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.

Oates' "Where are you going, Where have you been?" as social criticism

After reading Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Where are you going, Where have you been?" I thought that JCO was trying to make a criticism to society. This story written in 1966 talks about a girl named Connie who enjoyed being liked by older men. She would often sexualize herself in order to be attractive to men; she was concerned about her looks, and she liked to take pleasure from other people finding her attractive. It is not until one day a man comes to her house while she is home alone and threatens her with hurting her family if she doesn't come with him, that Connie was watching the consequences of her behavior.

It is described throughout the story that Connie has a lot of conflicts with her family, she doesn't get along with her sister who is seen by her parents as "the perfect daughter", she fights with her mom a lot, her dad works too much and when he would take them to the mall, he wouldn't ask what she and her friend did, showing that he didn't really cared about what her daughter was doing.

I believe that JCO issued a situation that is fairly common in today's society, children living in dysfunctional families which make them have certain issues such as Connie's behavior. Being constantly criticized by her mother, the lack of attention of her father, and being like the "black sheep" of the family, made her look for acceptance in her peers, which would make her too sexual even though she was only fifteen. As a consequence of her behavior, she gets between the eyes of a pervert called Arnold Friend who let her not choice but to come with him to, possibly, rape her. 

If we analyze Connie's situation, she was only looking for the acceptance she didn't get at home, and probably her dysfunctional family is the one to blame for the way she acted. It is important to understand that had she been understood and accepted by her family, she would have not have this issues with herself, even though anyone can be a victim of perverts like Arnold.

"Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.

"Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk."

Alcoholism

I was listening to the radio when Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” started to be played.  I inevitably made the connection with Carver’s stories: the both portray alcohol abuse as a way of evading meaning. In her song, Amy Winehouse denies the possibility of treatment and sees alcohol as the only way of coping with life: alcohol is losing control, is madness but is her refugee and she does not want to abandon it. Therefore, she becomes completely detached from existence. In fact, Amy makes direct reference to death when naming Mr. Hathaway who was a soul singer that killed himself:

“There's nothing you can teach me
That I can't learn from Mr. Hathaway”

Furthermore, it is quite interesting that both artists where immerse in alcoholism when becoming famous, and that somehow alcohol triggered on the one hand her music and on the other hand his writing. Somehow, on their way to avoid meaning, they actually gave meaning to their careers.
Indeed I read an interview a couple of days ago in which he talks about the story that inspired “Why don´t you dance?”:

INTERVIEWER
Could you say something about one of my favorite stories in your most recent collection? Where did the idea for “Why Don't You Dance?” originate?

CARVER
I was visiting some writer friends in Missoula back in the mid-1970s. We were all sitting around drinking and someone told a story about a barmaid named Linda who got drunk with her boyfriend one night and decided to move all of her bedroom furnishings into the backyard. They did it, too, right down to the carpet and the bedroom lamp, the bed, the nightstand, everything. There were about four or five writers in the room, and after the guy finished telling the story, someone said, “Well, who's going to write it?” I don't know who else might have written it, but I wrote it. Not then, but later. About four or five years later, I think. I changed and added things to it, of course. Actually, it was the first story I wrote after I finally stopped drinking.

Don’t be sympathetic but empathic

I thought that after reading The Hours, connectedness was no longer a word I was going to see again in the short stories. I know. I was wrong.  While reading “A small, good thing” I realized that this was no over.  In this magnificent story I could appreciate how we are all connected; no matter what we try and make an enormous effort to connect with everyone, yet we are all separate from each other.

In the story we can see that Ann and Howard are connected through the pain after their child’s accident, and how they are also connected to the baker after telling him that Scott died. This is product of empathy; a feeling we develop throughout our lives.

I found a video that explains perfectly what being empathic is, but first I want to make clear what sympathy and empathy are:

Sympathy implies recognizing that someone’s suffering while empathy is sharing someone’s suffering. So, empathy is characterized as a deeper emotional experience: putting into one’s shoes.

The Power of Empathy

Empathy is fully represented in this short story, for the characters try to understand one another and even if they cannot really do it, they try their best anyway. For instance, despite having no child, the baker understands the grieve Scott’s parents are living after losing their kid. He sees them incredibly sad, so he opens himself up and tells them more about himself. He is able to take the parent’s perspective by being empathic. He connects with something in himself that shares the same feeling the parents are suffering.

