The Shining

The Shining is a very interesting story of possession and violence. In class, we were able to come up with comparisons between Poe’s narrators and Jack. For example one comparison we made was their sanity within insanity. The narrators of Poe’s stories claimed they were sane, yet had some very insane obsessions and actions. Their obsessions were with bodily objects such as eyes, teeth and the heart whereas Jack was more obsessed with his father’s past and correcting and disciplining. Both the narrators of Poe and Jack felt a sort of isolation and both stories showed what that isolation does to the characters. It also showed how the characters reacted to trauma in their lives.


Jack can be seen in many different lights. For example he can be seen as a victim and a product of an abusive father and a passive mother. “He had reddened Jack's behind…and then blacked his eye. And when his father had gone into the house, Jack had come upon a stray dog and kicked it into the gutter.” He can also be seen as a man possessed and a man of addiction. “He was still an alcoholic, always would be, perhaps had been since Sophomore year in high school when he took his first drink. It had nothing to do with willpower, or the morality of drinking, or the weakness or strength of his own character. There was a broken switch inside, or a circuit breaker that didn't work.” (120) Jack could also be seen as a madman. He is seen as a very violent man throughout his life. When he is younger, he is violent to animals and is involved in many fights in school. He abused his son and wife and even broke his son’s arm.

Jack thinks that he is just a nice guy that is struggling. “He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand in The Great Wasps' Nest of Life.” He makes many excuses and thinks he shouldn’t be held accountable when he loses him temper.

This story brings up interesting ideas about the family dynamic and what it was in Jack’s family. Jack as the head of the household wanted to give him family security. He was the sole provider, and believed that he was in charge and others should be submissive to him. It was a sort of master-servant relationship. He would say things like “father knows best.” Wendy is first seen as meek and submissive to her husband. She thought about divorcing him, but felt as if she was stuck because she had nowhere else to go and no way to support herself and Danny. She also believed Jack when he would ask for another chance and think that this would be the last time. After they move to the hotel, she is seen as stronger. Even the hotel says that “she is stronger than we thought.” She grew stronger because the need was there for her to protect herself and Danny. Someone in class made the reference to a “momma bear” and the kind of fight a mom will put up to protect her young. The hotel was a sort of catalyst for her and it helped to make her stronger.

For Danny his life is a family nightmare. The scariest thing for him is the idea of his parent’s divorce or separation. “The greatest terror of Danny's life was DIVORCE, a word that always appeared in his mind as a sign painted in red letters which were covered in hissing, poisonous snakes." He was completely aware of the fact that his parents were unhappy and thinking about a separation or divorce. Because of his shine, he was robbed of his childhood and can see more than what his parents realize he sees. Halloran tries to explain to Danny about his shine and tells him “What you got, son, I call it shinin on, the Bible calls it having visions, and there's scientists call it precognition. They all mean seeing the future." Danny is afraid of losing his family as well as going crazy from his gift.

In class, we discussed the idea of the hotel being a character in the book. "The manager," Grady said."The hotel, sir. Surely you realize who hired you, sir." The hotel is sarcastic when it is speaking to Hallorann in a mocking manner. The hotel is also very manipulative and deceiving. Another word used to describe the hotel as a character was parasitic. I thought that was a very interesting word and it is true.
Another thing we wanted to do in our facilitation was discuss the book vs. the movie and what similarities were made between the two. We wanted to do this because we figured that most people have seen the movie and we thought it would be an interesting comparison. The movie is actually not close to what King wrote in his book. One difference from the movie to the book was the change in some of the characters. For example Jack is portrayed as a good man who is protective of his family but struggling with alcoholism. In the movie he is seen as a man that it is irritated by his family. Ullman’s character was also changed. In the book he is seen as condescending and tells Jack that if it were up to him he wouldn’t have hired Jack because he didn’t like him. In the movie, Ullman seems pleasant and genuine. Wendy is also portrayed very differently from the book to the movie. In the book she has a kind of strength when she needs it at the hotel. In the movie she is seen as passive, and weak. She even defends Jack when he breaks Danny’s arm. She reacts differently to Jacks madness in the movie as well. She breaks down and becomes hysterical. In the book she finds an inner strength and tries to protect herself and her son.
The kind of possession that Jack experiences has occurred to others in history. In a small town in Illinois called Watseka, a girl named Lurancy Vennum was possessed by the spirit of a dead girl named Mary Roff. She fell into excruciating pain and would fall into trances. She would speak of seeing angels and heaven. When questioned she was able to give details about the Roff house, where she had never visited before. When among Mary’s family and friends, they were convinced that she was a reincarnated version of Mary who had died 12 years earlier. She began being possessed when she was 13. Her possession in 1877 was called “America’s first documented case of spiritual possession.” “As documented by an eyewitness account and later retold in the 1977 novel "Watseka," Mary died suddenly in 1865 at age 19, only to come back 12 years later to possess the body of 14-year-old Lurancy Vennu.” There are many books written about Lurancy and her possession on called Watseka by Dr. E. W. Stevens. He was one of Lurancy’s doctors and was an eye witness to her story. Another book written about her is The Possessed by Troy Taylor.


Question:
Do you think that spirit possesion is real and if so why do you think the spirits pick the people that they do?

Source:
Taylor, Troy. Possession History & Horror of the Watseka Wonder. Whitechapel Productions, 2007.

