Who's the Damsel?

Jackson Pearce came to talk to all the literature classes about the different examples of archetypes and how they fit into all of the basic storylines that we know. The archetype that caught my attention was that of the damsel in distress. Pearce made it very clear though that the damsel in distress did not have to be completely incapable or dependent on other characters; just at certain parts throughout the work of literature that they are in, they need help from those surrounding them. At some point, I believe that every character within every work is a damsel that needs the help of others to help them in their time of need.

In the Hunger Games, this was very evident. The stereotypical damsel in distress archetype would be placed on Prim in the beginning though. She is a frail, young girl that needs the help of others to survive even in the beginning of the book. When it is stated that she is supposed to go fight in the Hunger Games, Katniss has to step in and take her place. Prim is the ultimate character that needed saving, but she is not the only character within this novel that is the damsel in distress.

 Katniss can also be considered a damsel in distress as well. Although this would not be the first archetype that readers would place her under, she still has qualities of a damsel in distress. She needs the help of Peeta to survive and finish first in the Hunger Games, and after to support her in the rebellion following. Katniss has her moments of weakness, and although she puts on this act of being a tough individual that is self- reliant, she needs that “warrior” or “protective” figure to stand by her and fight for her in her time of need.

Peeta can also be considered a damsel at times. He was Katniss’ protector and guardian for much of the novel’s series, but in the last book, when his memory is taken away, the roles are reversed. He needs Katniss to remind him of the person that he used to be. He needs her to remain close and act like the figure that he was to her. Peeta is also the softer of the two boys fighting for Katniss, which also makes it easier to place him under this category.

There are always a few characters though that have little to no connection to the damsel in distress archetype. Gale is one of those characters. He is the “warrior” figure and although his attitude about fighting and running away and war have changed since the beginning of the book, his archetype has not. He still wants to fight for those people that he loves and he wants to fight for something bigger than himself. Characters like Gale are needed to oppose the damsel image.

 Archetypes are always found within characters, but some may not be as apparent as others. The juxtaposition between the warrior and damsel in distress must always counteract each other in order for there to be balance in the novel.

Amazing

A Thousand Splendid Suns was an amazing book that everyone should read at some time in their lives. I just finished it and I was shocked it took me so long to read, because I had a hard time putting it down. Although it wasn’t the most action packed book out on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, it was one of the most interesting books that I have ever read.

Warning, I am about to spoil a very important moment in the book! My favorite part of the entire book was how there was always a twist when I was least expecting it. Tariq was dead and Laila was mourning his lose and also how Aziza would never know her true father. I, along with Laila, trusted the “honest” man that came to tell the terrible news, and I have to admit, I was furious when I learned about his death. But then when the times seemed too rough for Laila to handle, Tariq showed back up. These twists always came during the bleakest moments and inspired new hope within the characters.

The connection that was made between the characters was so realistic as well. Khaled Hosseini really personified them well and made me feel that same emotions for different characters that they themselves were feeling. I felt the hatred that Miriam and Laila must have felt toward Rasheed every time that he beat them or spoke condescendingly to them. I felt the sadness that haunted Laila when she had to give Aziza to the orphanage and leave her behind every single day. I felt the tormented struggle to determine the emotions about Zalmai; was he a good child or was he going to turn into the same exact being as his father. All of these aspects of the story really kept me wanting to read more and more.

Another aspect that I liked was that it was realistic. Not everything ended happily ever after, making the connections and the plot seem even more real. Not everyone makes it into the peace time after the long fought wars, and this is shown through Mariam's sacrifice to Laila, Tariq, and the children. She made a decision (which she hadn’t done in decades) and saved all of them and gave them a better life.

The entire book just leaves me wanting to read more and learn how everything turns out; which is weird because I have never truly felt that way about a book that wasn’t drowning in action. I liked that the story didn’t need all of the bells and whistles, it just had the simple facts and the story and that is what I believe made it a truly fantastic book. Like I said everyone should have the opportunity to read this book at some point in their life to see a different aspect on a war that we have been fighting for years.

Two Time Periods, One Image

Reading through Hamlet; it reminds me of my outside reading book A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini. Upon reading Hamlets soliloquy in class, I kept seeing the reoccurring image of isolation and the feeling of not being accepted that I found in A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Hamlet feels isolated for many different reasons. His father has recently died and it hasn’t even been two months, before everyone has moved on. His mother is even remarrying to Hamlets uncle; her brother-in-law. This was considered incestuous at the time, but Hamlet is the only one that sees the marriage as such. Everyone else seems perfectly content with it. Hamlet also feels like he cannot properly mourn his father because everyone else has moved on. He idolized his father, and while the other citizens and country people have moved on under the reign of Claudius, Hamlet refuses this and continues to think of his father as the true and better king. Hamlet doesn’t even interact with many of the other characters found in the play. While speaking in court, he only addresses his mother and never directly speaks to Claudius.