Another moment of sympathy that I liked in the story was when Ann comes across an African American family that was waiting for news about their child. They thought she was a nurse and asked her about the condition of their boy, though she said she was just looking for the elevator. After that, they were no longer interested in her, yet she remained there and talked about her son. Minutes past by and she wished she could talk more with them; people who were in the same kind of waiting. In the following lines we see another important episode of empathy in the story:

She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common. She would have liked to have said something else about the accident, told them more about Scotty, that it had happened on the day of his birthday, Monday, and that he was still unconscious. Yet she didn't know how to begin. She stood looking at them without saying anything more.

 To finish, I would like to sum up all this with a sentence that is in the video I am sharing with you: “Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is CONNECTION.”

The tip of the iceberg. (Daniel Riquelme)

While seeing a picture of an iceberg we are amaze of the fact that a huge piece of ice is floating on the sea’s surface. But the reality is that we don’t know what is below the surface, and certainly it is bigger and more complex than what we can see.

In this sense, the short stories by Raymond Carver are written based on this phenomenon. This style was originally settled by Ernest Hemingway who focused his writing on the superficial aspects of the story narrated. Both Hemingway and Carver meant the reader to find out what were the main and crucial themes treated in the story that were not written explicitly. So the idea is that the background of the story is omitted while the narration tells in a superficial way what’s happening at that moment, this led to a minimalistic style.

Look at this quotation of Carver’s short story Why don’t you dance?

"Those people over there, they're watching," she said.

"It's okay," the man said. "It's my place," he said.

"Let them watch," the girl said.

"That's right," the man said. "They thought they'd seen everything over here”

The man finished the dialogue with this phrase “They thought they’d seen everything over here”. In the story this make sense in the way that people is always judging from what they see, probably they just saw a scene, a picture of that moment and think that they can have a say on other’s life. On the other hand, we as readers are the observers; we are reading and creating an image of what is happening in the story. Nevertheless, the story was written in a way that we think that it is superficial and even senseless. But, there’s a lot more in these stories. Dreams, tragedies, love, opportunities, and misfortune bias the characters’ behavior. As a result, we have to go beyond the casual dialogue, the descriptions and the hard facts that are presented trying to answer why did that happened and make connections between the lexis used, the facts and the mood of the characters and with those clues try to crack the meaning, the real theme, the background of the story.

Now try to think on how many things surrounding us are like this tip of the iceberg, and how many times we avoid looking beneath the surface to see what is really happening. It’s not only about literature; it’s our life, and the things we lost when we support them in facts. There’s a lot more waiting for you.  

Daniel Riquelme. 

What really matters...

After having read Carver’s Why don’t you dance? for the first time,  I had to read it again because even though it is a short story, there’s a lot implied (or understated). The first instance we are introduced to is when the old man is taking the furniture out of his house in order to sell it in his front yard. As seen in class, it is interesting the fact that this man is selling even his bed, which clearly reflects not only a proof of him without a partner, but also a loss of intimacy as everyone can have access to his private life. By the same token, the furniture demonstrates the way human beings are connected to stuff, in this case furniture, and that there’s a process of devaluation (personal stuff should not have a price). According to the previous idea, we can infer that he is alone and furniture maybe reminds him of his past life (and that is why he wants to get rid of it). Then, a young couple arrives at this man’s front yard in order to buy furniture for their apartment. Here it can be appreciated that there’s a duality as the old man is finishing a moment of his life and the couple is starting one, yet they want everything cheaper. This desire also anticipates what would probably happen with them: they are not going to last much. Later on, there’s an experience that provides a break from routine which is the dancing part. While dancing, they are supposed to express themselves, though communication is not present.

I consider that this image reflects a moment to remember and value for every couple. This mere hand-holding can be something very common, but from my point of view, it symbolizes love and compromise between two people. Additionally, it should be considered as a reminder, that is, what allows a couple to remember what their union means and to dream of a future full of unforgettable experiences.

In conclusion, people should always give value to things, though this value must not be materialistic as furniture; on the contrary, this value has to be a more personal one that let people remember what really matters: to live.

