Category Archives: Winter 2016

Our Literary Manifesto

by Katie Smith

OUR

LITERARY

MANIFESTO

Immortalized echoes.

Our experiences are complex collections of words and moments, both shared and singular, echoing onwards. These are our words. As we arrive at the end of undergraduate experience, let us remember the words that inspired us onward.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;”

Join together, let us sing:

“Long Live Literature!

Long Live Literature!”

Together let us celebrate the principles of our passion: Our literary manifesto.

  1. Don’t look back.

We say that taking the road less “traveled by” has “made all the difference”. Now is our opportunity to put our money were are mouth is. so let us Stand still no longer.

“Run, you fools” There is adventure to be had Remember.

“There is no try, only do”

  1. Be a Global Citizen.

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

We sing on the songs of our ancestors, lives long lived and passed, still:

“Long Lives Literature!

Long Lives Literature!”

  1. Go outside. Stay There.

“The earth has music for those who listen.”  Yet, only if we are silent and linger long enough to listen.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise”

  1. Get Gritty.

We say that “We are the music makers” and we are the “dreamers of dreams”, yet we have learned the hard way that we “pay for everything in this world one way and another.”

“Read a little bit of Leviticus.
All the kids are a little too little for this.
All the parents nod in agreement –
“I think I can vaguely see what he meant.”
It’s too early in the morning glory
To read another allegory story,”

Wake up and do something that will make you sweat, put dirt under your nails.

“True grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done.”

Let us work for a better tomorrow today, pressing on, moving forward, with tireless tenacity.

  1. Bathe Often.

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Come into us at midnight very clean. It hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday”.

Honor thy body. Bow thy head

Allow the rain to wash over you, rain of love, hatred, humanity.

I wanna feel the thunder
I wanna scream
Let the rain fall down
I’m coming clean, I’m coming clean”

  1. Get Good

“Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!”

Our work is never over. . .

There “the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.”

. . . In fact, it’s only just begun

“Do not go gentle into that good night.”

We are the writers of the next great American novel. The Neoclassiest. Swaggiest. Millennial-est that ever existed.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”

 

It is we who can “call into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come. . . . And they must come, for at this moment, I am the whole reason they have existed at all.”

“ WE NEED THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF HUMANITY—their stupidity, animalism and dreams. . . . We believe in no perfectibility except our own.”

Long Live Literature!

Without it we would be lost!

We are the echo, the reverberation of the visions of all that we have read screaming an immortal message:

“I am. I am. I am.”

  1. KICK ASS!

We have a voice of our own, a megaphone of might held by a hair trigger.

Now is our moment. This our message, our literary legacy, our Manifesto.

 Let us not repeat, Let us learn, Let us change.

“Pioneers, o pioneers”

Let it be us who are the captains of industry and insight. Ambassadors to the ever-echoing past screaming:

I AM. I AM. I AM.

We Are. We Are. We Are.

Of course, this is but my modest proposals. A compilation of my education, spat out and condensed like soup for the soul. Remember: No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. “Lead on. Oh captain, my captain.”

A Societal DEvolution

Enthused seduced deduced and brought back to life with spring sensations building unraveling and slowly deteriorating the common wealth of malignant tides underneath vacant skies to betroth or diffuse the salient signs unwilling and barreled within the canvas of our lives bewildered and underwhelmed with majority ranking highs. Unannounced solutions partake the unmasked conclusions of wrought hide infusions in societal devolution. Working up a rampant of contrived barricades that bridge, rape and slander the, oh so high alidades which brought to us the scientific and neurotic explorations of today’s episodic vengeances.

When deduced and refused with nothing left to lose what then shall we use to throw out the abused or resurrect the pre-accused?

Zahra Hayder

Dabble Poetry

Unpredictable Demonstrations of Literature

by Zahra Hayder

Procrastination under the impressions of academics can assume a position of inferiority. Although, the truth behind the procrastinators behavior is, lack of motivation. Pedagogical authority impedes on those who are uncanny and honest. A past work of literature that could potentially (re)produce a new structure of words such as this piece will be considered only in light of, effort. Lexicons, dictionaries, and simple elements of a beset narrative are all obsolete in the face of old tradition or new certifications. Procrastinating infidelities of this work leading to the next, without a familiar presence, within the clock-work narrative, of time, might venture into a category of its own. The steadfast cause of unpracticed originality, in the face of immortality, can be seen as a getaway to thoughtless, reality. So, what then should we accustom ourselves too? Time management or knowledge based narratives which seem ultimately obsolete when a grading system is in place? Either way we cannot foresee the elements that place our work in the hands of others who categorize and inform the unprecedented audience.

Availability heuristics are the things we know (according to social psychologists) as being integral parts of our cognitive structures. Which means, the knowledge we have available in our mind is simply what we tend to use right away rather than, deliberative thought processes. This idea is very much similar to the unfocused narrative of our writing. When writing becomes overtly synthetic and unaware, we tend to recognize it as a piece acceptable by the majority and dependable according to new certifications. New certifications, in this sense is a kind of unraveling of academic approvals. What is deemed acceptable and appropriate within the writing process and/or the narrative itself. A pedagogical referent to our writing within the academic world is basically the route to success. However, is this a fair attempt at originality?

