Lack of Detective/Reader Relationship

Yeah, this book definitely messed with my mind, but I still enjoy it in a way. The narrator was definitely what made this experience more interesting for me as the mystery of their existence intrigues me. Actually, it’s more a mix of intrigue and yet confusion. As a matter of fact, this is actually the hardest blog post I had to make as whenever I tried to come up with some questions, they all seemed to fall flat somewhere, either with a lack of evidence, me essentially asking/screaming “WHAT? WHO? WHY?” at everything (which I know we all are wondering so that’s nothing new), an element that has been explained already, or just me spouting off some kind of insane convoluted theory on you guys and seeing if it would make any sense to you guys. Trust me guys, I want to spare you all from the last one.

Still, I managed to come up with some questions that we can talk about: the idea of how the detective and the reader are supposed to be going along the same plot together. In lecture, it was mentioned that we are supposed to identify ourselves with the detective as we try to solve the mystery/crime with the detective and feel a sense of victory when it’s solved depending on how much the reader is able to get right. With City of Glass and Quinn however, we end up just as lost, if not more so, than Quinn by the end of the story due to various reasons (the narrator we just find out exists, how we don’t know what happened to Quinn, etc.).

Thus, here are my questions:

It’s most likely intentional that we have been gradually more and more separated by Quinn with his multiple identities, him disappearing, and finding out this narrator exists during the last two chapters of the book that we don’t know who they are; so what’s the purpose of this separation? Does that leave the reader to bear the role of detective by themselves with what little knowledge they have like Quinn did with his mystery? Does this enforce the idea that this mystery is a lost cause for both Quinn and the reader or are there still possible solutions to some of the mysteries that the reader could at least partially come up with?

I highly doubt we’re all going to solve this crazy mystery, if it was ever intended to be solved at all, but it never hurts to speculate, right? Aside from the obvious headache of course.

Reading Buddha = Oedipus Flashbacks

I don’t know if it was just me, but didn’t some concepts in Tezuka’s Buddha remind anyone of anything? Because for me, I got little glimpses of flashbacks back to Oedipus Rex. Yeah, THAT far back.

The main aspect I picked up on was that both texts explore the themes of fate in a sense. With Oedipus Rex, the titular character was fated to end up killing his father and marrying his mother. With the caste system in Buddha, once you are born into a certain caste, you stay in that caste for the rest of your life. In both cases, whenever the main character (Oedipus and Chapra respectively) tries to fight back against their fate, it results in them suffering gravely for their actions. For Oedipus, his search for the truth on the murder on the former king of Thebes resulted in both Jocasta’s death and Oedips’s self-blinding. As for Chapra, when his true identity as a member of the slave caste is revealed instead of being a soldier, he along with his mother get executed. I guess in both of these texts, they both strongly rely on the idea of fate and destiny and keeping in line with what you are meant to be. I’m not sure if there’s any particular Buddhist meaning or further elaboration on this subject as I in no way know anything about Buddhist beliefs, but it would be interesting to see a comparison on those beliefs to see if the characters have broke some particular ideas central to Buddhism.

This was a fairly short post, but an interesting comparison in my opinion.

Scottie: Are We Really Supposed to be Cheering for this Obsessive Creep?

So yeah, although I do enjoy the movie overall, I still can’t get over how Scottie behaved during the second half of the movie. Please note that this will be probably just end up being a nonsensical rant more than anything else, so if there are some parts that don’t make much sense, that I haven’t explain very well, or are just flat out random, please bear with me.

During the first half of the movie, I was fine with Scottie. With how his friend Gavin hired him to be his private investigator to watch over his wife Madeline, him spying and following her around can be excused since he’s technically doing his job. After Madeline’s “death” however, that’s when I got quite freaked out by him.

Let’s check off the reasons for that shall we? Seeing Madeline through practically every women he meets? Check. Goes to Judy uninvited because she looks similar to Madeline who he now obsesses over? Check. Forces her to wear the same style of clothing/hair that Madeline wore despite her protests? Check. Takes her back to the place where Madeline’s “death” took place in order TO USE HER AS A TOOL TO MAKE HIMSELF FEEL BETTER? FRICKING CHECK.

