Bright Lights, Big Pity

You are not meant for this. But you are here, thrashing your way through the water, trying to find a way to breathe. Ah, the pool. Chlorine flooding your nostrils. Fast. Time is of the essence. Are these your last moments? You look at your sister, pleading for help. How did you get here? Your family, the people who treat you so kindly, have such high expectations that you cannot meet. You have tried, many times, to make them proud—yet here you are, taking in what seems to be your final breaths—just to make them proud.

Swimming is in your blood—it is something your father, your grandfather, and his grandfather were experts at. You are expected to do the same, but you can't find it in yourself to do so. You put effort into impressing your loved ones, that’s for sure. You do what you can to prove yourself to them. You tried to be athletic, to keep to yourself, to stay out of the way. You wonder what your life would be like without these expectations (although people will always find a way to make you feel incompetent—that’s just how it is). This often makes you wonder—will you ever amount to anything? Is there any hope, that maybe someday your loved ones will appreciate your choices in life?

Your sister wraps you in a towel and lets out a sigh of disappointment. You can’t help but to think that she is angry with you. You let her down again. How could you be so careless? You stare blankly off into space, seemingly unable to ask the questions you so desperately need the answers to. Do they really care about you, or is this all just an act? These questions plague your thoughts. Maybe it’s the fact that your father refuses to give you food all day. Maybe it’s how they all leave you alone for what seems like forever, and hardly acknowledge you when they see you again. It seems that you are somewhere in between being neglected and being the favorite child. How can this be if you can’t even prove yourself to your parents and your siblings? You feel useless—after all, what kind of Labrador retriever doesn’t know how to swim?

But that’s just how it is.

Navy Blue(s)

Social Hierarchy plays a major role in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Austen illustrates the differences between having happiness due to wealth, and having happiness due to the people you surround yourself with.

Having money does not mean having happiness. Sir Walter Elliot tried to trade his wealth for the mask of elegance and pride in his class. Obsessed with himself, the baronet reads Baronetage after reading Baronetage, again. Walter holds their position in terms of social class against potential owners of their old home. For example, Walter doesn’t hesitate to reject those in the Navy; he says, “Yes; it is in two points offensive to me; I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honors which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of” (Austen 27). He draws attention to how joining the Navy weathers a man’s features, making them out to be something much less than his ideal image of the owner of his home.

Lady Russell shares the same point of view as Sir Walter in terms of men from the Navy. Because of his weathered appearance, She tries to convince Anne not to marry Captain Wentworth. The only things that give Wentworth any worth, in Russell’s opinion, are his social class, his looks, and the way he treats women.

Persuasion adequately portrays the meaningless of social classes in the 1800’s. Through characters so self-indulged and obsessed with their stance socially, to characters like Anne who selflessly accept others for who they are.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print.

You've got A. Friend in me

Everything Connie chased after appeared outside of her house with a flashy paint job and bad intentions. Raised without sufficient parental guidance, but instead with the idea that physical attraction is everything, Connie comes to experience the consequences of her vulnerability all because she can’t help but to put herself in danger.

Wegs views Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? through a religious literary lens. Being the master of disguise and manipulation, Arnold’s front represents the unrealistic ideal boy during the mid-sixties, implying that he embodies not only Connie’s infatuation with pop culture, but also Satan. Wegs explains that Friend’s intentions are  “Kind of psychological manifestation of deep powers, deep imaginative, mysterious powers, which are always with us, and what has in the past been called supernatural.” (Wegs 104).  Arnold Friend is the exact representation of what Connie wants in a boy, which is no coincidence.

Wegs proposes to the reader that the purpose of Arnold Friend’s name is that it can be easily be misinterpreted as “fiend,” and that, “his initials would well stand for Arch Fiend.” (Wegs 103). Although it would be clever that Arnold Friend shares the same title as the devil, I believe that his name is just another deception to add to the suspense of the story and to his pseudo kindness. Giving himself the name “Arnold Friend” and giving himself the ability to introduce himself as “A. Friend” before he abducts a fifteen year old girl seems like something he would do.

One could argue that Arnold Friend’s manipulation caused Connie to eventually let go of hope and turn to leave with him, but Wegs offers another option; she suggests “the forces of her society, her family, and herself combine to make her fate inescapable.” (Wegs 106). Because her father couldn’t care less about where she’s been and her mother’s competitive nature in terms of beauty influences Connie’s flirtatious nature, her fate with Arnold was inevitable.

Oates asks two simple questions in the title of her story, and Arnold Friend gives an answer: “The place where you came from ain’t there anymore, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out.” (Oates 9).

Works Cited

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Print.

Wegs, Joyce M. “’Don’t You Know Who I Am?’: The Grotesque in Oate’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’” Journal of Narrative Technique 5, 1995. Print.

