Show, Don't Tell

Post by Mel

*CONTAINS MAJOR GRENDEL (POSSIBLY BEOWULF?) SPOILERS, IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY BEEN SPOILED BY EVERYTHING IN POPCULTURE THAT HAS EVER REFERENCED BEOWULF OR GRENDEL EVER*

Illustration; woodcut by Emil Antonucci

“I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly – as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.” 

Thus spits the protagonist of John Gardner's novel Grendel, in a fit of confused nihilism.  The world Gardner paints in this book through Grendel's lonely eye is difficult to describe:  So much of it exists entirely in Grendel's mind, but so much of it is painfully real, such that the reader can feel the same jagged edge that drives Grendel to his philosophy and his fate.  Through the Shaper, through Beowulf's "sing walls," the reader watches as mankind bleeds at the touch of this sharp reality, and heaves itself through the cosmos like a wounded beast -- clinging to each other and to their stories, particularly to the meaning that their stories give their lives, as if meaning and hope are equivocal and inseparable.  To Grendel, perhaps they are.

To me, my reading of this book wasn't complete without some knowledge of the philosophy and the reasoning behind it; I finished it deeply affected, but unsure as to why I'd been affected so, unsure as to the meaning my brain had soaked up like a sponge.  I remember that when I started it, it threw me into a terrible mood -- the universe seemed grey, time seemed to stretch as it always has in the most lethargic, meaningless points in my life, when I have nothing to occupy myself but the workings of my mind, chewing up the same fears and existential realizations over and over again.  In short, Grendel was bitter and alone and it hurt and I wasn't even sure if I liked the way it hurt -- I'm never sure, with this kind of literature -- but some part of me invested itself in him, in his familiar confusion, and I experienced his nihilism with him, and I understood it as one understands the look of an animal in pain.  Wordlessly and raw.  I had no names for these feelings, but I felt them with Grendel.

I have names for them now.  It took a little research, but perhaps the most helpful thing was this letter from Mr. Gardner to a group of high school kids that wrote about his book, in which I was reminded for the fifty-thousandth time that the protagonist's opinions do not represent the author's.  "[A good writer's] method," he addresses the students, "is not to argue for a single position--in the way Nietzche did, for instance--but rather to explore, with all the care and wisdom he's capable of mustering, the various implications, contributing factors, etc., that must be considered when any serious philosophical question is raised."  And with that statement, something clicked, and I started reading more -- about how he based Grendel off of Sartre, about his own relationship with Sartre's work, about how, to quote that very same letter, "[i]f the reader decides, as all three papers here decide, that I am advising people to live like Grendel and give up values, then the reader is wrong but I have done no harm, because the reader will see--in spite of his slight misreading--that somehow it's not good giving up values."

"Show, don't tell."  I understand what that means now.

Of course, I am reading Thus Spake Zarathustra for this very same project -- I'll get a taste of Nietzsche and decide then if I think he's preaching, as Gardner says he is.  From what I can tell, though, it's fairly obvious.  (Furthermore, it's interesting, but now that I've read Grendel and realize that it's not pro-destructive nihilism, I'm realizing that the lineup of books that I've picked out for myself are fairly anti-nihilism.  Camus' Caligula certainly is.)

 Nietzsche is certainly literature, but I feel like I'll still have gotten more out of Gardner's work than I will when I read Zarathustra; there's something wonderful about feeling the pain of a misguided protagonist, completely sympathizing with him, and then realizing that what he has become is evil and will bring him misery and that you don't have to be that way.  I struggle with this sort of internal conflict: I'm not sure what there is, if there is anything, and it pulls me into some terrifying places sometimes.  I don't like the idea that there isn't one great big cosmic standard telling us all what to do, that there might not be anything out there, there might not be any deities or anything more than the cold, barren, inexplicable earth and our inexplicable lives.  There's something heartening about the idea that Gardner isn't advocating losing yourself to it.  He isn't even advocating immediate pleasure, like the Dragon.  He's not advocating anything but looking at it, feeling it, and deciding what it is based on its nature.