Almost the same exact story line is occurring in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Miriam has lived with her mother in an isolated area because she is considered a “bastard” child that everyone wants to forget about. They are sent away to this deserted area so people can forget about them and the original sins of the father. This is very similar to Hamlet, because Hamlet was next in line for the throne, yet people seem to want to cast him aside. Miriam also goes through a terrible loss of her Nana (her mother’s name). While she continues to mourn, others are already making plans for her future. After just 2 weeks of mourning time in her biological father’s house, he finds a suitor for her and marries her off. When she cries in front of her new husband, Miriam is continually asked why? No one seems to understand the heavy lose that she has gone through. They all expected her to move on within the course of a few weeks, which is the same exact emotional response that Hamlet is receiving from the different members of his own family.

Miriam is also very isolated. She rarely talks to different characters and when others do approach her, she rarely comments directly back to them. She prefers to spend her times alone in the comfort of her own house.

It was interesting to see almost the same exact occurrences happening in two stories that couldn’t have been more different. Although they are set in different time periods in different parts of the world, this reoccurring imagery of being alone and not being understood is prevalent in many of the stories found in literature. I thought it was very interesting just how closely related these stories were though.

Ted Kooser

In class, we discussed Ted Kooser’s “Blind” poem, to better ourselves in analyzing poetry. I found that I really liked the way that he styled his poems. They were simple thoughts and words written in a pretty simple structure, but each different aspect had a key place. I enjoyed that each word’s denotation would lead to another words connotation or denotation. The web that it created was fascinating to look at and connect to other pieces of the puzzle.

I was planning on doing a more in depth read for my blog, but when I tried to find the poem “Blind”, I could only find the poem that he wrote called “A Blind Woman”. I decided that I was just going to look at it, and see if it was at least similar, and this is when I decided that Ted Kooser is my favorite poet.

She had turned her face up into
a rain of light, and came on smiling.

The light trickled down her forehead
and into her eyes. It ran down

into the neck of her sweatshirt
and wet the white tops of her breasts.

Her brown shoes splashed on
into the light. The moment was like

a circus wagon rolling before her
through puddles of light, a cage on wheels,

and she walked fast behind it,
exuberant, curious, pushing her cane

through the bars, poking and prodding,
while the world cowered back in a corner.

I liked the imagery of the light that is streaming in. When I think of light I think of the little rainbows that show up and the happiness that it usually brings along. But the specific colors that Kooser uses are white and brown. These colors are extremely muted, which was ironic for a piece about being light and colorful. The other imagery that came from the repetition of the word light was joyous happiness and even the curiosity that follows a young girl. But then there is that repeated imagery that is somewhat of a caged animal. The “cage of wheels” and how she is “pushing through the bars” makes it seem like she is caged and only sees light on a small occasion.

This led me to think, is she literally caged within a prison cell, or caged within her own body? She cannot see, which can be told from the title (Blind), but that could mean that her eyes cannot see at all, or that she is blind to the outside world that she is trying so hard to get to. The bars could be that she cannot overcome the struggles that await her.

It also makes me think that she is a sort of animal that people want to see, but at the same time, want to keep their distance from at the same time. The speaker talks about seeing the circus wagons, but then she goes on to say “through the bars, poking and prodding,
while the world cowered back in a corner”. She’s the act that people hope to keep their distance from. But then that also lead me back to the question of what are they wanting to see from her. She might be blind to this as well. She might not see what they see.

This used to frustrate me about poetry that I could never have a clear answer to a question that I had. The poet wasn’t right there to explain the exact uses for the words that he had chosen. But this actually interests me. I like to think of all the different questions and actually using the text to support and disclaim the different theories that float through my head. Poetry is interesting once you find a poet that writes in a style that you prefer.

Not That Bad

When Ms. Clinch first told us that we were about to start a poetry unit, I secretly panicked inside. I have never been able to completely analyze poems the way that the teacher and even the other students have, and knowing that complete analysis is needed for this class, the poetry unit seemed like a difficult unit to cover.

But I’ve learned over the past week that I can find almost anything in a poem and write a semi-solid response on it.  There are so many ways that the poet both visually captures the poems central theme by using various word structures but also the specific words that can be the ultimate piece of understanding the poem and it’s so what.

My favorite poet that we have read in class so far is e.e cummings. I like that he goes against everything that English professors pick over. Nothing is capitalized and words seem to be randomly thrown around, while the stanza’s structure is so diluted that there seems to be no meaning. But every single piece of the poem has a meaning. In the poem in Just, only two words are capitalized, and even after an entire class period discussing it, a proper answer wasn’t formed.

I used to not like that poetry had no answer. That even after a lot of thought and discussion, the true meaning that the poet was trying to convey is never properly struck down. But after last semester of intense analysis, I enjoy that I can take a different meaning from the poem and not be entirely correct. And seeing all the small things that the class picks up is very interesting and adds to my own thoughts about the poem as a whole.