Joyce Carol Oates at Home

Writer Joyce Carol Oates at Home

From all these classes, the one about Oates was one of the most interesting authors I have heard so far. The way the professor presented Oates, her achievements, novels, short stories,  all her work just  let me with the feeling of knowing more about her.

 That is why, I have been trying to find and gather information about Joyce Carol Oates. I looked for biographies and what some other authors say about her work. I found very great publications about her work -which I will post later. But suddenly,  I thought it would be a good idea to look something on Youtube. That is how I got to this video. To know about her in HER own words was way better to have read a four-page essay about herself and her thoughts about her own work. To have heard that three-minute video is worth doing it.

The way words come out of her mind and the pasion she has of writing are amazing. Her thoughs  about life and herself are aslo remarkable. I recommend everybody to watch it and hear-and-watch by your own how amazing she is! 

"Blurred Lines" in The Hours.

http://candef.blogspot.com/2008/07/hours-by-michael-cunningham.html

I have found this interesting blog that shows us some of the techniques used by Michael Cunningham in his writing of The Hours. Through my reading I realized that many of the things said by the blogger were covered for us in class. What took my attention was the importance given to the blurred boundaries in the book, and how Cunningham used this tool in order to create this world that overlaps and creates fiction from reality, and a reality from fiction.

The intertextuality in the books is mainly represented by Clarissa, which is the main character in Mrs. Dalloway, even though in this book she lives a completely different reality. The boundaries become more blurred when we find Virginia Woolf character inside the book. She is the author and creator of Mrs. Dalloway, but in The Hours she is presented at the same level of his characters: Clarissa and Richard. The reality that we found in Woolf is portrayed as fiction in the book, so she becomes a fictional character that comes from reality to make it fictional. In the same aspect, we have Richard Dalloway, who is a character of Woolf’s and Cunningham’s novels, writing a book inside a book, using one of the characters in the book (Clarissa Vaughan) as a fictional character in his own book; so, this took us again to a limbo between fiction and reality, because inside the book they are fictional characters who are making fictional characters of themselves. The case of Laura Brown and her connection with Mrs. Dalloway is also interesting, but I think this does not demonstrate the blurred boundaries I was talking about as well as the other relationships in the book.  Inside the blog you could find some quotes from the book that can help you to understand the intertextuality and the connections between the characters in both books.

I thought these demonstrations of the not defined lines in the book would be really helpful for us to have a better understanding of the book and also to understand Michael Cunningham’s vision of literature, taking into account the different techniques he used to get us into the book and make his fiction more real for the readers. 

NOTE: The blog is written in Spanish first and then in English. I think you should read it in English! 

A Dialogue between Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's The Hours.

Probably, most of us are not in the mood of reading, but I have found a very interesting critical article on the Hours that may be useful for better understanding the relationships between The hours and Mrs Dalloway.

As we have been covering in class, not only is the concept of intertextuality important when understanding postmodernism but also when understanding Cunningham’s novel. In fact, the very existence of the The Hours is based and depends on Mrs Dalloway.   

In “A Dialogue in Books: Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's The Hours,” Furman deals with the basics of intertextuality and goes beyond by making remarkable connections. For instance, she points out the significance of the “caves” once mention by Virginia when referring to her work “I dig out beautiful caves shall connect, and each comes to day-light at the present moment” setting their original meaning but also giving them a new one, directly connected with intertextuality; in simple terms: as ripples that go much further and cross boundaries, reaching much more than just the characters inside one book.

Furthermore, she includes other mayor themes in her  intertextual analysis, such as homosexuality, insanity and suicide. Apart from contrasting the way those themes are developed in both novels, she also contrasts the literary techniques Woolf and Cunningham embraced during the writing process.

Therefore, I deeply encourage you to have a look at it, especially before the upcoming test! 

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uc5qmire3214b82/A%20dialogue%20in%20books.pdf

The Hours - Time

In The Hours, Cunningham plays with time, challenging the reader to make his or her own connections between the characters. At the beginning of the novel, it is rather impossible to make a real and meaningful connection between Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf, for example. First, because of the epoch that each of them was living, and second, because the only connection that the reader could make, was that Laura was reading Ms. Dalloway. But I would like to go beyond the superficial connection. 