Procrastination is not an easy process to overcome and the handling of new ideas needs to be filtered through a mind, based on academic teachings. The unpracticed originality of a writer(s) text is simply because the writer wants their work to outlive their vessel, thus the writer becomes ‘immortal.’ The writer’s history and/or legend literally lives on by way of the written word, only the written word. No person lives on after death as does their writing. The written word has kept legends of the ancient world alive such as Mutanabbi, Socrates, Hammurabi, Plato and so on. From philosophers to potent warriors, the name lives on by way of generated text. An intimate relationship between writer and reader turns into a deflowering of knowledge that has been acquired by the writer then permeated to the reader/audience. The exchange between all parties according to pedagogy should maintain specific structure in syntax and form yet claim originality. How can this be achieved without rumination which ultimately leads to confusing procrastination?

For purposes subject to this narrative I shall proceed with defining of rumination in context. The obsession over negatively charged ideas as the direct result of inequitable gambit put forth by ‘proper’ education is the very meaning of rumination within this flailing clock-work narrative! Whether we operate on the availability heuristic or descriptive thinking the dyer goal subsequently, is, to have a steady balance between varying terminology and styling of the written word as approved by higher priests. We have various academes that would implore the use of specificity even, with reading of texts! Not only is this a staled attempt to control the writer(s) contrived text, but, it is infringing upon the very nature of the process and development of the written word. Thus, procrastinating is deemed practical among the impractical grading system in the academic world.  According to rhetoricians, a piece such as this before you may have no place in the pigeonhole categories of a ‘good’ or acceptable piece. How so, you may ask. Well, for starters it has no argument or persuasive aspect to it.

Not unless the writer is willing to generate a plausible argument opposing their own ideas. Why shall a writer contradict their thought process, endeavoring to a wildly displaced augmentation of knowledge? Presently, combining old and new curriculums that are rapidly building to block personal expression seems to echo the academic problems of the beat generation. All (literary novices) know the problem with the beat generation was that their (the beats) work had no place in the ‘academic’ world. Since the wordsmith(s) narrative(s) of expression, were not deemed acceptable enough for the higher priests. The distribution of numerical agendas does not guarantee execution of a stamped article validating the knowledge of the wordsmith. Therefore, innovation lacks implementation when immortality breeds negligence. Remember, in the beginning of this piece we spoke about how a person can outlive their vessel? By way of the written word, only! Many would ‘argue’ a person’s legend may live on through consanguine relatives, however, names gradually get phased out of lexicons when atoned alphabets are unavailable. We see rhetoricians in propagated combat with politicians, and romanticists in due battle with humanists, yet no one contributing to the forlorn literary “novices” whom, are only referred to by way of lectures. Respectively, the higher priests audit and categorize the literary “novices” as articles of mischief dedicated to procrastination while soliciting sympathies.

Last I understood writing and the process of said writing needs to be unique, structured, interesting, and boldly controversial; if of course that kind of thing suits your personal tastes! Writing in today’s world as defined by the academe is formed in “genres” which are “determined by the narrative technique, tone, content & by critics’ definitions of genres”. Notice the definition from wiki[pedia] states that the content actually does matter. The content of course must align with a specific Subcategory under the ‘genre’ umbrella as in mystery, comedy, tragedy, fantasy and so on and so forth. Yet at the same time the defining statement claims that critics’ definition pigeonholes the narrative. Basically, the wordsmith themselves do not contribute to the validation or categorization of their personal writing. In retrospect the matter is not of originality, nor of content within the scope of perceived knowledge it is a matter of priests within the academe who have complete and utter control over the grading and finalizing of the writer’s own work! Well, let us examine this a bit deeper, if the content of this piece you are reading now does not reflect either ‘genre’ nor does it supply any critic with due taste, how then is the procrastinator supposed to manage without rumination? I leave you with this thought, once an answer is achieved do shed some light on this horrid exposé of an individual’s thoughts.

 

Poems for Slughorn

by Nicholas van der Waard

To be an owl, soaring through the night,

Or a breeze that blows through the raven

Hair of a woman, a lady in a silk chemise

Who reclines on a soft feather bed and dreams

Of love.

“The night is young but Saturn old smiles sagely.

Moon dreams, sickle slashing sleep sings, to me sweetly songs of sagely

Wisdom and love. What has been and what will be

Come mingle like dancers in the mind

Of a hopeless dreamer dreaming drifting

Lightly on a tide.”

Pleasant, content, artistic bluebell blossom feelings

Rivers run ruthless across the page. A field of

Roses—verily a sage! Killer of mine rage

Ink spills across the frame. The tiger in me

Timid, ere growling made sudden tame.

“The arrows of unbuffering consequence

Bounce forlorn from my skin,

Rain over my feet. Harmless blades

Of feathered grass. It now a fence

Around me to protect

Mine tender heart.

Earthen eyes eager scan the horizon

Surmise love’s next surprise.

Hurt’s hell, the fading knell,

Distant peal of oft-promised joy

Rings the siren another bell.

And I think, and I dwell.

Sleep and dreams.

Touch tomorrow toy-like streams

Happiness moon beams, sorrow seems

To fade.”