What really upsets me about this more than anything else is that this is supposed to be the good guy, the character we’re supposed to be rooting for to succeed in his mission. That scares me a lot as males at the time who grew up watching this film at the time will think that the creepy, obsessive behavior is acceptable, that this makes them strong, desirable men that women would want to do everything, even change themselves for! It wouldn’t matter much if it was just a normal film, but this isn’t the case. Vertigo is one of Hitchcock’s most famous films, so with the impact it had, of course more and more people check it out in the following years, so this movie had been watched by a large audience.

I know that several people apparently do defend what he does as being justifed, and I do in a sense get that Scottie was tricked by his friend Gavin just so that he can use Madeline’s death to cover up murdering his wife and that Madeline did decide to go along with his demands anyways because she loves him, but that’s about the most that I can deal with. The main problem I have here is that he shouldn’t have a reason to bother to continue with the mystery after Madeline’s supposed suicide.

But he’s a detective, it’s his job/instincts!

Well, it is in name, but he seems fairly reluctant for the role in the movie’s plot. For the first half, he retired from the police force after the incident that killed his fellow officer and caused his vertigo. With the earlier investigation, he didn’t want to do it in the first place when Gavin asked him to. Scottie even suggested for Gavin to bring Madeline to a psychiatrist or a doctor to deal with her issue.
During the second half of the movie. He’s been held in a sanatorium (I think?) for about a year during which it is assumed that he was unable to do work due to his depression, or at the very least not be going around investigating again like he did before.
In both of these cases, this proves that after traumatic events, he stops investigating entirely, albeit for different reasons. So this whole “detective thing” going on with Judy? That ain’t a detective doing his job, that’s an obsessive, manipulative creeper who seems to need the existence of Madeline (or a woman like Madeline) in order for him to function and be happy again. (I dunno why, but doesn’t that seem like a strange role reversal in a way that stereotypes want us to believe that women need a man to complete their lives? Hmm….)

Scottie subconsciously knew that Madeline wasn’t truly dead!

Although it’s possible, it’s never been confirmed and the chances are slim, so that’s not very solid as an excuse.

Well, Madeline went along with Scottie’s demands out of love!

Yes and no. Yes, it’s clear that she does love him and does want to play along to have a chance to be with him. However, I feel like there’s this one thing that we’ve all overlooked; she was most likely used by Gavin as a pawn, not the one most likely to come up with the cover up/plan (unless there was something that I missed). Remember that this is still the late 1950’s so it’s automatic to understand that Gavin was the one in control and was using Madeline as a means to his own end of killing his wife. Just like how Scottie used Madeline as a means to his own end of “moving on from the past” and getting over his vertigo. She fell into the hands of one controlling man to another, so she in part had less control of the situation than some would argue.

I knew there were some other points, but these were just the ones that I can formulate in my head at the moment.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that if this is the character that men back at the time are supposed to relate to and aspire to become, no wonder that in our more free society, there’s still some patriarchal aspects that remain due to the older generations continuing to enforce those views through various forms of power, whether it be through government, media, and simply people within our own lives.

Carter: Providing Pairs of Perplexing Parallels

So yeah, that title showing off consonance may or may not be intentional. You know what is intentional (and better put together than my lame attempt of a title)? Angela Carter’s stories, particularly in their relation to one another despite being separate stories.

First off, can I just quickly say that I loved this book? It was such an interesting and in some ways familiar experience to me because of the connection to Margret Atwood. When I heard in lecture that Atwood was a fan of Carter’s work and took some inspiration from her, my face was practically left in a permanent smile for the rest of the lecture because now I knew why reading The Bloody Chamber felt so familiar to me.

In a dystopia where the US becomes a theocratic state with mass infertility due to pollution, the few fertile women left are forced to be “handmaids” whose main purpose was to bear children for elite, infertile couples.