Do you think Michael Cunningham was original? do you think he did a great job by connecting three different realities? 

In my opinion, Cunningham saw the opportunity to do something great, and he took it. He saw that there was something intriguing about how these three realities were connected. Was it that the protagonist of each reality was a woman? Was it the contrast between those people's relationships? Was it... time?

 

I think that Mrs. Brown is the reader/character that connects both realities: she is Richard’s mother, who connects with Clarissa’s life (the other reality) and she is reading Mrs. Dalloway; she is the one feeling like Mrs. Dalloway, and is tired of her role as a mother and a wife. But on the other hand, Clarissa is feeling pressured by the past: her romance with Richard and a very important and special moment between them.

This novel is trying to tell us that we, as human beings, are time-dependent, and that there is nothing that we can do about it. Memories from the past are always present and they shape our actions and emotions. By reading this novel, we become aware of our nature, and how bounded we are to time, even if we do not notice that. Time is inevitable, and more hours will come, and with that, the same routine. Just as in Mrs. Dalloway: showing us the whole life of a woman in only one day.

These three realities in The Hours show a particular moment in time of each of these women, and every detail of their lives has a consequence and a cause for their actions.

Do you think we are tied to time? Do you think Laura is an underrated character in the novel? I would like to read your comments!

Do Gay Parents raise Gay Children?

There is a topic that I would like to portray in this entry, for I believe I could establish a point regarding the several pieces of work that we’ve read along this semester. Considering the information that we’ve been exposed to during this term, it’s inevitable not to pay attention to this particular topic or subject—whatever—which is present, intrinsically, in Literature: homosexuality.

It is not relevant to expose my opinion concerning this aspect of sexuality because nobody cares—I think—and it is not my intention either to generate a discussion about homosexuality itself—I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right?  For I must say that it does call my attention that homosexuality is present, intrinsically, in so many literature works.   

To make myself clear, I would like to start portraying this general idea of modernism, which, basically, could be understood like this rebellion of mankind against God. “Thank God” this rebellion was expressed through many pieces of Art, so now we can witness their majesty and beauty. I believe that as part of the result of this rebellion many people, especially artist, were willing to explore and exhibit what was considered to be prohibited and unusual regarding the period of time we are alluding to. From this point, many writers allowed themselves to express their inner thoughts, feelings, convictions and why not say, sexual desires without fear, ignoring any kind of prejudice. The result? The creation of characters and storylines that we’ve been reading in classes.

Ironically enough is that writers who were well-known for having other sexual orientation wrote stories and created characters, portraying homosexuality—maybe not all of them were open towards sharing this private side of their lives but “rumors always has it”; always. Personally, I can understand this fact, considering that Art is a form of expression, and consequently, they were expressing something by doing this, as I mentioned before.  

For instance, let’s start with the author of Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf.  Even though she was a married woman and a person who suffered from nervous breakdowns, it is believed that she had a liberal life—during the 30’s it was speculated that she had an affair with Vita Sackville-West, her eternal lover. Her masterpiece, Orlando, published in 1928, is said to be a biographical novel based on Vita’s life. In addition, for those who may not know, Woolf belonged to the Bloomsbury Group, circle of writers, artists and intellectuals from the Bloomsbury district of London that supported gay rights, women in Arts, open marriages, and other unconventional ideas. 

In connection with the same idea, The Hours, in which Virginia Woolf is also part, but this time as a character, also exhibits the topic of homosexuality through these three characters portrayed by the writer, Clarissa Vaughan, and Laura Brown. Although there are many themes that we could expand on regarding this literature work, the topic I’m mentioning is connected in the way how every character deals with it. Laura Brown is supposed to be a married and unhappy woman, who chooses to accept her reality and face life by abandoning her family. Clarissa is an independent woman with an established life and who doesn’t have anything to hide, given that she has this aspect of her life resolved.  In your opinion, which would be the case for Virginia? Oh! I almost forgot, needless to say, Cunningham has openly talked about his sexual orientation.