He showed me a terrible thing and somehow I got something wonderful out of it, something I can't quite explain.  And I think that's what literary fiction should be about.  Not swamping the reader in heavy deeper meanings, not driving the reader to some true understanding of reality's fatalism and meaninglessness, but showing the reader a situation, explaining it to the reader in the best way those characters and those situations can, and letting the reader take from it what they should, logically.

Sometimes I get angry at literary fiction for being pretentious, and this is not one of those times.  I truly love this book:  It's given me hope, in a weird sort of way.

Edward Scissorhands: A More Realistic Version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Written by: Kathy

Even though I liked the book, the reactions to and of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein really angered me. Why would Frankenstein be unhappy with his creation? He worked very hard on it. Plus, there is no possible way everyone would have the initial instinct to just kill or run away from the monster. He's just a large, gross looking man. Realistically, people would just think he was strangely really sick or something. They probably wouldn't think he was an evil creature sent from hell to kill them all. Not only am I unhappy about the other people's reactions, but I am also unhappy with the monster's reaction. It makes no sense why he would just want to kill others just because he thinks it's wrong. I believe Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands has a more realistic take on Shelley's Frankenstein.

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First of all, I don't understand why Frankenstein would be so proud of his creation one minute and then hate it the next after he brings him to life. He talks about how beautiful his creation is right before he brings him to life, and when he suddenly does, he's like "Eww. Gross. Nevermind. It's hideous." Does the monster all of a sudden become ugly when he comes to life? Does he have hideous facial expressions or something? I mean, he probably looks the same as he did when he was dead. Also, why is Frankenstein just now realizing what he is doing is wrong? Right when he brings the monster to life? Is he one of those artists who work so hard on their masterpiece and then finish it and look at it again and are like "Eww. Gross. It's horrible." even though everyone is saying how nice it looks? Seriously, Frankenstein. Seriously. He may just realize what he is doing is wrong, because he has a sudden moment of realization, like when you make a sandwich, but then remember you just ate an our ago, but you still made the sandwich and don't know what to do with it and you regret making the sandwich. I don't know. If I worked really hard on something, I would be proud of it. If I work really hard on an essay and am proud of it when it's finished and I show it to someone else to read and they say it's horrible, then I completely don't understand at all. My work is my baby and I should be proud of it, despite what others think. The inventor in Edward Scissorhands doesn't react like Frankenstein at all. He's proud of his creation after he creates him. He doesn't run away, he raises him like a child. He works really hard on finishing his hands, but then, unfortunately, dies. He loves his creation until his last breath, unlike Frankenstein. I don't think Frankenstein realizes his creation has feelings too. He should of thought about it before he made him, and ran away and hurt its feelings.

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Not only am I angry at Frankenstein, but I am also angry at everyone who has ever seen the monster. Everyone is scared of him. Everyone either wants to run away from him or kill him. I don't understand that. If I saw a ridiculously tall and morbid looking guy, I would just assume that he's a seriously ill tall guy who needs some help. That's exactly how Dianne Wiest, the mother and saleswoman, reacts when she first sees the scar-faced young man named Edward who has scissors for hands. She takes him home and treats him like one of her own sons. Her family and her neighbors (except for that crazy paranoid everything-is-Satan lady) are weary at first, but then they begin to like him, because of the art he makes with his scissor hands. If Frankenstein's monster could show how his amazing ability, his strength, can help others, then he might be able to get people to like him. He tries to do this while collecting wood for Felix, but he remained anonymous. If he wrote him a letter saying "I'm a hideous monster, but I'm friendly and nonthreatening. I was the one who collects the wood for you every morning." then maybe he would get the family to like him. I think he completely approaches it all wrong. He should know that they would never leave their blind father alone for so long. What was the monster thinking?

