Killer in "Where are you going, Where have you been?"

Joyce Carol Oates´s inspiration for writing “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”  resides in her reading of a tale by Charles Schmid plus her listening to Bob Dylan’s song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. Oates’ curiosity came after reading about this killer who seduced three young girls, even though he was somewhat weird.

Oates, in her writing of her story, wanted to tell the story from the point of view of the potential victim. This victim was Connie, who succumbed as the three girls from the stories Oates had read did before. She was caught by the killer, in this case a peculiar man named Arnold Friend and even though she was scared of him, she felt a certain attraction for him. Even though at first she didn’t want to go with, she ended up doing it; despite the fact that she had realized how weird he was, that he seemed older than she thought at first he was and also that he walked in a strange way doe to his stuffed boots, which are some of the characteristics that this character shares with Schmid’s character.

Connie, was presents as Oates’s way of criticizing society, presenting her as the prototypical American girl of the time, with superficial preoccupations who wasn’t interested in anything but having fun. She is also the representation of the exaggeration of violence to women, which is the prototypical object of violence.  The attraction that Connie felt for this man was based on her desire for someone who offered her more than she could imagine. This also makes clear the social view of women as an object erotic object.

Even though, the end of the story is not really explicit about what happened to Connie, knowing the inspiration for Oates makes it a little bit more clear what was Connie’s fate.

I let you a short preview about a video representing this story.

Different visions of love

This video shows several kids talking about what they think love is. I think this is related to Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, in which four characters, two married couples, talk about their concept of love. For all of them, love is a different thing. All of them have different visions about this concept, even though they are in a relationship --marriage-- based on love.  They basically base their lives on that, but fail to define it properly according to what they feel.

In the case of this video, these kids try to describe what love is but, unlike the characters of the story, they are unexperienced on the matter: they are not married, they haven't been involved in a relationship, they haven't had a partner, they probably haven't loved anybody yet. However, they have a notion of what love is about and its implications (getting married and having a family).

The characters in the novel are talking out of their experiences (like Terri and the experience with her ex-husband), but these children have no experiences on this subject at all. Therefore, what these kids say is what society has shown to them about love, what they have seen and heard. These kids reflect the very dissimilar visions of love that we have in our society. However, all of them come to the same point: love ends in marriage and in having babies. As a society, is that what love is for us? What are the messages that we are transmitting about love? The vision of the kids is different from the ones of the characters since, on the one hand, the latter are more experienced than the former and, on the other hand, they are affected by alcohol and they tell the truth from their inner feelings, from what they really believe.

I could be useful for us to think about what love is for us and about how we express that love in the world (at the end, that's what kids see and absorb). We should think how we explain and express love when we talk about love.

The value of life...

It was definitely a hard time that I went through when reading Carver´s story “A small, good thing” The presence of a child I think is what caught my attention, even more when the little kid was hit by a car. At first glance, it appears that everything is going to be fine. That what doctors said is true and the boy sleeping long hours was just a matter of the shock because of the accident.

In order to get what will happen at the end of the novel, I continued reading and it wasn’t easy, going page after page without seeing a solution. It was almost possible to put yourself into that terrible situation and you heart started to beat faster. Firstly, I thought it might be because I´m a mother, but then I came to realize that is not a matter of parenthood but a matter of life, and how it can be taken away from us at any time.

This thought usually came to our mind when we know people that die suddenly. Two days ago a neighbor from childhood, two years older than me, died because of a heart attack. The same day just a few streets away from my home a men was hit by a car and died immediately.

The boy finally died, after two days of profound sleeping. His parents were profoundly amazed and sad about the death of their son and at the same time they recover a relation that might have been destroyed when everything was fine. As we know the details of the story, the cinnamon rolls offered by the barker gave them a restorative experience as well as the conversation with him.

It is difficult to express how this story makes you fell but most important is to showcase the importance of relations in life and how this kid of horrible situations from the outside in my case or the inside in the case of Scotty´s parents makes us aware that life can end at any time and that we have to enjoy every minute of it. That life is valuable no matter what happens and it can be taken away from us in a wink.

“La muerte esta tan segura de vencernos que nos da toda una vida de ventaja” José Piquer, 1822

It was difficult to translate the phrase and have the same meaning, that is why I left it in Spanish, but we still understand what it means, and how is related with the story. I also wanted to show a representation of the story, and I looked for one in YouTube, but every personification did not express what I felt, so I definitely believe your imagination and feelings toward the fictional work can do a better job.

Small Avalanches by Joyce Carol Oates (Female empowerment)

First of all, I would like to  present the plot of Small Avalanches by Joyce Carol Oates, the story that I'm going to write about.

The story occurs in rural Ontario,  in which Nancy a 13 year old teenage girl has a dangerous encounter with a stranger. After visting her uncle, she was returning home walking under the sofocating heat of the deserted road when a strange and charming man started to follow her. At the beginning, she was confused and intimidated by the man's attention since she was not used to received this kind of attention from grown up men. After a while, Nancy was going to cut path through a shortcut but the man followed her regardless of her refusal. The man follwed Nancy, but after a while, overcome by the exhaustion he collapes and Nacy leaves him.