Last but not least, there has been speculations concerning Fitzgerald and Hemingway's friendship, pointing out that they were something else than friends. Regarding Fitzgerald, it is believed that Nick, the leading character of his play The Great Gatsby, would be homosexual as well, only if we analyze his personality and consider certain passages of the play that could be read between lines—it’s not my intention though to expand more on this idea, but, would you like to share something?   

I would like to finish my entry by providing an extract of a beautiful letter that Hemingway wrote to Fitzgerald on July 1^st 1925:

(…)I am feeling better than I’ve ever felt—havent drunk any thing but wine since I left Paris. God it has been wonderful country. But you hate country. All right omit description of country. I wonder what your idea of heaven would be—A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably [be] an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.

Thank you for reading my entry, I’m looking forward to exchanging more ideas with you!

  

Into The Wild and its relation to The Hours

Hello, classmates!

          Last class, while Mr. Villa was talking about how Mrs. Brown, the character who plays the role of the reader in Cunningham's The Hours, broke free after her suicide attempt, made me think about my favorite movie: Into the Wild. I think that most of you might have seen it and I really hope you have because I do not want to become a spoiler or something like that. 

          This movie, based on real events and characters, tells us about the story of Christopher McCandless, a young man that just graduated from high-school. His life, at least at the very beginning, seemed completely normal, until the film starts to show us that he is not happy at all with his family and his life in general. During a dinner after his graduation ceremony, his dad tells him he wanted to give him a new car because Chris' car was "crappy"--and it literally was. Despite the fact that for many young men this offering would be something considered great, Chris got angry and discovered his disappointment and discontent towards their parents and the way they pretended to have a normal and happy life (and marriage) while they fought all the time.

          From my point of view, the dinner means to Chris what the suicide attempt after reading Mrs. Dalloway means to Mrs. Brown: realizing that they did not like the life they were living and that they had to do something about it or they will end their lives with an immense feeling of dissatisfaction (and, of course, it is not cool to become into someone like Jimmy Porter, right?). Out of these episodes, both people accept themselves and the way they wanted to live life: Mrs. Brown could have left her family, assumed she was lesbian, and lived the life she wanted in the way she wanted to, but she didn't in the end... She had an image she had to maintain; similarly, Chris accepted himself as a free soul, as a money-hater, as a nature-lover and changed his name in order to leave his past behind and embrace this new life totally: Alexander Supertramp, the identity Chris chose, gave him the power to re-exist in a wild way.

          

          Referring to the idea I previously wrote--the instance, event, or thing that gave both Mrs. Brown and Mr. McCandless the strength and courage to make the change necessary to live life the way they wanted to--I found a quote said by Mr. McCandless himself which supports what I have just said:

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

         Finally, I would like to ask those people who have seen the movie, what do you think about this comparison? Do you think it is valid, or not? It will be great if you comment and give your opinion on this by commenting on this post! 

Good night! =)

We are build from experiences (and from other people as well!)

   Have you ever thought about the different connections between your identity and the experiences that you have lived? Most of the time we are not aware of these issues, but the truth is that our identity has been built up from for years and years, made up from past experiences. That’s why the relationships between people are so important. If we think about The hours and Mrs. Dalloway we can recognize this element on the characters.  The differences between the same characters in both novels were determined by the decisions that they made in the past, but also by other people’s actions. Do you remember the fact that in Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa never meets Septimus? Despite that they never see each other, Clarissa gets involved (in a way) in Septimus’ death. In the same way, the actions of the different characters in The Hours are closely related to a future event in their lives, even when those events (at the beginning) have no apparent relation between each other.

I am leaving you now a short comic made by Luke Pearson which talks a little bit about how some actions can rebound into other people, in a way in which you can’t even imagine. (Open the image in a new window to make it bigger :D )

Christina Cortez Á.

Art - Cunningham

When I was looking for information on internet, I found this picture. This piece of art make me think about Cunningham's works, because it has different features that make me connect it to his books, or at least the one we are reading. First of all, what called my attention was the shape of the object in the image because it is loke the book The Hours in the sense that it puts three things together as Cunningham put three lives together in his book. This expresses the connection of the story, the link between the roles that are into the novel (the one we've talked in classes, that into the novel there were the three main important roles in literature; reader, character, and reader).