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Lastly, I would like to talk about how Frankenstein's monster all of a sudden starts killing people. When he's reading about violence in his books, he thinks about how horrible it is, but after Felix beats him up, he all of a sudden hates human kind and wants to kill everyone. He shouldn't be judgmental and decide all human kind is horrible. He just encountered a few bad eggs in his life. There is probably someone out there who wouldn't judge him. I think he starts acting like a monster, because everyone assumes he's a monster. In Psychology, it's called "Observer-Expectancy Effect." It's where the subject behaves a certain way because the observer unknowingly influences the subject to behave that way. This can be seen with Justin Bieber. Everyone hated him and believed he was an arrogant a**hole when he first became famous, even though it wasn't true, and now, after a few years of being hated so much, he is actually an arrogant a**hole. I believe this is what happens to Frankenstein's monster in the novel. Fortunately, for Edward, almost everyone likes him, except for that one crazy lady and Kim's boyfriend, Jim. No one starts questioning Edward until he is talked in to breaking into a house and the rumor Joyce spreads around about him raping her and then everyone starts believing he's dangerous when he pushes Kevin out of a car's way to save him and accidentally scratches his arm. Everyone turns on him and calls him dangerous. I believe people reacted more strongly to Edward than they would have to a normal person. A normal person would have been shunned, but Edward is chased back to his old house, but things only started going down hill for him, because other people are jealous vengeful freaks. If he saved Kevin's life without the break in and the rape rumor, people would believe Edward is heroic, but since Jim is a drunk jealous boyfriend and Joyce can't handle rejection, people started questioning him. Edward wasn't hit by the "Observer-Expectancy Effect," he was hit by others' Fundamental Attribution Error, over-exaggerating small things other people do.

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Even though Frankenstein's monster and Edward behave in different ways, they still are hated because other people are judgmental and can't simply listen and understand other people's point of view. People judge and that influences other people's behavior and their own behavior. Even though Frankenstein and Edward Scissorhands are very different stories, they still speak the same moral: Judging others is wrong. This is something everyone needs to learn, even when not in monster-related situations. Judging people on looks or misunderstandings can lead others down a terrible path. They can end up wanting revenge or they can end up being sad and lonely for the rest of their lives. Everyone deserves to be happy. Before one needs to make a decision, one needs to understand before they act.

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On Setting

Written by Mel

I think that one of the things that can make or break a novel is the setting.

You might be saying, well, no duh -- or you might be wondering what on Earth I mean:  After all, an exciting/interesting set of characters, emotion-evoking writing, and/or a great plot should serve if the setting fails, shouldn't it?  Many of Shakespeare's plays, it could be argued, have a mutable setting, and I certainly wouldn't disagree with you on that point (my favorite version of Richard III is set as a World War I allegory, eschewing everything but Shakespeare's own mentions of the War of the Roses!).  But I'm beginning to note that 'setting' doesn't just apply to things as superficial as historical era or geographic location.

So, I shall pose a question:  Could you set Wuthering Heights away from the moors, and still retain the innate feel of the setting it had before?

Oswaldtwistle Moor (Orphan Wiki, Wikipedia Commons)

Depends.

Setting is inevitably tied to theme; you can look at countless other works and see that.  Though works of genre fiction, C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake mystery books are rooted firmly in Tudor England, a setting in which the main character is treated with flippancy, derision, and even sometimes disgust because of his disability and his status as a lawyer -- and further, being a contemporary author, C.J. Sansom uses the status of women in that era quite often to make statements on sexism and illustrate certain qualities in his characters.  If you set Revelation in the 2000s, Shardlake's views on equality and his kindness toward women would be a pleasant surprise, but not shocking or immediately endearing; in fact, given his beliefs in the original Tudor-set novels, he might seem a little stiff or old-fashioned.  And while lawyers are still scoffed at and people with disability still suffer prejudice, he would have a lot easier of a time than he did in the early 1500s.