How like a fallen soldier I felt, defeated, my goodwill utterly

Depleted. My unrequited love seated deep inside me, so blindly!

When through happy chance I beheld two ladies fair who fixed

Unto me a coupled stare. In them I saw what with her in love I had

Fallen. No baggage nor pain. Just two happy faces. Sparkling

eyes smiling stars twinkling cheerfully in the lonely dark. To me

Only they were glad to see. Their dawn is your dusk, my rebel;

And the sickle of a thin, shy moon in my heart rises cautiously to

Await the arrival of another brilliant sunrise.

Sad sighs, I shut mine eyes. She told me they were green.

All I want is to hear her voice, if not here, perchance a dream?

Nightmares plague me, I rise uneasy. Was that her I’d seen?

Away from me she went, no matter how I tried.

To catch and hold her one last time, the purpose of this rhyme.

Here are words she may not read. Yet, to hope I cling:

I knew the risks and so did she. We took our chances.

Perhaps we’ll meet again, my love. I just pray under happier

Circumstances.

Anger, rage, lament reason

Lost, sophomore, dim-witted sage

The voice of reason, drowned out

by the din of a fit of the season.

Alas! Fury, encompass me it doth

Such as it is, loth! Despair

Hated’s broth, the taste bitter

None doth compare.

Sad beautiful bell, beligerent beam

Smiles sad seem such lonely dreams how

Tired against the beam. One spent can

Lean.

But the music plays on.

Nightmares are the hellish, black, vile hounds that nip at my heels, chasing me into the day where I dream awake, exhausted and spent and left wanting.

Life’s lofty love so fleeting flies,

Seeping passion, it deeply buried lies

The raven of my graveyard heart,

Spreads her glorious wings, sadly she sings

Soars, takes flight, joyful and free, into the glorious

And long beautiful Night.

Emily Bronte’s “Wild Workshop,” Wuthering Heights

by Nicholas van der Waard

 

I was researching Emily Bronte’s life and works for Professor Sandy Norton’s Women’s Literature class and in doing so found that the Great Mediator for Emily Bronte to the general public was her older sister, Charlotte. The so-called “Sphinx of Literature” herself was infamously silent save for the only novel she left behind, and her awesome poetry. In reading the book, Wuthering Heights, I immediately loved it; something in it spoke to me, a sort of elemental force that was more or less lacking from Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre. Charlotte tempered her passion, subduing her wild protagonist with an older, chiding narrator and passing off most of the brunt of Jane’s wild nature onto her “double,” the mad, “goblin-like” Bertha (also compared to a vampire, which I found rather hilarious). Emily Bronte, on the other hand, frankly didn’t give a damn, creating what Charlotte describes as “the little black-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came from the Devil” (xiii): Heathcliff (that idea that dark is Devilish pops up now and then, though Austen wrote, in Northanger Abbey

 

“Oh! They give themselves such airs. They are the most conceited creatures in the

world, and think themselves of so much importance! By the by, though I have thought

of it a hundred times, I have always forgot to ask you what is your favourite complexion

in a man. Do you like them best dark or fair?” (64).

 

didn’t seem to fixate on the idea of black being universally negative when it suited her needs).

 

I loved Heathcliff instantly. “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is,” writes Charlotte Bronte, about him. “But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he[, Ellis Bell,] is not always master—something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself” (xiv “Editor’s Preface”). Of this, I can instantly relate, coming from a family where bi-polar disorder is par for the course; I am not always in control of my emotions, and they seem to have a will of their own. Despite all reason, the devil claws its way to the surface (“Je est un autre,” indeed, Rimbauld).

 

As to Emily’s novel, itself, Charlotte writes, “[in it] there broods ‘a horror of great darkness'; that, in it’s storm-heated and electrical atmosphere, we seem at times to breathe lightning” (xiii). I love that description, perhaps in the same fashion my 2-year old nephew pretends he is a triceratops: I long to be like a dragon, an elemental beast that breathes death (“and my breath death!” [Tolkien 245]).

 

Of poor Cathy, Charlotte writes: “Nor is [she] destitute of a certain strange beauty in her fierceness, or of honesty in the midst of perverted passion and passionate perversity [I adore her use of the chiasmus, here]” (xiii). Even if Charlotte Bronte was subdued (and let’s face it, tame) compared to her wild sister, she describes the novel well, and it is worth noting that she was her silent sister’s Greatest Defender. “Breathe lightning” and “strange beauty” are such awesome, well-turned phrases, possibly Charlotte attempting to emulate Emily’s work in her own, tempered fashion. It evokes the same kind of hellish grandeur I adore. Reading the novel, itself, I felt like Mr. Lockwood, a stranger “[left] with a brood of tigers!” (Wuthering Heights 4). Quite a delight, because is there any fun in Literature without at least a little bit of danger?

 

Antonio Losano sums up the novel well, too: “The novel straddles Romanticism and emergent Victorianism; it fuses romance and realism. Is is simultaneously a ghost story, a revenge tragedy, a local history, a passionate romance, and a powerful social commentary” (Losano 57). I love this refusal to be any one thing but, like the demon of Gerasenes, “is Legion [for we are many]” [Mark 5:9].