Apart from making me think about the novel intself, I noticed that this picture (piece of art) follows what we've talked in classes about what art is. Art connect things that are not commonly together, as in the case of The Hours that puts the three roles together. I really do not know how did this piece of art, but that artist I think did a great job because I feel when seeing/watching this image that we are as human beings complemented by other human beings. Indeed, I think that our necessity of not being alone is because we are all connected in way, and as I have mentioned before, our actions are all connected in our lives too. Art means connection, and this image for me is connected to what we are convering and to what I think about the meaning of life.

Another important feature of this piece of art that called my attention is the color; blue and purple. Those colors for me mean water, but further that water they mean ocean. It makes me thing about deepth, but in the sense that not everything has the same importance or that not everything has the same connotation for every person. The colors are mixed, so they also remind me that there is no limit between one thing and its oppossite, very simimar to what Cunningham illustrates in his way of writing, he shows us that there is no limit in life-death, men-women, black-white, etc. Cunningham's novel The Hours is for me like the image because it has almost the same features that are shown in the novel, but in a more abstract way.

We are all connected

Yes, a ripple. Just like the one our teacher drew in the whiteboard this afternoon.

Ripples are undulations that appear in the surface of the water when it is disturbed by some energy. It moves and modifies itself, letting the energy flow. This movement can be seen as a metaphor of everything that is alive in the planet. When you read a book, see a movie, listen to a song, or see a picture you become aware of many aspects of them that influence your thoughts and ways of perceiving life; they enter to your mind.

Without knowing, you are having a connection with the artist, who was influenced by the world when working in his piece of art. Something that happened years ago, far away from where you are sitting right now, is taking part in your life. Had you ever thought about it? This piece of art is the result of a person and the world around him, and now this world is becoming your world too; something that occurred in the time the artist was working is influencing your life too.
 
If you have watched The Butterfly Effect, you may have thought about how a little, insignificant action can change reality as we know it. Therefore, you have in mind that we are connected, and that every action we perform is causing ripples in the big ocean of the world.

This is what Cunningham wants to say through his book The Hours: that every action always resonates, that there is always a transcendental communication causing ripples. It can be evidenced in the connectedness existent between the main characters: Virginia Wool (author of Mrs. Dalloway), Mrs. Dalloway (the character), and Mrs. Brown (the reader of Mrs. Dalloway). Every event, thought and decision made by Virginia Woolf has an impact on the writing of her novel and on the reader.

So, I invite you to take consciousness of the importance of our actions –from the smallest to the biggest– and to think before saying or doing something, because they always have an impact on the whole world as we are all connected.

Michael Cunningham talking to The Guardian

Michael Cunningham: A life in writing

Hello y'all! I was surfing the net trying to find something interesting to share with you related to our current topic. I found this interview that Michael Cunningham gave to the British newspaper, The Guardian. In this interview we can see different aspects of Cunningham's life as a writer and as a person as well.

I liked the interview a lot because although he talks mostly about his new novel,  By Nightfall, he usually goes back to his most important work, The Hours, which is our current book to be read. He also talks about his personal life so we get to know Cunningham in a different way, a more human way. He talks about his feelings when writing and after finishing a novel as well. 

As we can read from the interview, he says "Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest." He is always coming back to Virginia Woolf and The Hours. This way, we are taken to what interests all at this point of the semester. 

I think that the interview will help us all to have a better understanding about Michael Cunningham and The Hours. I recommend y'all to read this interview and maybe some of you will be interested on reading Cummingham's new novel, By Nightfall!

Cheers!

First of all, I’d like to point out that my post will not refer to specifics features or characters’ performances in The Hours, but more to the effects it may have in our perspective of literature, or how we may interpret a book.

Then, I’d like you to ask yourselves: What is the point of reading a book?

Sometimes, at first, the only purpose of reading a book is to entertain ourselves because someone else recommended us to read it saying that we would like it. But the thing is that, when we finally finish reading the book, it is not rare to find ourselves thinking “I would like to be the protagonist of the story”, “I wish this book was based on my life”, or even “This book tells the exact story of my life”.