The setting of that book gives the reader an immediate connection with one of the characters, as both an outcast and a man with borderline revolutionary ideas on gender roles; even his inner religious conflict is flavored by the Reformist/Papist tensions at the time.  Everything about Sansom's mysteries is painted by the fact that his characters are living in London under King Henry VIII.  It would be unthinkable to tear them away from that setting.

Illustration by Ivan Lapper

Without including too many spoilers (since I have no way of knowing how many of you have read it before), setting also figures greatly into Frankenstein.  Being a piece of period literature, the reader has to doubly consider the setting -- both when it is set and when it was written.  Thankfully, the two aren't terribly far displaced, but it's still quite different than reading a contemporary work written in the late 1700s; the narrative is rife with Enlightenment and Early Modern ideals.  This is a story that is almost entirely a product of its time, from the sneaky references to the Natural State and social justice to the outright classical/theological allusions and natural philosophy name-dropping.  If you've never read it before, you might even laugh aloud in places at the weirdly-placed digressions into tourist-y description.  (Maybe even if you've read it before.  Catches me off guard every time I read it.)

And yet, it is absolutely possible to translate it into the modern era,  because in the end it's not about the obvious setting, just like Emily Bronte's work isn't about the setting. 

So my answer to the original question would be that you can indeed set Wuthering Heights elsewhere, and almost anywhere -- the story itself, with its isolation and wildness and desperation, has Northern England's vast rocky moors engraved into its soul.  To translate it and retain the real meat of the setting would be effortless because the story itself is the setting, just as in Frankenstein -- the narrative itself is a product of its setting, from its morals to its characters.  The characters are embodiments of their time's (and author's!) moral disputes and musings.

You see this a lot more with literary fiction, I think, because setting in genre fiction tends to be an excuse for escapism and cool period description.  Sansom isn't the only author that does this, but there are a lot of contemporary historical fiction writers that don't, and mostly they're those that are esteemed as literary; Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is lush with the moral conflict of the time period, such that the word "doublet" or a mention of rushes on the floor can jar you out of the conflict if you aren't familiar enough with the time period to know it's not just coming out of nowhere.  She doesn't need to mention the setting very much because the thoughts and struggles of the characters are so thick with it.  And while Umberto Eco offers a rich setting to get lost in in almost all of his books -- he's technical about the setting to the point of massive descriptions of monastery life or medieval religious conflict that can last pages or even chapters -- that's not the point, in the end.  If you examine his work as a literary critic and not just a lover of history, you can get just as much if not more out of it.  The theme itself stands out starkly, and is timeless.

This post is probably a lot more rambly than a lot of mine since I've been out a lot of days and haven't attended several classes that were probably enlightening -- and I realize it's not really about anything specific from English class, other than Wuthering Heights.  But the presence of setting has been weighing on my mind as both a writer (National Novel Writing Month, you say?  What?  [weak, horrible laughter]) and a reader, and I think it's an important thing to consider the entanglement of the setting with the ideals and themes of the plot; if I'm reading a book with a setting that isn't reflective of its plot, and a plot that isn't reflective of its setting, something that I can't put my finger on feels off.

The time and ideology should breathe through its characters.  It should feel alive, no matter whether it's a Shakespeare play set during WWI or some outlandish adaptation of Wuthering Heights set in the bustle (but stark, strange isolation) of New York City.