 

To it’s wicked protagonist, Losano writes

 

“…But Heathcliff cannot be ignored, and even disapproving readers and critics have tended to admire Heathcliff as a potent figure for social rebellion: as a lower-class character, Heathcliff destroys what he perceives as the unfeeling, staid, and passionless upper classes. The intensity of the bond between Catherine and Heathcliff also is itself a criticism of the dull and proper affection that motivates* Edgar or the other traditionally respectable people in the narrative. In Wuthering Heights Emily offers a truly radical view of individualism, social mobility and passion”(57).

 

I love this unabashed nature to Wuthering Heights and Emily’s natural commitment to passion and wild beauty. No chaser with this drink, and it may burn on the way down, but it’s all part of the fun. It finds beauty in the taboo and champions those that regular society would reject.

 

Being something of an outcast and reject, myself (according to my own views) and being bred on the valor of the Byronic Hero by my Romantic-loving mother (also a die-hard fan of Jim Morrison, from The Doors, who, in turn, borrowed the name of his band from Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, which was derived from William Blake’s sui generis work, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”—it’s all a big cycle, people), I found myself immediately falling in love with everything dark and hellish in Wuthering Heights. The novel doesn’t mask the nature of such things, but finds beauty in them regardless of the inextricable ugliness. It demonstrates that anything can be Beautiful from the right perspective and that what limits us are the constraints of society.

 

Like Adam Savage from Myth Busters always loves to say, Emily “rejected Victorian reality and substituted her own.” However, Emily didn’t just reject Victorian ideas, she smashed them, and personified her own notions of Beauty in a human Devil. Like Milton before her, who Blake described as “of the Devil’s party,” it is easy to see which camp Emily is in. I also count myself among that number. I long to “hew” my works in a “wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials” (“Editor’s Preface” xiv).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Austen, Jane, and Claire Grogan. Northanger Abbey. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2002. Print.

 

Bell, Currer. Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell. Wuthering Heights. By Emily Brontë. 1847. New York: Random House Publishers, 1943. Print.

Bell, Currer. Editor’s Preface. Wuthering Heights. By Emily Brontë. 1847. New York: Random House Publishers, 1943. Print.

 

Losano, Antonia. “The Brontë Sisters: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.” Ed. Jay Parini.Scribner’s, 2002. 49-62. ProQuest. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.

 

Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Hobbit. 1937. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001. Print.

 

Comparative Analysis of “Who Goes There?” and It’s Adaptations to Film

by Christopher Atkinson Jr.

In a time where Hollywood debuts less original stories, and produces more adaptations and retellings of stories, the discussion of how well the story is retold is an ever prevalent and growing topic. Opinions on every single film released are varied, especially if the source material from which the film was adapted already has a fan base. In this case, the opinion and critique of the film can be in depth and sometimes harsh. On the other hand, films like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy set the standard for literary translations to film very high (as well as setting the bar high for films in general!). Nonetheless, the analysis of  these adaptations continues to be an important factor in watching film, discussing film, creating film, and of course, writing about film.
John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” is a 1938 novella about a shapeshifting alien found during an expedition in Antarctica. The story has been adapted to film three times: Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing From Another World, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s film (also titled The Thing), which serves as a prequel to Carpenter’s film. All three films follow the same story line, but all three maintain their own tone and changes to the original material. Before  discussing such changes and differences, it is important to define what kind of literary adaptations exist, and apply to the translations of Campbell’s original work.

In his book, Understanding Movies, Louis Giannetti identifies three types of literary adaptations in film; loose, faithful, and literal. A loose adaptation is one that would take only part of a story, or a certain aspect, and translate it to film. There are dramatic changes made to the story, such as the setting and cast. A faithful adaptation is an adaptation that respects the original work to only omit what is deemed redundant or unnecessary  for a general audience, as decided by the individuals adapting the work onto film. The story at large remains the same, while subplots, smaller roles, and some dialogue are left on the cutting room floor. The third type of adaptation is a literal adaptation, which Giannetti explains is almost only reserved for stage productions that have made it to film. In fact, the only  usual differences between the two is the inclusion of cinematography, and the fact that the performance isn’t live. These three categories of adaptation can be used to determine how well any movie derived from a literary source, was translated onto film. Looking at 1951 and 1982’s literary adaptations of John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” , I have determined that Howard Hawkes creates a loose adaptation of the film, while John Carpenter managed to successfully produce a faithful adaptation.

Differences between the original story and it’s adaptations are noticeable from the first scene or both movies, as both took a departure from the original starting point. “Who Goes There?” starts off with the crew looking down upon the recently unearthed (or rather, un-iced for that matter) extraterrestrial, and discussing it’s origins, capabilities, and possible threat to the camp. Carpenter’s take on the story sets the tone for the film, which involves a lot of looming uncertainty and mystery. It follows a dog being chased by my in a helicopter over the tundra. The 1951 version of the film is the most drastic of the adaptations, beginning with the crew being assigned to investigate a possible plane crash near the north pole. While the beginning point in the story isn’t so much a determining factor of how to gauge the translation, it is interesting and reflective of the film maker, to see how they wanted to initially present the characters, setting, and plot to the audience.