You may be wondering why I am saying this if I am supposed to say something about The Hours. Well, I have presented this question to you because, somehow, in The Hours we can find a representation of those thoughts. Do not forget the three main characters: Woolf, Dalloway and Brown (the writer, the protagonist of Woolf’s novel, and the reader respectively). Now, think of Mrs. Brown as you while reading a book, Mrs Dalloway as the protagonist of the book you are reading, and Woolf as the author of your book.  As in The hours is clearly shown a relationship between those three characters, have you ever found a similar relationship between you, the main character, and the author of your favourite book? Of course you have! And then, when you have finished your book is when you find the real purpose of literature: it is not only to entertain us, but also (and more relevant) to present us a fictitious reality that will eventually establish a notorious influence in our reality, whether it is because we feel represented by the characters in it, or because we would like to be like those characters.

Then, we find an answer to the question presented above: the point of laying on your bed reading a book for ours, is to let the author’s fictitious reality influence our own reality in such a way that we feel connected to the author, someone who we may never know.

My Language Creates My Reality.

While talking about Michael Cunningham in class, the teacher mentioned a topic that called my attention: Language and Reality.

So the first question that came to my mind was, “What’s reality?” According to the Oxford dictionary, reality is “the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined.” However, this didn’t give me any answer whatsoever, though after a few seconds the teacher said that reality is not reality, but what makes reality is when you believe that something is real. It may sound a little bit confusing, yet it solved my doubts.

Then, two questions came up immediately to my mind: Do we all see the same realities? Or, do we each construct our own reality based on our previous experiences?

I think that reality is different for each individual, and it is created by our own background knowledge and experiences we have lived. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that there are patterns that have been arbitrarily accepted by everybody in order to create a shared reality. What I mean is that even though each individual has their own reality on their minds, there are things we all share and consider real; for instance colors, what a chair is, etc.

A couple of days ago, I saw this picture on the internet that made me realized that reality is in fact related to language. We can see that Abracadabra, a magicians’ worldwide-used world to “make magic,” means I create what I speak. So the “reality” that magicians show us when making a woman disappears and telling us that she’s actually gone is reality for us.

The concept of language was mentioned during the class and how it creates or modifies our reality. I can say that words have changed throughout the years due to the fact that reality is made by language and it controls us somehow. That is why feminist movements in the60s and70s tried to change the usage of certain words like male nurse for nurse, spokesman for spokesperson, man hours for working hours, and so on. They tried to stop sexism, and they wisely realized that language does actually modify the way people are viewed and perceived.

It is also important to highlight that these two concepts (reality and language) are strongly related due to the fact that reality could be said to be a rumor brought to us through the language.

Another concept discussed in class was centrality: to focus on ideas that have a fix concept, like history, men, women, and love. Artist should avoid concepts related to centrality and should focus and make the reader see reality through the point of view of difference. That is why avoiding centrality will give the opportunity to artists of creating original works. Moreover, the reality of books should have a meaning in people’s real life. This is the case of Mr. Cunningham, he also believe that avoiding centrality would lead him to original works.

The persistence of the memory, by Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali´s painting The persistence of the memory, one of his best known works expresses the softness and hardness of the time and space. As the professor of the Royal Academy Dawn Ades wrote in her book Dali: "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order."

I want to take this quote and portray the symbolism of the watches in Dali´s work with this relativity of time and space. How our life is totally dependent on this abstract concept that is present, in one way or another, in all things we do and which make us aware, just in a few moments in our life, that time is our contender in a battle that we know we would not win. 

As I started reading the novel "The hours" a few days ago, I found that it was a completely different experience from other novels I've had read. The sentiment of despair in the thoughts written by Cunningham that was, supposedly, the last thoughts of Mrs. Wolf made me aware that whichever the causes of our death and no matter if we end with our lives or we die from other reasons we all are time-bounded creatures. The more we read the novel, the more we understand how it makes us aware that we have a deadline; that at the end the time and how it passes by is what make us human.

Space as the physical entity that surrounds every act and our entire life is other concept that as well as Cunningham, Dali toke to represent in his works. As Dali himself expressed, many of his paintings were scenarios taken from their dreams and if we thing about that, dreams are the extension of our experiences in life and in many occasions of our satisfactions and dissatisfactions in it. In the hours, as we read we understand how the three women are in a place they don’t want to. That they roles in the society they live are making them disappear, so what is the difference between disappear in life and actually die? Is one better than the other?