Don't kiss the girl

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Discussing chapters twenty-four through twenty-eight this week reminded me of the 1997 classic american crime movie, Kiss the Girls. In Kiss the Girls a few girls from nearby Durham, North Carolina have disappeared. As a viewer I knew that they had been taken, captured, and put into a home like place where they were used for their talents. However, in Wuthering Heights Heathcliff traps Little Catherine. Much like in Kiss the Girls Heathcliff keeps Catherine for what he can use her for. Heathcliff wanted her to marry Linton so that he could inherit Thrushcross Grange when Edgar dies. The kidnapper in the movie keeps his victims in order to enjoy their talents. Now I am almost positive people will say the same about this blog they said about one of my previous ones, "why did you chose to compare these things when they really have nothing in common?" Except, in my head they do. The problem is getting it out. When I think Wuthering Heights, I immediately see a cavernous house. Yes, I know that is not actually what it is, but it's how I envision it. When I read these chapters my immediate thought was about the movie Kiss the Girls I don't know why, I had not seen the movie in YEARS. However, I can semi understand why now. When I first heard about the movie I dreamed the place that the kidnapper kept his victims as a massive house, colossal. Therefore, I realized the same house was the one I thought Wuthering Heights would look like, and that connection astounded me because of the similarities to the way that Heathcliff and the kidnapper had chosen their victims. I envisioned Catherine as one of those women, trapped away only to be used when needed/wanted. I felt bad for Catherine, while I really hadn't anytime before. 

The Complexity of The Maze Runner Characters

Written by Kathy

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FROM THE MAZE RUNNER SERIES (EXCEPT THE KILL ORDER AND THE MAZE RUNNER FILES) BY JAMES DASHNER
Seriously. I name almost all the major deaths. Don't read this if you don't want spoilers.

Last class, we talked about the complexity of the characters in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Mr. Mullins wanted us to look at all of Brontë's characters and notice their complexity, because he wanted us to appreciate the book more. I already appreciate the book, because I like every single book I read. The reason I never hate a single book I read is because I look at all the books I read in a more complex way, instead of just looking at the surface of the story. Most readers tend to only look at the surface of a story. One book series I love that no one else seems to appreciate is The Maze Runner Series by James Dashner. Most of the time, people say the books are "too confusing" and all the characters are "bland." First of all, The Maze Runner Series is supposed to be confusing. Thomas is put into a large Maze without his memories. We are reading from his point of view. We are supposed to be confused with him. Secondly, the Maze Runner characters are some of the most complex characters I have ever read in a story. A few of the most complex, but unappreciated characters in The Maze Runner Series are Teresa, Gally, and Alby.

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When I first read The Maze Runner, I didn't like the character Teresa at all. She seemed too perfect, because she had absolutely no flaws except for "sassyness," which is a stereotypical "flaw" for strong women in books. I kind of held a grudge against her the entire series until she saved Thomas' life and got crushed by a ceiling, which is when I started to feel sorry for her. After I finished the series, some friends helped me realize how complex Teresa's character actually is. In the first novel, The Maze Runner, you mostly see her annoying perfectness and her sassyness, but during The Scorch Trials, real flaws start to appear. One of her biggest flaws is caring too much about others and not enough about herself. She even ends up beating up her best friend, Thomas, to save his life and ultimately ruining their friendship forever. On top of that, she ends up pushing him away from a falling ceiling, only to be crushed by it. So I guess you could call this flaw her fatal flaw.

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Another character that is often looked at too simply is Gally (or Captain Gally as he likes to be called). He is first introduced as the bully of the series, because he passionately announces his hatred for Thomas every time he sees him. He even tries to kill Thomas after they escape the Maze, but Chuck sacrifices himself and the dagger hits him instead. Gally is actually being controlled by WICKED. Thomas, however, can't get this into his head, but Thomas is just clueless sometimes (and by sometimes, I mean all the time). Gally is obviously crying and trying to gain back control of himself before he throws the dagger, but Thomas doesn't notice and just blames Gally for Chuck's death. Later on, when Thomas meets Gally again in Denver, Gally reveals to Thomas he was controlled by WICKED and never really wanted to kill Chuck. He also sarcastically remarks he wanted to kill Thomas, which shows he is both sarcastic and serious (Gally seems to take himself too seriously sometimes. Example: Captain Gally). Even after Gally tells Thomas why he killed Chuck, Thomas still hates him, but he, at least, tries to not show it as much. If we, as the readers, look at Gally from Gally's perspective and not Thomas' perspective, we would see that Gally is actually a really complex character. If you do your math correctly, you can notice that there is a Keeper missing on the pole at Ben's Banishment. Gally is already declared a nemesis by Thomas at this point, so if Thomas looked at the pole, which had all the Keepers on it, wouldn't he think "What? Gally's a Keeper? I didn't know that. I hate him so much. Ugh." He doesn't, however, think this, because Gally wasn't there (Thomas doesn't realize Gally is a Keeper until Thomas' first gathering much later). And why would Gally not be at Ben's Banishment? Well... Ben is a Builder and Gally is the Keeper of the Builders, so they probably spent a lot of time together not working (Have you seen the quality of the Homestead?). My theory is that they are really close and Gally couldn't handle watching someone that close to him sent out into the Maze to become Griever food. Dashner shows that Gally actually does have feelings and isn't just the bully Thomas perceives him to be.