When Ms. Clinch stated that we would have a timed writing on analyzing a poem, my heart did sort of drop though. I did not believe that I was ready to jump into the deep end of completely analyzing a poem for myself. How would I be able to come up with my own ideas and write a solid essay without the help of Ms. Clinch or my fellow peers?

When I walked into class Friday, I was dreading writing this timed writing. I looked at the poem and had a literal pity party for myself for at least a minute, but then I looked at it, read the prompt and started analyzing the prompt. I soon started to see how the structure of the stanzas was leading me to believe one thing about the poem, and that led me to see another aspect of the poem that I had missed in the beginning. Before I knew it, my poem was marked up and I had questions scattered around the margins that would help me write this timed writing. It wasn’t as difficult as it seemed and I realized that poetry isn’t as terrible as it first seemed merely a week ago.

Shadow Hero?

In psychology, we discussed the different archetypes that Carl Jung created. While I was reading the different passages I noticed some key points that really helped put Grendel into perspective, and put it in a way that seemed to capture Grendel specifically.

The first aspect that stood out was “the shadow” character that Jung argued is found in every single work. The Shadow can also be called a villain. What stood out the most though was that, the shadow is neither good nor bad, but is similar to an animal. It stated that an animal is capable of tender care for its young and vicious killing for food, but it doesn’t choose, it does what it has to do. But in the perspective of a human, the animal looks harsh and inhuman, so we as human beings push it aside. This brings back the question of whether Grendel is good or bad. Although in Beowulf, it characterizes him as a ruthless killer for just sport; his personal narrative shows his true proposes. It is hard to characterize whether Grendel is good or bad, and it is difficult to determine if what he is doing is moral or not. He needs to attack to eat, but he also doesn’t need to attack the specific people of Herot (Hart). Grendel was born into the monster that he is, and although he tried desperately in the beginning to gain the trust and love of the humans, they saw him as a threat and treated him as such. This makes the humans look like the monsters. It makes me wonder who is right and who is shaping our ideas to make their own ideas sound better.

The other character that Jung created was called “The Persona”. This character represents the public image of a character and it also comes from the Latin for mask. It can be a good impression or a false one, depending on the individual. Both of these sides show Grendel. He wants to be accepted by the people, but he knows the consequences that will follow. The mask that he puts on could be his “monstrous face” or his gentle side. Both have been seen. Sometimes Grendel kills ruthlessly without a care. Other times he gently treats people; him lifting Unferth up and carrying him home. The characters in the mead hall only see his public face, which shows that he is violent and filled with rage, while he stomps around the castle killing people. The private side shows that he is still scared of weapons, even though he knows they cannot harm him. The different masks that Grendel puts on, helps increase the complexity that arises in determining whether he is good or bad.

We read this passage today in psychology class, and it just jumped out at me how similar it was to Grendel, and how it shows that this difficulty in determining whether the “villain” is good or bad is found in all different kinds of works. It also helped to word the mixed feelings that I was trying to express about Grendel.

Their True Side

I thought the character shifts from Beowulf to Grendel were very interesting to observe, and that is why I chose to write my blog on it this week.

In Beowulf, Hrothgar is characterized as a man of great worth and respect. The mood when he was around was pitiful because of all the hardships that he had gone through. He was losing beloved friends and men, and his large mead hall that was compared to heaven was being torn to shreds by one monster. This is the tone that followed Hrothgar around throughout Beowulf. But when Grendel speaks of him, the reader sees how Hrothgar came into power. He overpowered all the other tribes of individuals living in the woods and made them pay tribute to him. The tribute was so large, that many had a difficult time paying for it, and had barely enough goods to manage themselves. Although Hrothgar offered comfort and safety for them, his character was not the same one that was seen in Beowulf.

Another character that changed quite a bit was Grendel. Even by the first few pages of the book, the reader understood more aspects of Grendel than an entire section of Beowulf. Grendel is described in such great depth, while in Beowulf, it is almost like a game to try and uncover small facts about Grendel. Yes he is the main character in this book and needs to be characterized, but the fact that so much of him was explained in less than half the time he had in Beowulf, shows that the character that he was personified to be in Beowulf, was not even close to the individual that he is.

Grendel’s mother was also different from Grendel to Beowulf. In Beowulf, the mood was fierce and full of revenge. But, as Grendel pointed out earlier, only individuals with thought and knowledge could process the act of revenge. In Beowulf, Grendel’s mother seems to have a plan of attack and knows what she must do in order to properly avenge her son. She seems almost human in this respect, because the Anglo- Saxons believed in avenging their dead and fallen kinsmen. But in the book Grendel, she is portrayed as a monster who has no understanding of language or reasoning. She sits in the corner of the cavern and does little to nothing during the day. Grendel, her own son, does not understand her and has a difficult time approaching her.

The characters started to show their true colors in the beginning stages of this novel. The discovery that Hrothgar was not as honorable of a king as he appeared to be in his later years, helped show how he came into complete power over all of the towns. The characterization of Grendel and his mother also seems switched. This adds more depth to character, in contrast to Beowulf where none of the characters were heavily described.