Along with his alarmingly extensive knowledge of her and his ill-fitting boots, this reinforces his parallels to the devil.
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"contains elements of the cautionary tales of youth. The kinds where it would be very unwise to mimic the main character's actions. The author Joyce Carol Oates dedicated her story to Bob Dylan, and his song "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" was an influence:

You must leave now, take what you need you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out, the saints are comin' through
And its all over now, baby blue

The images evoked are of departure and a loss of innocence, like how Connie is taken from her house by Arnold Friend. Of course "the vagabond who's rapping at you door/Is standing in the clothes you once wore" also relates.

First Day

When Sexson walked in and said his little joke about the atmosphere being as somber as an Ag class, I figured that this is going to be an enjoyable course. I've never had a blog, yet there are a couple I admire. So this will be somewhat interesting to do. I am rather curious about Dostoevsky so it's exciting that we are going to be reading his novel The Brothers Karamozov.