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One of the most complex, but unappreciated characters is Alby. I have never heard a single person say that he is his/her favorite character. That might be due to the fact that he died in the first book, or it could be due to the fact that people aren't looking at him closely enough. Even though I don't usually choose favorites, I would say that Alby is probably my favorite character, for a number of reasons: (1) he is fearless, (2) he is efficient, and (3) he is a really caring person. Alby usually only shows the first two to other people. He wants the other Gladers to know he's a good leader, especially since he is fairly new at leading (The previous leader, Nick, died somewhere between Chuck's arrival and Thomas' arrival. Chuck arrives only a month before Thomas, so it was fairly soon). When Minho tells Alby there's a dead Griever in the Maze, Alby quickly agrees to investigate it the next day. He pokes the "dead" Griever with his foot. I don't think any other Glader besides him (not even Minho) would poke a Griever. The Gladers are completely scared of the Grievers, but Alby believes it is important and he pokes the Griever in order to double check that Grievers can actually die (They actually can, but this particular one wasn't really dead). Alby makes decisions in a quick and rational manor in order to get things done in a time efficient manner (except after he goes through the Changing). An example of this is when Teresa first arrives in the Glade. He takes the situation very seriously and questions Thomas on whether he knows her or not. He doesn't spend a lot of time on questioning Thomas, because he figures that's a waste of time (because Thomas isn't answering all that well) and he orders the Med-jacks to take Teresa in their care. He also tells the many excited and hormonal teenage boys not to touch her. This shows that he cares a lot about people, even people he doesn't even know. There are many hints he is a caring person throughout The Maze Runner, but the biggest event that shows how much he really cares a lot about others is the time he saves Newt. In The Death Cure, as Crank Newt is begging for his death, he tells Thomas the story of how he really got his limp: After Newt climbs up one of the Walls inside the Maze, throws himself from the side, and lands on the ground, he is somehow still alive. Alby finds him and drags him all the way back to the Glade, most likely going against orders to save his friend (Guessing that Alby was a Runner at this point, because Alby would've not gone into the Maze with Minho if he wasn't: Runners had to map their sections then immediately come back). Alby cares a lot about Newt and about his fellow Gladers. He wants to ensure that everyone's lives are safe and they escape the Maze. Well, until he goes through the Changing. After he goes through the Changing, you can tell he still cares a lot, because he doesn't want the Gladers to face the horrors of the real world. He believes it is preferable to be killed by the Grievers than to face what's outside the Maze. Even though Alby may not always show it, but he has many different sides to him: He has a fearless and efficient leader side and he has a caring guardian side.