Howard Hawks’ 1951 adaptation of Campbell’s novella suggests itself to be a loose adaptation of the original piece. Not only is the cast of characters replaced with a strong military presence, but there are also two characters included that push the film into a departure from it’s original genre of mystery, suspense, and science fiction. One of these characters, Scotty, is an ambitious and thin-skinned journalist who seems more worried about his career during the whole ordeal than the present danger of an enraged extraterrestrial. The other cast addition is that of one female who seems to serve no other purpose than to be a damsel in distress, and a love interest for the male lead. These two characters and their unintentionally passive attitude (which the entire cast can be considered guilty of) take away the suspense and uncertainty that came with the source material. While “Who Goes There?”  carried with it a darker tone, “The Thing From Another World” fails to carry the horror aspect onto the silver screen.
Not only did the 1951 film adaptation fail in it’s translation of character and tone, but it also missed what is possibly the most important aspect of the film; the Thing. In this adaptation, the thing does not shape shift like it does in Campbell’s text, nor does it try to build it’s own escape craft. The mythology of the Thing is tossed aside, and replaced with am alien, humanoid plant that requires blood for survival. In addition to the science fiction aspect of this literary translation being excluded, it seems as though the movie was geared for a broader audience. In Campbell’s novella, he goes into detail within the dialogue about how the creature acts, survives, and where it may have come from. The dialogue in the film is much more watered down, especially during the scene in which thermite explosives were used in an attempt to remove the space ship and it’s inhabitants. The intricacies of the excavation were overlooked, and made for an unintelligent display of power on behalf of the characters.  Katherine Schulten goes on to elaborate on why things such as this are changed in the process of making a literary adaptation; “There are three main reasons a filmmaker or screenwriter might make major changes in adapting a literary work to film. One is simply that changes demanded by a new medium. Film and literature each have their own told for manipulating narrative structure. In a novel, a new chapter might take us back to a different time and place in the narrative; in film, we might go back to that same time and place through the use of a flashback, a crosscut, or a dissolve, such as the various techniques the filmmakers in Wuthering Heights employ to keep the complex narrative coherent.” (Shulten, 16). Although, the aspects of the Thing may have been limited by the technology of the time. It would have been very difficult for filmmakers to convincingly create something such as an alien in the midst of transforming into a dog.

While all this holds true, it could be explained that this movie was ‘watered down’ and made into more of a simple action adventure for the audience it was presented to. There wasn’t a broad choice of movies to go and see at the theatre in the 1950’s, and looking at the two addition characters previously pointed out, the lighter tone, and the less sophisticated antagonist, “The Thing From Another World” seems to conform to the exact same tone and plot development as any other movie of it’s era. As Katherine Schulten explains in her book, Masterpiece: Film in the Classroom; “. . . the third main reason for a filmmaker to make dramatic changes to an adaptation, and it is one that anyone who works on a MASTERPIECE classic is motivated by: how to make a classic story ‘new’ for a contemporary audience.” (Schulten, 17).

As for a contemporary audience in 1982, it was an easier task to translate to film the horror, paranoia, and often gruesome imagery illustrated by John Campbell. Carpenter succeeds in translating the source material to film, while maintaining much of the original story.  The major differences reside in both the lean in genre between science fiction and horror, and the emphasis on concepts such as trust, paranoia, and uncertainty between the characters.

Carpenter’s adaptation does change the events in the story, but he does so with good reason. The first being that he needed to pace the story as a movie. With a novella, the pacing is controlled by the reader. With a film however, the director controls the pacing for the viewer, a tool many filmmakers of the horror genre use to their advantage. “The Thing” was adapted into a horror movie by Carpenter, therefore, he needed to change not only the events that happened in the story, but how they occurred. For example, in the novella’s blood test scene, fourteen men are shot and killed upon discovering that they have been turned into Things. Carpenter uses the horror movie method of killing off the cast gradually over the course of the movie to stretch out this scene. His cast dies over time, each in a creative and gruesomely appropriate way. This stretching out of the killings also is an example of Carpenter’s goal of creating a film with fantastic suspense, and exemplifying the paranoia presented by the situation of a shape shifting alien.

While analyzing these two films and the original novella from which they were derived, it has become apparent that not a translations are defined by how faithful they were to the source material. Although including much of the story is important, filmmakers are often limited by budget, technological constraints, and delivery to the audience. Carpenter has demonstrated that not using the original novella as his screenplay is not to be condemned, but commended because he omitted, changed, and edited parts to his advantage of achieving his goal. It was the Carpenter’s goal of making a specific horror film adapted from Campbell’s work that made his changes from source material to film make sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Louis Giannetti “Literary Adaptations” Understanding Movies, Chapter 9: Writing, 2011,                           Accessed November 5th, 2012

 

Katherine Schulten, “Adaptation: From Novel to Film” Masterpiece: Film in the Classroom A                                Guide for Teachers, 2011, Accessed November, 17th, 2012

 

To Absorb or to Ignore

by Amber Chapman

 

