Hey everyone! Please forgive me for over-producing here. It’s a Norse Mythology inspired short story. This is my version of how evil sprouted into the world. Enjoy!

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In a little house on the neck of a hill laid a little boy. He was small and he was kind, and he had never hurt a soul. He climbed tall trees and swam in deep rivers. The little boy spent his days frolicking in the daylight. He captured fish and he teased the neighbourhood girls. Although he was an orphan, the little boy knew how to take care of himself. The river bathed him clean and fed him full of fish. His little garden sung with happy herbs and spilled with radiant radishes. He was a happy, healthy, kind little boy.

While he was fearless in the sun, he was vulnerable by night. Each night at the brink of dusk the wind would blow softly and lull the little boy to sleep. Before the wind could sing its lullabies the little boy locked his doors tight and squeezed his windows shut. He was defenseless against the sleepy wind and his restless sleeps. When he closed his eyes each night the wicked world of his nightmares enclosed upon him. The boy was taunted by clowns, chased by wicked animals, and tortured by demons. Despite his benevolence and his courage, the little boy internalized a world of pure terror.

One night the little boy had an eerie nightmare that veered from his normal, terrifying dreams. In his dream his feet hid underneath a thick mist that caped the hard ground. He focused his eyes and saw a tall, ghastly old woman in the distance. The boy had seen a kind like hers in his dreams before.

“Witch” he whispered.

“Come here” whispered the witch. Her voice twinkled like stardust in the air.

The little boy’s heart thudded anxiously in his chest. He remembered the witches from his previous dreams well enough not to trust them.

“Do not be frightened. I need your help”

Her long white hair grazed the mist in stringy, straw-like strands. Her glowing red eyes wrinkled with deep crevices when she grinned with her yellow, decaying smile. With skin as white as bones, she looked like an angel of death.

The witch suddenly began to walk in the boy’s direction. The boy was frozen with fear.

Standing a table’s distance from the boy, the witch began to speak. “I need your help. I am caught in your dream.”

The boy felt his heart thud louder in his chest. “Why should I help an evil witch like you?”

The witch revealed her nasty teeth with a wide grin.

“Young boy. If you help me I will grant you any wish”

The little boy pondered in thought. He longed to escape from his terrifying dreams that plagued him each night.

“Any wish?”

“Anything you could ever want.”

“You have a deal”

The little boy awoke with a jerk. He thought long and hard. How would he help this witch escape from his dreams? Could he capture the dream?

“A dream catcher” he whispered.

The little boy gathered strong rope and sturdy wood. He webbed the rope with the wood and created a large dream catcher. The boy admired his finished project; it was his ticket to restful solace. As the sun said goodnight and tip-toed into the distance, the whispering winds made their way toward the little boy’s little house. Tucked into his bed, the little boy closed his eyes and listened to the breeze as it lulled him to sleep.

The little boy awoke suddenly. The moon was high in the sky as it was late at night. He turned his head toward his dream catcher and noticed a dark, hazy cloud of mist caught amongst the rope.

“Reach for me!” screeched a familiar voice. “Reach inside the cloud!”

The boy rolled out of his bed and reached deep inside the cloud. The boy grasped the witch’s bony hand and pulled her up with all of his might. The witch sprung through the cloud and collapsed on his bedroom floor. “Meet me at the nape of the Old Oak Tree before nightfall tomorrow. Then I will grant your wish,” she croaked. The witch then disappeared into the night.

The next day the little boy waited eagerly for nightfall. He gardened in his garden, swam in the river and fished for his dinner, but he could not tear his mind away from the night’s meeting with the witch. At the cusp of nightfall he began his journey toward the Old Oak Tree.

When the little boy arrived the witch swung from behind the tree.

“What is your wish, child?”

“I wish to be relieved from my nightmares forever”

The witch smirked. “On one condition” she cackled. She held out her hand and revealed one small, grey stone. “Plant this stone under the roots of the tree and your wish will come true”

The boy extended his hand and took the stone from the witch. “Fail to plant the stone within the hour and you will suffer”

The witch shrieked a menacing cackle and disappeared into the air. The boy began to dig, but his hands were young and small. The sun creeped behind the hill and the boy could hear the whispers of the lullaby breeze. The boy’s eyes felt heavy, but he continued to dig. His eyes felt heavier, and heavier. The boy dropped the stone into the cavity and collapsed, unable to resist the incantations of the wind’s whispers. The little boy slept soundly next to his wish, and the witch roamed freely in the night.

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Works Cited

Cline, John. “Dream Catcher.” Psychology Today. Psychology Today, n.d. Web. 30 May 2015.

McCoy, Daniel. “Norse Mythology for Smart People – The Ultimate Online Resource for Norse Mythology and Religion.” Norse Mythology for Smart People. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 May 2015.

1.

I think this is a fantastic question. Maybe this is because I learned the exact opposite in another course here at UBC.

I took English 348 with a well- renowned professor on campus. I have to admit he was absolutely brilliant, and I could sense his passion for the subject even before I heard his booming, theatrical voice that bounced around the room during his Shakespearean introduction. I was excited for the course and I couldn’t wait to dive into some of my favourite literature. Alas, he had me fooled.