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The Maze Runner Series is full of complex characters. I can't even begin to comprehend people who don't believe the characters are complex. They are extremely complex. All the characters in the Maze Runner series have many different sides to their personalities. Shuck it, even the "Rose took my nose" Crank has many different sides to his personality (We know he likes to eat noses, but the words "Rose took my nose, I suppose." sounds like a nursery rhyme. He probably was a father or an uncle or another family figure before the Flare took him over). Even the smallest characters can have complex personalities. Not all characters need an entire book in order to portray their personality. The personalities Gally, Teresa, and Alby were portrayed through the writing of James Dashner quite well. They are complex and different from every single other character in The Maze Runner Series. People who read the series probably perceive the characters as simple, because they are reading from the perspective of Thomas, the main character. Thomas is an introvert (You can tell by the way he complains about not getting enough alone time and the way he runs off to the Deadheads to hide from his problems), so he won't naturally be able to perceive other people's personalities as well. Since the readers are in the perspective of Thomas, probably the most clueless character in the entire series, they won't be able to look through other character's perspectives unless they look closer at the series. The most subtle of hints can give away an entire character's personality. Figuring out a character's personality is like finding the Code to the Maze, you have to put the small facts and ideas together to come to a conclusion. That conclusion will help you escape the Maze of "flat" characters and go into the real world of discovering round characters. Sometimes the key to solving the character's personalities is right in front of you and "maybe you should just push that button." - Chuck (The Maze Runner, Page 346)

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What An Actual Young Adult Romance Would Look Like

Written by:  Mel H.

 (This is my first post for Amber's, Lizzy's, and my blog; for anyone who doesn't know what happened, I moved from my one-person blog to their group.  From now on, I'll be writing every third post.  Hi everyone!)

**spoilers for Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments books**

It is undeniable, laughably and obviously undeniable, that whatever feelings exist between Catherine Earnshaw Linton and Heathcliff are unhealthy.  To say the very least.

When I first started reading Wuthering Heights, I'd heard reviews quite to the contrary of the actual material; of course, there are always going to be fangirls who make Heathcliff out to be some sort of brooding bishounen with hidden spots of softness, but even aside from these extremists and Heathcliff apologists, the status of WH as a swooning, grand romance is lauded far above the crooked abusiveness of the relationships depicted in it.   I knew, for one, how I thought the story was going to go:  I knew beyond all knowledge that Heathcliff, after having been treated terribly by Hindley Earnshaw, would sweep back in from his three year absence on a white horse and sweep Catherine away from her husband, who would turn out to be A Terrible Person Indeed.  There would be all sorts of social and class conflict, and maybe someone would die, but only tragically.  And maybe Heathcliff would commit a few acts of brutality along the way, but he'd end up being a good person after all.

Haha.  Ha.  Hahaha.  Haha.

The blaring warning sign -- what began to tear down my childish expectations -- was Catherine's "I am Heathcliff" speech, where she asserts that, unlike loving Edgar Linton, she needed Heathcliff; she identified with him.  This essay does a good job of exploring that particular facet of their relationship, which is, I think, one of its most telling aspects.  It's almost as if Heathcliff and Catherine see the other as an alter ego, empathizing and identifying with one another to such an extent that they seem like individual parts of a whole. 

Further, the Freudian sense of the word 'identification' (other than going down into a horrible dark rabbit hole full of Oedipal complexes and political incorrectness) lends WH's central relationship an even darker, more socially backwards tone: Not only does it insinuate a mental strategy that reflects dangerously low self-esteem, but it also paints the picture of two individual personalities barreling ever closer toward one another, losing sight of the individual 'self' in favor of assimilating as much of the other person and the couple as possible.  More on that here.

I don't want to get into psychology because that's not what this blog post is about -- I'm merely bringing these things up to ask you, as a reader, if they're at all familiar.  Are they?  If you're saying 'yes' right now, then I agree with you; and if you're saying 'no', I'd recommend you rent any Twilight movie or read the first book -- or, more to the point, pick just about any brooding vampire romance for teens off the shelf that you can find.