I wake up everyday in a community that I was not raised in. I observe the ideas of my peers that race has become the rooting question in every class room and every piece of social media. Are the minority speaking for a new revolution, a demand? Not for new laws or new entitlements, but TO BE SEEN, TO TEACH THE HISTORY AND STATS, TO MAKE THE WORLD EMPATHIZE WITH OUR EXPERIENCE.  As a result, the minority is aware of injustices, the minority will see a black person as a human with a certain experience…not as a criminal, not as a “African American” who made out of poverty, not as a statistic. Sometimes I want to scream and tell people to awaken and be more self aware. It’s crazy because I have never felt the pain of race until I was a identified “black body against white walls.” Rankine describes this as “What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like?” The white walls of Ann Arbor, soon the white walls of a educational institution. That both don’t expect me to succeed. How can you not question your experience, question this world that pushes people against white walls in a white society. My question is when placed against the white walls of society how do you express or explain yourself, do you withhold your culture or unapologetically be you.

 

I challenged my self in my senior seminar, I questioned how can I tell my peers the feeling of watching everything that you do so that you won’t be a stereotype? So that you won’t be placed in a box. Rankine writes “Another friend tells you you have to learn not to absorb the world. She says sometimes she can hear her own voice saying silently to whomever—you are saying this thing and I am not going to accept it. Your friend refuses to carry what doesn’t belong to her.”

 

To absorb, what is there in the world that Rankine writes should be “learned to not to absorb” it should be ignored and not accepted. I believe absorbing does not always mean making it apart of you or allowing words that don’t “belong” or “apply” to you affect you. I believe that you must absorb so that a stand and an observation can be taken and the “whomever” must hear those silent words. I question why are those words silent.

I find my self in a high rise of those “silent words” I always fall on silent words…seriously you cant some up the oppression of a entire race in every conversation where race is brought up.

 

What is the experience of being a conscious black person:

Being black is having to explain that saying African American sounds more racist than black because it’s an attempt to being morally correct or trying to defend racist thoughts. I’m just black.

Being black is writing on being black, and trying not to use the word “we” because you want to speak for you race without grouping like the white society does.

Being black is having to be aware of what you watch at white couple’s home when you baby sit because you don’t want to seem “too black”.

Being black is feeling that when your black experience comes out in conversations with other races you limit it what you say.

Being black is being asked is nappy the right terminology for natural hair.

Being black is having to try to keep the present “be” out of your casual conversation with whites… because you can’t say “I be running” without looking uneducated.

Being seen as disrespectful when you don’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance or the National anthem, because it wasn’t written for us anyway.

Being black is having to be better then the next white person because you will forever be compared to the “black lazy” stereotype.

Being black means you must be on time for everything or you will be seen as being on CP TIME. (color people time/always late)

 

What Rankine is saying in the novel is that there are moments when you can remain silent and ask “why do you feel comfortable saying this to me” or correct the ignorance of a society who only knows what is taught in schools and the media.

What happens when blacks in entertainment paint those white walls black, will society “allow” them or fight back? To not fall on silent words.

Recently that white wall has beginning to turn…to a small shade of light grey and America can’t take it. Recent artist that are popular among all races have made a strong black stand and the whites socialist are outraged.

Artists like Kendrick Lamar created the first pro-blackness album in main stream hip hop. His entire album stabs at the “black experience” he writes in his song the blacker the berry:

“You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture

You’re fuckin’ evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey

You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me

And this is more than confession

I mean I might press the button so you know my discretion

I’m guardin’ my feelin’s, I know that you feel it

You sabotage my community, makin’ a killin’

You made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigga”

What was the response?

Shock…black shock because there was no silence

Shock…because its unknown for an artist to have such an in your face message.

Shock… because the only response is that “you can appreciate the words, without the experience”

 

[The experience is what the words are trying to give.]

That’s what music can do for you sometimes. It can make you see things differently. Make you want to apply it reality. This powerful message was either “absorbed” or not because people “refuse to carry what doesn’t belong to them”

Kendrick was at his most confrontational and unapologetic in this music and fans like myself. Who is black, cried at the lyrics when they laid upon my ears…because I have never felt such truth then I did in his album.

 

Should be absorb what is said to us? Or remain silent because we feel like the words being said does not “belong” to us. Or Do we unapologetically correct the world?

The Last Ship

Submitted by Dominic DiCarlo Meo

“The Last Ship” by J. R. R. Tolkien

Firiel looked out at three o’clock:
the grey night was going;
far away a golden cock
clear and shrill was crowing.
The trees were dark, and the dawn pale,
waking birds were cheeping,
a wind moved cool and frail
through dim leaves creeping.

She watched the gleam at window grow,
till the long light was shimmering
on land and leaf; on grass below
grey dew was glimmering.
Over the floor her white feet crept,
down the stair they twinkled,
through the grass they dancing stepped
all with dew besprinkled.

Her gown had jewels upon its hem,
as she ran down to the river,
and leaned upon a willow-stem,
and watched the water quiver.
A kingfisher plunged down like a stone
in a blue flash falling,
bending reeds were softly blown,
lily-leaves were sprawling.

A sudden music to her came,
as she stood there gleaming
with fair hair in the morning’s flame
on her shoulders streaming.
Flutes were there, and harps were wrung,
and there was sound of singing,
like wind-voices keen and young
and far bells ringing.