While I was reading this story, I was intrigued by the man's intention. It is not clear if he wanted to hurt Nancy or if he just was being friendly, but an adult man following a 13 year old girl through the road is pretty suspicious. I never imagined how the story could finished, but I suspected the intentions of the man. 

Nancy was a pretty naive character, she was kind of suspicious about the man, but she wasn't fully aware of the danger. What I love about her character is how her personality  is playful and childish, but at the same time is kind of mean and pretty dark at some moments. For example, when she  throwed a rock at the man. At this moment, I started thinking: who was really the victim? who was in danger? At the beginning, I feared for Nancy's well being, but I realized that she could take care of herself. This fact present in the story reflects how Oates presents female empowerment. The lead character, a little girl knows how to take care of herself, and she took decisions by her own.

I compare this story with a movie that maybe some of you have watched: Hard Candy. Nancy really have some resemblance with Hayley, the main character of this movie. I strongly recommend this movie if you haven't watched, and if you did, you could share your thoughts about my opinion.

What is love?

Doing some research on a definition for love after reading Carver's short story "What we talk about when we talk about love", I found an article made by The Guardian, a british newspaper, in which many experts try to explain love.

Here's the link: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/13/what-is-love-five-theories

So, a physicist describes love as chemistry, just like the chemistry that Nick and Laura felt while they were discussing about love drinking Gin. Even though they never used that word to define what they felt for each other, it is understood that all the caresses and holding hands and touching during the reunion mean that they had the urge to do it because their body were releasing chemicals.

A psychotherapist states that there are many types of love. I'd like to mention one that made me recall the reading of Carver's short story: Pragma. Pragma is described as "the mature love that develops over a long period of time between long-term couples and involves actively practising goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding". This made me think of Mel's story about the old couple in the hospital that just wanted to see each other. And also of Mel's relationship with Terri, who have been a long time together so he feels very attached to her.

Then, a romantic novelist describes love and adds another perspective: "What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air – ..... -- Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming, a physical pain". This made me think of Terri's ex lover who wanted to kill her and Mel's opinion on it. I think Ed may have felt deprived of it, that is why it became an obsession and since he could not have her, he wanted to kill her, but ultimately killed himself. He loved her (contrary to what Mel thought), but maybe not in a healthy way.

For me, love can come and go but we are the ones who should learn what is right for us and learn to keep it. 

Which's your Cathedral?

Reflecting upon Carver's short story Cathedral, I realized that all humans beings seek for a Cathedral in life. What do I mean by that? I mean that all human beings are expecting to get something that makes them feel somewhere else.  Something that makes them feel in calm, cozy and pleased. Something which was just made for each of us. It can be a place, a person, or a situation which you would never reject of facing, because the pleasure of  facing it  is enormous.
A Cathedral can be the perfect place  for you. A cathedral makes you feel out of the  mainstream world. A cathedral makes you forget how miserable your life is; and the problems you are going throw. Although, the pleasure of being there is limited, it helps you to take a rest from the outside world without going away from it. A cathedral is the Oasis in  the dessert. It is a placebo for your soul.

I am pretty sure, that you all bloggers are  having a stressful week. Full of tests to sit, projects to hand in, presentations, etc. But you all want to get done with it soon in order to feel free and do the things that really makes you happy. Things that makes you forget that you are a busy and miserable undergraduate student, who cannot experience life as it is, because university is a barrier which hinders people from having a life.
Nevertheless we all have moments in which we can connect  with our inner selves. Moments that sometimes last a bit, but can feed our souls.
Which would be your moment/ place/ thing/ person? Which would be your Cathedral?

I am attaching mine = )



Impressive, stuning, magnificent, wide, calm, Chilean, mine. The Atacama Desert ( Playa de Rodillo, Caldera, Region de Atacama)

Carver's Short Film: A Small, Good Thing

A Small, Good Thing short film

I found out this short film now, right after the test. I think this is an amazing film and reflects, of course, Carver's creation.
It takes almost all elements from the novel (it, of course music and there are little differences, plus the ending is different, but I think that that is part of the creation process. But in overal , it follows the same structure as in the Carver's story). I could actually feel the same emotions as when I read it. As some know when we commented about A Small, Good Thing, I could feel the suffering of the characters since I had health problems two years ago. From one of a sudden, I had a huge pain in my stomach and needed to go to the urgency treatments. It took a while to the doctors to finally discover I had ulcers and they opened up the stomach "walls" letting the gastric acids burn my organs -in the mean time they did the testing, I had such a bad time and pain killers couldn't do much. Finally went to surgery and it all worked out perfectly.
But still, my parent's faces were awful. I could see their stress and desperation just with looking at them. The same way these parents feel in A Small, Good Thing.
Turning back into the short film, the benefits of watching it is that you could see  the desparation (actually see unlike the story in which you need to just picture it in your mind). You can see how in this seventy-minute film the emotions of the characters change during the plot. The end, as in novel, is also well performed.

I recomend this film for all of you to apply it in your classes if you would like to talk about Carver. I think this is a great material to work in classes. There are a bunch of things you can make your students do (maybe this is not directly related but still, I wated to point it out).

I hope you enjoy it and make comments about it.