Previously in high school, I read arguably one of Margret Atwood’s most famous books The Handmaid’s Tale, and I loved it. Well, not what happens in it (I certainly wouldn’t want to be stuck in that world cause it’s just so depressing), but how engrossed in the story I became and it was one of those stories that made me really start to think on the issues that the book brings up. That’s a little parallel in it of itself now that I think about it; while both texts were a bit hard to handle at time due to the events occurring within each book being fairly gloomy, they both showed Carter’s and Atwood’s explorations and debating on women’s roles in a master slave relationship as well as the use of sexual desire and violence (though more so in Carter’s case).

Anyways, enough nerdiness for now. Back onto the subject at hand. One major thing that I noticed while reading The Bloody Chamber was that there were two pairs of stories that cover the same fairy tale, but each story being a different take of the original tale, and I focused on how The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger’s Bride are both based on Beauty and the Beast and how The Werewolf and The Company of Wolves are both based on Little Red Riding Hood.

I know that we covered the first two stories in seminar back on Wednesday, but I also connected the other pair of stories to this particular pattern that I noticed. So that leaves me to question this: What kinds of similar themes/ideas did these story pairs and that all four stories in general cover and why is it that each fairy tale pair is different in terms of how they execute the story (Beauty’s different reactions to the stay with their respective beast and how Red reacted differently with the wolf in both stories for example)? In general, why did Carter choose these two stories in particular to make two alternate versions of instead of making similar pairs with other fairy tales or simply focusing on other fairy tales?

Lt. Gustl: What are you hiding?

Well, this was an interesting story for me to read. What caught my attention the most was the way the story has been told to us. Instead of it being told by a third person narrator or from a direct first person which would normally consist of the character describing what’s going on around them, we are shown Gustl’s thoughts as they appear, as if we managed to read his mind somehow.

As interesting as this is, it also raises a lot of questions. Since the reader relies so heavily on Gustl’s thoughts to make sense of where he is physically and mentally, how much of his thoughts can the reader really trust? This to me appears to be something that Freud would have a fun time analyzing since he would be able to clearly see Gustl’s concious desire for sex within his thoughts. However, aside from sex, there could be possibly be other things that Gustl isn’t making himself aware of, as Freud would go on to say that what the reader is able to see Gustl think isn’t entirely what is truly in his subconscious as Gustl’s “ego” is possibly keeping some of his true thoughts hidden from the reader, possibly even from Gustl himself.

Again, aside from sexual desires, what could Gustl be hiding from the reader and/or himself that we are not explicitly told? How much of his visible thoughts are truth or censored lies? Is there another way of thinking aside from Freud’s views that could possibly offer another answer?

Dark Fairy Tales: Changes Through Retellings

Going into this, I was very excited to get into some fictional stories (FINALLY!) as we only did Oedipus The King and The Tempest thus far. I’m so happy to finally focus on other stories and see how these stories are told and why they are told.

During our lecture, I was a little surprised when I heard someone saying that the Grimm’s version of Snow White was a lot darker than they thought it would be. The reason as to why I was surprised was because in my case, I already know about many of the darker, original versions of these fairy tales. Not just through my curiosity bringing me to look up these stories’s origins as a teenager, but also through my own experience of reading them as a child.

There are two instances in particular that I vividly remember, first of which is Snow White. The picture book that I found in particular was pretty much the same as the version that we read except that the prince and Snow White lived happily ever after on horseback and omitting the wedding scene with the death of Snow White’s stepmother. Again, since I was just a little kid and it was a bright, happy, cute little picture book, I didn’t think anything of it since it ended happily.

The second instance, which is a lot more vivid for me, was the Hans Christan Anderson fairytale The Little Mermaid. The version I read as a child as part of an anthology of fairy tales was pretty much close to the original story, except for one bit which I’ll talk about in a bit.

In the original story of the Little Mermaid, she ends up mute with the loss of her tongue in exchange for human legs from the sea witch in order to find the prince whose life she saves from a violent storm. However, walking and dancing are extremely painful to her as it is akin to walking on sharp knives. However, the prince ends up falling in love with another princess and plans to marry her believing that it was her who saved him from the shipwreck. The little mermaid was heartbroken due to all she sacrificed to have a chance to be with him. Suddenly, the little mermaid’s older sisters find her, explaining that they made a deal with the sea witch in which they cut off their long hair in exchange for a magic dagger. Giving it to the little mermaid, they explained that if she were to kill the prince with the knife and let the blood drip unto her feet, she would be able to grow back her tail and return to the sea a mermaid. However, when she sees the couple together in their bed happily sleeping, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She throws herself an the dagger into the sea and she dies turning into sea foam.