A ship with golden beak and oar
and timbers white came gliding;
swans went sailing on before,
her tall prow guiding.
Fair folk out of Elvenland
in silver-grey were rowing,
and three with crowns she saw there stand
with bright hair flowing.

With harp in hand they sang their song
to the slow oars swinging;
‘Green is the land the leaves are long,
and the birds are singing.
Many a day with dawn of gold
this earth will lighten,
many a flower will yet unfold,
ere the cornfields whiten.

‘Then whither go ye, boatmen fair,
down the river gliding?
To twilight and to secret lair
in the great forest hiding?
To Northern isles and shores of stone
on strong swans flying,
by cold waves to dwell alone
with the white gulls crying?’

‘Nay!’ they answered. ‘Far away
on the last road faring,
leaving western havens grey,
the seas of shadow daring,
we go back to Elvenhome,
where the White Tree is growing,
and the Star shines upon the foam
on the last shore flowing.

‘To mortal fields say farewell,
Middle-earth forsaking!
In Elvenhome a clear bell
in the high tower is shaking.
Here grass fades and leaves fall,
and sun and moon wither,
and we have heard the far call
that bids us journey thither’.

The oars were stayed. They turned aside:
‘Do you hear the call, Earth-maiden?
Firiel! Firiel!’ they cried,
‘Our ship is not full-laden.
One more only we may bear.
Come! For your days are speeding.
Come! Earth-maiden elven-fair,
our last call heeding.’

Firiel looked from the river-bank,
one step daring;
then deep in clay her feet sank,
and she halted staring.
Slowly the elven-ship went by
whispering through the water;
‘I cannot come!’ they heard her cry.
‘I was born Earth’s daughter!’

No jewels bright her gown bore,
as she walked back from the meadow
under roof and dark door,
under the house-shadow.
She donned her smock of russet brown,
her long hair braided,
and to her work came stepping down.
Soon the sunlight faded.

Year still after year flows
down the Seven Rivers;
cloud passes, sunlight glows,
reed and willow quivers
at morn and eve, but never more
westward ships have waded
in mortal waters as before,
and their song has faded.

Letting Lips Speak

by J. Barringer

 

“Chop off the lips quickly

To stop the words in her mouth

She’s settled back in the chair

Temporarily relieved that the pain was kept

Buried and kept from rising up.

She has no idea what the words will do.”

Can I keep my secrets forever? I have many, but there is one that eats away at me when it comes to mind. Like Melinda Sordino, the protagonist in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, I have a secret. Her secret involves Andy ”It” Evans, who raped her at a summer party (Anderson 135). Andy silences her “IT is my nightmare and I can’t wake up. IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I’d throw up,” (Anderson 45-46). I know such emotion. I can feel my own throat closing out of fear and remembrance of my own “It”. He was doing his homework. I thought he was ignoring me. I played with my pencils, I was finished looking up the spelling words for the week. I wrote my sentences with each letter twisted up to create syllables. I scribbled onto my paper with chicken scratch. I was good at this. With absent-minded innocence my eyes glanced over one sentence. One definition.

 

Impotent /ˈimpətnt/ adjective :

1.

unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless.

“he was seized with an impotent anger”

Synonyms: powerless, ineffective, ineffectual, inadequate, weak, feeble, useless, worthless, futile;

 

 

It was hard processing this definition as young as I was, but I understood enough of the world to know that I never wanted to be powerless. I never wanted to be weak, or feeble, or useless, or worthless. Those words I knew. Those words wrinkled and burned my eyes so badly that my heart ached. I saw them. I feared them. But I wasn’t afraid of him. Not yet. He was still doing his homework. Algebra, I think. It is hard to remember why the j’s, and h’s, and x’s all got mixed up in math. I shook my head. I was going to stick to words. I could add an “I” to the word “never”, to the word “want”, next to “be”, thrown beside “impotent”. I had something. I had something.

 

“I never want to be impotent.”

 

Oh, I was so satisfied with myself you would have thought I won a Pulitzer prize for that sentence. It takes talent, stringing words together. At least that was what I thought back then. It takes skill to be able to make sense of every bit of information we get and sew our own thoughts and opinions together. I was light. I was free. His dark eyes slithered over and burdened me.

 

“What’re you so happy about?” He asked in his slightly raspy voice. Upon clearing his throat and staring at me harder, he tried speaking again.

 

“Why’re you smiling like that, you’re so weird.” He shook his head dismissing me in words, but his eyes lingered. My heart yearns for my earlier defiance and spunk. It disappeared with my strength to stand up. But in that moment I answered him with my fiery snapping fingers.

 

“Mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine.” I answered  in only a way that I could. He wasn’t intimidated in the least bit by my domineering little self. I thought to myself. I don’t want to be impotent. I never want anyone to view me as an impotent being. I raised my feathers, bright as flames, glistening with boldness, and told him with a flick of my hand and roll of my eyes that I was me, and I am mine. I was not afraid of him. Not yet.

 

He was perfectly nonplussed by my phoenix showcase. Shouldn’t he be wriggling like a coward? I thought so. I thought I could eat werewolves, wrestle vampires, and catch Frankenstein on a hook.