I've never read Twilight, so I can't say one way or the other whether it actually DOES follow this pattern, but I read a lot of things like Twilight back in middle school and early high school.   Girl meets brooding boy who thinks he's a monster, there's an immediate attachment, girl becomes so smitten with him that she can barely think of herself, boy tries to acquit himself from the relationship but fails because he's so absorbed in her, they do lots of creepy things like watching each other sleep and sniffing each other's hair and trying to kill themselves for each other, and eventually...

...what, did you think I was going to say it usually ends tragically?  No.  They usually wind up happily ever after -- and if not, with just as much unhappiness as it takes for the author to churn out another novel and make loads of money off of their lovelorn wretchedness.

The Mortal Instruments:  Obligatory Shirtless Man Cover

 One of my favorite fictional relationships way back when was Jace and Clary from City of Bones, who function quite a bit, in retrospect, like Edward and Bella, or Heathcliff and Cathy.  Of course, Jace and Edward both are much kinder love interests than Heathcliff -- it doesn't take much, surprisingly -- but the rhythm of the story still stands.  Clary winds up so utterly smitten for Jace that she's willing to do all sorts of unpleasant things for him; if I recall correctly, they wind up resolving to ignore the fact that she's 100% convinced that he's 100% her brother.  She shoves herself through all sorts of damaging trials for him.  As the story goes on, it feels almost like she's losing herself to this great tempest that is I love Jace I love Jace I love Jace and as a young girl, reading that, I started to feel very, very weird.

And that's the point.  She loves him so much that incest is okay.  She loves him so much that killing herself is okay -- even preferable to a life without him, as Bella suggests in Twilight with her "him".  She loves him so much that she'd like to lose herself in his shadow; in fact, that's what love is about, isn't it?

That's what love is about, isn't it?

I think Catherine Linton would say so.  I think Heathcliff would tell you directly that the relationship is unstable and ugly and he likes it that way.  So do a lot of people.  And I understand why you might want to fantasize about a relationship like Catherine's with Heathcliff:  The world is so turbulent, our identities so full of self-loathing, so ever-changing, that to shelter oneself in the persona of another, even if he is a wicked and terrible man, is preferable to living in our own skins.

Let me ask you a question, though.  We've all already seen how Brontë depicts her savage, selfless romances:  Destructively, and exactly how they are.  But that's not the story you get from Clare's books, or Meyer's, is it?  There seems to be an entire genre now devoted to telling the story of a young woman who falls in love with a man/woman who's bad for her but can't leave him/her because they are entirely become one another -- and how it's all okay, because it's love, and young people (even adults!) are that way.

Is it love?  Do we need to be telling our daughters this same story over and over again?

That to crawl inside the persona of a destructive man or woman, to be incapable of living without him or her, is just part of their existence as a woman with romantic feelings?

Fire and Ice

By: Izzy Lewis

Literature is any written work that achieves a story about life. It has at least one theme and is able to connect to one's life. In Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice," he states "Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice." Fire and ice are both factors that are needed in a story.

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Fire is the explosion of ideas in a story. Fire, or "desire" as Frost calls it, is what makes life exciting. Ideas are what drives humans on to do new and exciting things. Without ideas, everything would be boring and life would have no meaning. Without ideas in a story, the story would lack meaning. The story needs fire.

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Not only is fire a necessary element in a story, but ice is also. Ice is the cold, hard facts about human life. One can't have ideas without having facts to back them up. Sometimes it's hard to accept the facts and only pay attention to the ideas, but the facts are also necessary to understand the story. The story needs ice.

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Fire is what starts the story and ice is what calms it down. There needs to be a balance in order for the story to work. If there is too much fire, the reader will be overwhelmed with ideas and reading it will be straining to the brain, because the reader will have to think too much. If there is too much ice, the reader will be bored with the story, because there isn't anything in it challenging to the mind. With a perfect balance of fire and ice, one will be challenged by the story but also understand the story and be able to relate it to human life.  Fire and ice together, of course, make water. With water, the ideas and facts flow easier to the readers' minds. So, if the world was going to end, it should end in both fire AND ice in order to achieve a perfect balance.

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