Rushkoff, I've Given You All and Now I'm Mr. Nobody

“We cannot go back. That’s why it’s hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible.” (Dormael, Mr. Nobody). The film Mr. Nobody abandons a traditional, linear narrative structure by allowing the viewer to explore the several different lives lead by Nemo Nobody, the last mortal alive. Avoiding a linear narrative by creating many potential storylines through one person’s life, Director Jaco Van Dormael captures the endless possibilities one is presented throughout one’s lifetime.

One of the first scenes consists of Nemo as a one hundred and seventeen year old man who is attempting to recollect his past. At the age of nine, Nemo was faced with an impossible choice- to live with his mother or to live with his father after they separated. The two possibilities are explored, both of which are followed by the possibilities of marrying three different women in three different lives, and subsequently his deaths which are caused by either driving off of the side of the road into a lake, crashing his bike into a tree, and even by being inside of a combusting spaceship on a mission to spread one of his three wives’ ashes on Mars after she was blown up on their wedding day. If any part of this plot sounds confusing to you, then Dormael is doing his job of directing a nonlinear narrative correctly. Douglas Rushkoff states, “There is plot-there are many plots- but there is no overarching story, no end. There are so many plots, in fact, that an ending tying everything up seems inconceivable, even beside the point.” (Rushkoff 34). Rushkoff, referring to the many different aspects in the plots of fantasy, exemplifies the endless options that the fantasy genre leaves to the reader. Although the different possible outcomes of Nemo’s life (or lives) are shown, Dormael does not directly give the viewer a straight answer as to which life was really led by Nemo. By leaving this aspect of the plot unsaid, Dormael follows both the ideals made by Rushkoff and the theme of his film: there are endless possibilities.

Pulp Fiction, a film described by Rushkoff as an example of a nonlinear narrative, has a lot in common with Mr. Nobody in terms of multiple story lines. Rushkoff explains that, “On one level we are confused; on another, we are made privy to new kinds of information and meaning. The reordering of sequential events allows us to relate formerly nonadjacent moments of the story to one another in way we couldn’t if they had been ordered in linear fashion.” (Rushkoff 34). By showing the events that happened in each and every one of Nemo’s lives, Dormael demonstrates to the viewers how the idea of multiple storylines allows them to fall together in order to create one general plot by parting from the idea of linear narratives.

Another way that Mr. Nobody differs from a traditional narrative is not only the fact that it shows the past, but how the future is described. Due to the discovery of how to create renewable cells, humans accomplish their goal by becoming immortal. Because of this immortality and Nemo’s lack of it, the movie features events taking place in year 2092, and therefore exemplifies to the viewer the ways in which people communicate in the future. Each immortal, along with their stem cell compatible pig, watches Nemo recollect on each life he lived. By the time one of the futuristic eye-like cameras film Nemo saying his last words, the whole world is alerted with holograms and every television zeros in. 

Mr. Nobody explores the themes shared with Douglas Rushkoff in Present Shock by pushing the boundaries of traditional narratives. Dormael explores the different ways in which narratives can be told in Mr. Nobody, a movie that holds multiple paths, bending the ideals of traditional narratives. “Every path is the right path. Everything could have been anything else and it would have just as much meaning.” (Dormael, Mr. Nobody)

Works Cited

Mr. Nobody. Dir. Jaco Van Dormael. Perf. Jared Leto. Pan-Européenne, 2009. Film

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. N.p.: n.p. Print

The Art of Feasting

While reading A Moveable Feast, one could say that Hemingway didn’t care much for what others thought; he was straightforward and by looking at what he said about the authors when he wrote the memoir years later, one can assume that he might have taken advantage of their friendships by deliberately pointing out their faults to the reader. For example, Hemingway often described Scott Fitzgerald as a drunkard to the reader by making statements such as, “[But] when he was drunk he would usually come to find me and, drunk, he took almost as much pleasure interfering with my work as Zelda did interfering with his. This continued for years but, for years too, I had no more loyal friend than Scott when he was sober.” (Hemingway 46).  By talking negatively about those he is observing, Hemingway takes the risk to clear up any potential miscommunications with the reader and instead establishes an honest tone. According to Hemingway, “you had to be prepared to kill a man, know how to do it and really know that you would do it in order not to be interfered with.” (Hemingway 28). The ways in which Hemingway was brought up most likely had an effect on his blunt style and lack of concern for others.

Ernest Hemingway’s writing style could very well be described as untraditional, as it is laid back compared to the style of other authors. His subdued tone could be either a product of the time period in which he wrote the book, his depression, or a combination of the two. It is also possible that Hemingway's series of electroshock therapy is a contributor to the ways in which his perception of time is altered, or how he remembers information in general. “There are many sorts of hunger… Memory is hunger.” (Hemingway 57).

We study how information is communicated through language in class, and that is why I believe we read A Moveable Feast. By studying the ways in which Hemingway chose to make connections with the reader, we can attempt to make similar connections with our readers in the future.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964. Print.