 

“Do me a favor,” He told me innocently enough.

 

Favors for a friend. Favors for a cousin. Favors for your father. Favors for your mother. Favors for her. They say “Do me a favor” with a calm, innocent lilt to their voices, and they hide the beast in their eyes. You fooled me. He fooled me. Do him a favor. I did him a favor, and  I have never been able to talk about it. Not until I picked up Speak in high school. I am Melinda Sordino. I am Jasmyn. I am John, I am Kayla, I am Charlotte, I am Michael, I am victim. I cried. I kept crying. I still cry sometimes. Do me a favor he said. Baby girl socks were lying on the floor with their edges of lace. My favorite socks beside my school shirt with white buttons and a fruit punch stain, bright pink. Do me a favor. I did him a favor, and after the favor I was rejected. He tossed me aside. He never cared.

 

Talk girl, my mother says. You don’t talk to me anymore. You don’t say how you feel. You don’t let me in, you build your walls so high, little girl. Don’t you know you are my sunshine? Talk girl, my mother says. This is my weaving of words. This is the importance of literature; the significance that reminds me to let my lips speak. I am Melinda Sordino. I am Jasmyn. I am life, breath, hope, love. I am me, and I am mine. My voice is mine.

 

In the United States alone,  18.8% of African-American women suffer from sexual assault  (USDOJ).

Robert Walton’s Sieve of Nectar

The influence of Coleridge on Mary Shelley’s Characterization in Frankenstein

by Alyssa Rittinger

“Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live”

(626, “Work Without Hope”)

“The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience.”

(Frankenstein, 24.37)

It is reasonable to presume that Mary Shelley was, by some extent, inspired by the works of Samuel Coleridge. His works are alluded in various ways throughoutFrankenstein. From an interpretive stance, Robert Walton is often compared to the Wedding Guest of Coleridge’s disconsolate poem “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”  There are so many correlations with the Ancient Mariner poem that are explicitly alluded in Frankenstein that further comparison cannot be avoided. But Coleridge’s emulation of characterized hopelessness is one of the more distinguishing factors that compares directly with Shelley’s novella.  The epigraphs highlight the two excerpts in such a way that perfectly encapsulates this thematic correlation.

Coleridge’s “Work Without Hope” is a poem that juxtaposes the speaker’s perpetual depression with the optimism of nature making its gradual return to spring.  As beautiful and purposeful as life appears, the speaker feels somehow set apart, as though still stuck in a winter wasteland where he wilts away into idle uselessness.  The speaker alludes to having lost his sense of purpose.  He has nothing to hope for, nothing to strive for.  The world just continues on without him.

Frankenstein similarly expounds on the emotional ramifications of men who are overzealous with their own ambition, all of which liken to this form of helplessness.  With Victor Frankenstein, his pride constitutes as a primary consequence for his downfall.  For the creature, his desperation for companionship ends up eliminating any chance he may have had (or, arguably, could never have) in securing a loving dynamic with a human being.  Robert Walton, interestingly enough, represents a bitter marriage of these two qualities.

Walton, as a tertiary character, may not seem all that relevant to the direct context of Frankenstein’s cataclysmic ordeal with his creation.  Yet Walton still narrates a significant portion of the novella. His reflections on the morbid tale are what bring thematic questions to the forefront of the story. There are questions of exploration, hubris, family, companionship, fatality, etc.  All of these circumnavigate the events of Frankenstein and his creature, and culminate in the form of Walton himself.  His inactivity seems to be his only safeguard from complete ruin; however, the yearnings he has are conspicuously and intricately aligned with that of Frankenstein and his monster.  Frankenstein and his monster had both lost everything worth living for, and thereby lost themselves in the process.  Walton, being the second-hand audience of their tribulation, feels overcome with his own internalizations.  Whether it’s out of mimicry or relatability, Walton suffers the contagion of the same helpless melancholy that afflicted both Frankenstein and the creature. In this way, the conclusion of Frankenstein’s tale represents a parabolic harbinger for the ambitious seafarer.

Unlike Frankenstein and the creature, however, Walton still has a life to live for.  He has a sister waiting for him back home, the promise of returning to a land of warmer weather instead of succumbing to an icy sea.  Yet despite these optimisms, Walton now feels “ignorant and disappointed.”  He seems almost willfully blinded by the fact that his life still bears the promise of beauty, renewal, and solace.  The tumult of Frankenstein affected Walton’s perception of the world and his place in it.

That being said, Walton won’t necessarily be stuck in this proverbial rut for long.  His emotions seem to sway in accordance to those he surrounds himself with.  He is even influenced by the members of his crew, who convince him to give up the trek through the arctic and return home.  Walton explicitly recognizes that he will forsake knowledge in favor of safety, which is the lesson that Frankenstein was unable to learn.  Walton may have little inhibition with keeping his heart on his sleeve.  But there’s a keen awareness there that ensures Walton’s capability to adapt as the situation dictates.  So while he may feel like his limitations render his voyage impossible, like “drawing nectar from a sieve,” Walton still has a life that he can live. A home to return to, to a sister he cares for.  He can find a new “object” to center his “hope” on in such a way that was no longer possible for Frankenstein.