This professor, brilliant though he was, advocated the theories of McLuhan and Ong; demonstrating the distinct existence of an oral society that existed pre-Shakespeare, and the semi-literate society that existed post-Shakespeare. He tried to argue that Shakespeare’s tragic plays, though full of love, loss, character and emotion, were instead centralized around the agonizing shift from oral culture to literate culture. What happened to reading the plays and discussing their thematic significance? What about Shakespeare’s brilliant literary devices? My professor’s perspective upset me greatly.

The arguments were fantastic. They were well-supported, somewhat logical and very interesting. However, his arguments just didn’t sit well with me. How could a culture that was so full of rich customs and traditions be degraded as a primitive culture that lived without the abstract?

I feel a similar feeling toward Aboriginal culture.

Courtney MacNeil’s article empowers oral culture. The culture is not considered simply black or white, but is instead credited for its complexity and its memory. The black-and-white parallel of oral culture vs. literate culture fails to recognize the existence of the written and the spoken that exists in both of these avenues of language. Today, while we are/were considered a literary culture (and now moving toward a digital culture) our culture would fail to exist properly without orality. This course may be something that we are each taking online, however, we all watched our professor’s introductory video. Our online course is a perfect example or how these cultures, while treated as distinct entities in my other course, are perfectly intertwined.

The abstract is everything in an Aboriginal culture. Every animal and totem pole has a story, every elder has a lesson. The falcon, the eagle, the bear, the salmon, the raven. Everything is significant, and everything is valued. This “oral culture”, while it uses orality to convey its language, does so with levels of complexity that literate culture has lost. These peoples have no means of writing anything down. They must remember what they are told. These peoples must listen when they are spoken to. The memories of these peoples are fantastic, and unheard of in any literate culture. MacNeil’s argument defending oral culture is probably one of the best articles I have read since my unsettling Shakespeare course. MacNeil states “orality is not the opposition of writing, but rather a catalyst of communication more generally, which is part of both writing and speech” as “the medium is innately connected with cultural knowledge”.

Similar to the “primitive” parallel that McNeil criticizes, Chamberlin discusses “Us and Them”. What interests me in particular is that the “barbaric” is criticized for being “them”; that which is not a part of “us”. Chamberlin makes a brilliant statement when he says “..surely different languages [orality] should be nourished the way rare species are, by protecting their habitat…Why should a particular language be preserved when another larger or stronger one seems ready to replace it?” (15-16). For the purpose of this argument, why should literacy be preserved as the dominant language when orality is still perfectly complex and dominant in Aboriginal culture? Does reinforcing and defending literate culture continue to proliferate colonialism?

Was my professor a secret supporter of the colonial effort? Just Kidding. (maybe)..

This is a residential school. This is what is agonizing. Not Shakespeare’s “transition” from “oral culture” to “literate culture”. This is brutal colonialism, and this really shouldn’t have happened.

Works Cited

“The Gutenberg Galaxy Essay – Critical Essays – ENotes.com.” Enotes.com. Enotes.com, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.

“Ong on the Differences between Orality and Literacy  |  Chapter 1: Literacies on a Human Scale  |  Literacies  |  New Learning.” Ong on the Differences between Orality and Literacy  |  Chapter 1: Literacies on a Human Scale  |  Literacies  |  New Learning. Methuen, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.

“Stories the Totems Tell: Bringing Aboriginal Poles to Life.” Https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca. Government of Canada, 2000. Web.

Hey everybody! I’m Hailey and I’m a fourth year English Literature major. I’m excited to be enrolled in this course because I LOVE criticizing colonization! I think that it is vital for a society to analyze it’s past mistakes and learn from them in order to reroute behaviours, attitudes and actions in a justifiable and moral direction. From what I seem to have read/observed this course will be weighted largely upon online discussion and participation. According to my understanding, it is up to us as responsible and reliable students to engage in discussion from a digital environment and actively read both the teacher’s blog and our fellow student’s blogs. As a course about Canadian literature we will be reading literature/stories and discovering intersections between Western and Native traditions. This course will be historically-focused in an effort to focus our thought upon the impact of history upon Canadian literature as a genre. We will also reflect upon storytelling (and I’m assuming this regards Native storytelling). In addition, from what I’ve come to understand, we will be separating the genres of Literature and storytelling in an effort to reveal canonization, nation-building and colonialism, and how all of these topics work together.

I hope that this course strengthens my online skills and stimulates thoughtful online communication between students regarding the texts of study. In addition, I hope that this course allows me to develop a well-rounded critical understanding of Canadian literature. In particular, I hope to reflect upon the evils of colonialism and criticize the horrors of assimilation and integration that native Canadian cultures underwent during Westernization. I recently took a course that reflected upon British imperialism in Africa and India and I was baffled at the horrific, bloody history that cut deeply into the cultures of these affected continents/countries. I hope that this course provides me with a similar enlightenment and focalizes my educational motivations toward the wrongdoing of Canadian imperial actions/behaviours that were once thrust upon Native cultures of the pre-Canadian territory.

I’m looking forward to this course and I can’t wait to see what it has in store! Happy Friday :).

Works Cited

Gordon, Todd. “Canada As Colonial Power | Literary Review of Canada.” Literary Review of Canada, n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.

Monkman, Leslie. “Aspects of the Indian in Canadian Literature.” Aspects of the Indian in Canadian Literature. University of Toronto Press, n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.