Now, I’m not sure if this part in particular was only in the book I read or was in the original ending of the story, but this what also also in the ending that I read. After the little mermaid turns into sea foam, instead of ceasing to exist like what would normally happen, she becomes a spirit and is greeted by several other female spirits. The say that because of her selflessness in not killing the prince out of jealousy, she has the opportunity to be a spirit that will go up into heaven. Again, I’m not sure if this is what happens in the original tale, but this was from the story I had read.

What I find fascinating is how even through different generations, people tend to change and even add material to these stories, yet how they managed to endure after centuries of tellings and retellings.

If anyone else wants to check more on this subject, here are links to two videos out of so many online to get you started:

(Keep in mind that the stories may vary depending on what aspects the video makers decide to focus on, as they both talk about the same fairytales, but explain the stories differently. Because of this, I highly recommend looking up these stories yourselves to see how even one story could have different versions of it depending on the time period.)

Hopkins Achieving Purpose with His Skills

Let me make this clear: I still have a fairly hard time understanding Hopkins’s poems. I do however have a somewhat easier time understanding his actions, particularly his actions after deciding to continue his poetry. Him coming to terms with using his poetry to glorify God really struck me somehow. Looking through my Bible, I found a particular verse that I feel would really strike as important to Hopkins:

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10

Whether or not you not you believe in a God, this verse still brings about the same sort of idea. Everyone has some sort of special skill or talent that they have learned to develop, and that gift should be as part of your future. In Hopkins’s case, it’s to use his poetic skills to share God’s glory.

As for my connection, it’s with my own writing skills as I enjoy writing fictional stories with plans to at some point write and publish some fictional novels. I’m at that point where I’m trying to use my writing skills to create these novels that teach important lessons that I’ve learned throughout my life.

Of course, it’s not only restricted with writing as it states in the verse. It states the talent can be in various forms, so that opens the door for many possibilities and personal interpretations of one’s talents that can be used with would vary from person to person. Whether it be in sports, mathematics, science, art, music, speaking, wherever you talent may lie, you have the capabilities to use your passions and talents to achieve great things.

Prospero, why not just kill people?

I’m pretty sure most of us have read at least one other Shakespeare text back in high school. In my case, I’ve studied Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet.

When reading through The Tempest, I was certain that I knew what was going to happen; “Prospero is going to use his magical powers as well as Ariel and Caliban to terrorize the shipwrecked crew and eventually kill them all,” I thought to myself in my mind. At this point, I was pretty much expecting some sort of bloodshed since all the plays I mentioned above have at least half the characters die, Hamlet in particular has practically everybody die off except for Horatio and Fortinbras. By the story’s end however, I was left a bit confused at what just happened. Other than Caliban being left behind at the island, nothing particularly bad happens to the characters, certainly not death. This wasn’t exactly a tragedy, nor was it a comedy, so it was a bit of a more different experience than what I was expecting.

That ends up leaving these questions in my mind: Since it’s been made clear that Prospero has some powerful magical abilities, is there a particular reason why Shakespeare decides to not have Prospero use his magic to kill off the shipwrecked crew for revenge? Does it have something to do with a possible political message Shakespeare was trying to convey at the time? Could it possibly have something to do with Shakespeare’s change in perspective since he was near the end of his life at the time and no longer wanting face death? Some other reason?

Self Introduction

Hello! My name is Vanessa Giesbrecht and I’m from Mission, British Columbia.

I decided to choose Arts One because of the fact that I love to read and write, so I figured that this program would allow me to improve in my writing as well as talk and discuss about a variety of books with others.

For me, I’m personally excited to read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter due to the darker fairy tale themes as I love fantasy books. I can’t wait to get to know you all! 🙂

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