Murder!!!! (The Extra Exclamation Points Are Completely Necessary)

“A flash of lightning illuminated the object and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy demon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support.”

-p 73

I must admit I’m intrigued by this particular passage. I was rather perplexed initially by the relevance of William’s murder. Now, however, it appears that it was Frankenstein’s monster that actually killed him. Though we do not yet know the reason for this murder, I find it interesting that it was Victor’s brother whom the monster killed. Of all the possible people the monster could have killed, it was his creator’s brother. More significantly, I feel like this will create a deeper sense of despair and regret to Victor’s demeanor. He essentially brought about his brother’s death; I highly doubt he will be able to live well with that on his conscience. I’m interested to see how Victor lives with this truth in his heart, and if he will attempt to hunt down the monster.

The Beast Within, Part...4?

“As thought to harmonize with the general mood, the rocket bombs had been killing larger numbers of people than usual. One fell on a crowded film theater in Stepney, burying several hundred victims among the ruins…Another bomb fell on a piece of waste ground which was used as a playground, and several dozen children were blown to pieces. There were further angry demonstrations, Goldstein was burned in effigy…and a number of shops were looted in the turmoil; then a rumor flew round that spies were directing the rocket bombs by means of wireless waves, and an old couple who were suspected of being of foreign extraction had their house set on fire and perished of suffocation.”

--p 149

As I read this passage, my immediate suspicion was that it may actually be Big Brother who coordinated these bombings on Oceania. After all, these seem like rather civilian-oriented bomb drops; if Eurasia really was bombing Oceania, one would assume that they would attempt to bomb the separate ministries, yet instead they bomb the locations which would incite civilian rage against them. This uncannily unlucky placement makes me think that Oceania may in fact be bombing their own citizens in order to maintain fear and incite rage and support for the war effort against Eurasia. Regardless of whether this is true or not, however, the theme in this passage—one discussing the extremely violent and savage measures that fear can drive people to take—remains. In this passage, people have become so fearful of bombings that they are driven to take the law into their own hands. What is so frightening about this situation is that it is an old couple—a common symbol of innocence—that is killed by arson. Fear causes men to lose most common sense; they become fueled solely by the animalistic instinct to survive at all costs.

This animalistic instinct, as well as the lengths the people took to ease their fears, reminded me of the actions of the Jack’s group of boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Jack whips the boys into such a frenzied fear of the Beast that they savagely murder Simon due to blind suspicion that he was the beast. They then kill Piggy simply because he opposed them. In a way, this savagery has already occurred in Oceania. People kill those whom they fear to be traitors, yet the Thought Police already are immediately killing anyone who even thinks of opposition to Big Brother. Despite the Party’s supposed sophistication, the Party in reality consists of nothing but animals.

UPDATE: On page 153, Julia expresses her own belief that Big Brother is actually responsible for the air raids. Looks like I’m not so crazy after all!

Somein' Tells Me Yer Not from 'Round These Here Parts...

Another interesting tidbit about William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" concerns the deliberate choice of the early twentieth-century South as the story's setting. This setting is initially established by the narrator's mention of the "graves of Union and Confederate soldiers." Combined with the emphasis on "tradition," this mention indicates a Deep Southern sentiment to the narration. This Southern perspective impacts the plot of the story tremendously. Through the narrator's descriptions, it is clear that the city of Jefferson operates largely on the basis of reputation and social hierarchy. Instead of sympathizing with Miss Emily in her period of grief after her father's death, the community only indicates their relief that "at last they could pity" her because "she had become humanized."

It was this entrenched belief in social order, and the accompanying derision for the members of the city's aristocracy, that likely influenced Miss Emily's actions. Miss Emily was unable to truly connect with anyone within her community due to her elevated status. That is why Homer—a Northerner and, therefore, not a member of the dysfunctional Southern community—is accepted and even loved by Miss Emily. I think Miss Emily murdered Homer not out of anger or revenge—if that had been the case, she would not have slept next to his skeletal corpse—but out of misguided desperation. After living a life of detachment from her community, Miss Emily had become so desperate to keep Homer with her that she poisoned him in order to keep him with her dead or alive. While this is admittedly a rather macabre idea, it simply is a tragic, if not exaggerated, result of the Southern mindset.

This Is Heavy, Doc

Well, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a bit odd, no? While this story was certainly the most dramatically interesting, it also was most definitely the most bizarre. Faulkner establishes this quirkiness by writing with an extremely convoluted chronology. The story opens with the present time of Emily Grierson's death and funeral. The narrator then recounts an altercation between Miss Emily and the Board of Alderman over taxes which occurred several years beforehand. Immediately afterward, the narrator employs flashback even further by taking the plot thirty years earlier. This scene, which describes how the city dealt with a "smell" about Miss Emily's house, creates a bit of confusion and suspense as the reader is unsure and curious of the source of the smell. Upon completion of this tale, however, the narrator goes back two years further to Miss Emily's father's death and the subsequent arrival of Homer. We then learn of Miss Emily's purchase of arsenic, followed by a seemingly abrupt topic shift to Homer's departure and ensuing return to the house.

After that, the narrator fast-forwards back to the present. It is here, in the present, that the jumbled events of the past are finally explained as the narrator and the other men discover Homer's skeleton where he had poisoned with the purchased arsenic. Instead of simply starting from the chronological beginning, Faulkner employed a series of flashbacks in order to increase the level of suspense of the story. By slowly feeding the reader individual clues, Faulkner leads the reader to finally discover the truth of Miss Emily's past in a more dramatic and exciting fashion.

Murder, She Wrote

I admit, I rather enjoyed "Edward." The two speakers--Edward and his mother--use repetition of each other's names and of their initial comments. This repetition serves two purposes. Superficially, the repetition emphasizes each individual question or responses, forcing the reader to read each comment twice in order to feel its power more strongly. On a deeper level, though, this repetition increases suspense as Edward's mother constantly pressures Edward to reveal his troubles. This buildup of pressure and suspense occurs twice within the poem. Each time, Edward finally reveals what is troubling him, and each time, the answer is slightly shocking. In the first climactic moment, the reader learns that Edward has killed his father. This murder is revealed as the reason for his guilt and for his decision to leave the land he knows.

Yet the second climax is even more surprising. After building up the emotion of the poem by asking her son what will happen to those he will leave behind, Edward's mother finally asks him what he will leave for her. Yet instead of a heartfelt token of his lover for her, Edward replies with a rather unexpectedly bitter "curse of hell" for her. At first, the reader is shocked at Edward's reply, yet in the very last line of the poem, Edward finally reveals the reason for his loathing: his mother gave him "such counsels" to kill his father. Despite his guilt, Edward's hatred for his mother is stronger, for though he committed the crime, she devised it in the first place. A rather interesting--and by interesting, I of course mean grossly dysfunctional--mother-and-son relationship, don't you think?