Poe

Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston in January of 1809. His mother died when he was two, and because she had separated from Edgar’s father, he went to live with his grandparents. He was brought up well and went to school where he exceeded in Latin and French. In 1825, Edgar began school at the University of Virginia where he started drinking heavily and racking up large debts. He quit school less than a year later. With nowhere else to turn he joined the U.S. Army in 1827 and later entered West Point. John Allen, his father, refused to pay for it, and Poe soon left. He went to New York to try to get some of his short stories published. Poe bounced around to different newspapers and he published his first volume of short stories, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." He married his cousin Virginia, when she was 14 and he was 27. Even with the numerous jobs, Poe always seemed to be in financial distress. The death of his wife in 1847 caused Poe to collapse from stress. Mystery surrounds his death. On October 3 Poe was found at an auction house, and by the 7th he had died. There are many myths and speculations about what he died from. Some think it may have been alcoholism, others say he died from rabies. We may never know for sure because no autopsy was ever done.





The Raven:

"But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered- not a feather then he fluttered-
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before-
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

The raven is a symbol of death and it came after Lenore, this man’s love, died. The Raven only knows one word – nevermore, and after learning that it can talk, starts asking it questions to which the raven always answers nevermore.

The Tell Tale Heart:

In the Tell Tale Heart, the speaker claims he is not insane. He plots the murder of an old man that lives in his house. He doesn’t want to murder the old man, just his “evil eye.” "I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever." He claims he isn’t insane because he premeditates the murder. He waits until the man’s eye opens and kills him. He hides him underneath the floor boards in his room and just in time because the cops have been called because a neighbor heard the scream of the old man. At first he acts like nothing is wrong, but the longer they stay the more paranoid he gets and confesses to the murder. He says that he can still hear the man’s heart beating underneath the floor boards.

Black Cat:

The narrator in this short story claims he is sane just as the one in the Tell Tale Heart. He is violent to everyone except his cat, Pluto. In a fit of rage one night, the narrator takes out a knife and stabs out Pluto’s eye, and hangs him from a limb of his tree. Months later, he finds another cat that looks like Pluto and takes him home but soon finds that he hates this cat as much as he hated Pluto. He tries to kill him with an axe in a fit of rage, but his wife defends the cat and gets the axe in her own head. He hides her body in the wall of his basement. Just as in the Tell Tale Heart, the police come, and find the body in the wall.
In class, we discussed how Poe’s stories discuss in some way or another dismemberment or losing body parts such as eyes or a heart. I thought it was an interesting point that someone made that our eyes is very vulnerable. They are part of our identity and if we lose them it is like we are losing part of our identity. We also discussed how we give human qualities or characteristics to some of our body parts such as our eyes and heart so it makes it even more horrific when someone loses a body part like that.

Ligeia:
This story revolves around love. The narrator discusses a love of his named Ligeia. The only problem is that he has a memory problem and cannot remember anything about his love except for her eyes. “I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligei.” Her eyes become his obsession and a fetish for him. Ligeia becomes mysteriously ill and was a topic of discussion in class. “Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.” Ligeia was not a weak woman. Her symptoms that the narrator described were emaciated, with pale fingers, blazing eyes and her veins stuck out in her forehead. The idea was brought up that she starved herself and allowed herself to die. One of the reasons for her killing herself was that the narrator was obsessed with her.

One of our many class discussions was about love. A question we looked at was can we still love and be self-reliant? Or does love mean co-dependence? I think that you can be self-reliant and be in a relationship. I am married and feel that I am independent, have my own kind of life and friends. I am able to experience things on my own and although I love him, I don’t feel like I need him to be fulfilled. Some think that love is a co-dependent relationship where they feed off each other. I know about people in relationships like that and think that it is kind of pathetic. I feel like people in those kinds of relationships lose their identity and just become what the other wants them to be. It is sad because in my friend’s case, they are not like the person that I grew up with and knew, they are very different.

Love is dynamic, not static and therefore will change and grow over time. People expect their romantic relationships to be the same as when they first met, and I don’t believe that its possible for it to be like that. If you think that you will stay in that honeymoon stage your entire life, then you may end up jumping from one person to another and nothing will last long-term. Poe’s stories are invested in the idea of soul mates that sometimes have unreasonable expectations. For example, one of his narrators believes that his lover will come back from the dead.

Why do we search for love when it’s not a fairy tale kind of love?


I remember reading this story in high school and thinking how bizarre it was. I really am not into any scary movies or this type of writing. I find his writing interesting and strange. I also think that all of his writing is very similar story lines. If I had to pick a favorite out of all of his, I would choose the Tell Tale Heart. I know that people are pulled into the perverseness of Poe’s writing and the ideas of death and dismemberment, but I don’t really enjoy those things. A lot of people really enjoy watching perverse, scary things that we wouldn't even dream of thinking about. That is why there are so many scary movies and why these movies make more movies. The Saw movies were famous and they continue to make them, I believe that is 5 now. This movie shows people making crazy decisions in order to save their own lives. It also shows contraptions that people wouldn't even dream of normally.

Questions:

Why are people strangely attracted to the scary and perverse stories of Poe and other writers like him?

What causes a tormented memory?

For some, it may be the death of a loved one, others a bad experience. For Pollard and Chase, their tormenting memories came from their experiences on the ship Essex and the events that took place on it. People deal with their memories differently; Chase decided to keep a log of his experiences. He thought he would never be able to be free of the tormenting memory unless he got his story out.

After the ship wreck, Pollard was able to in a way forgive the whale went on another whaling expedition. Even though that second time didn’t go well, he was able to find a kind of healing through going back on the ocean. Someone in class equated it with falling off the horse and getting back on. That comment reminded me of when I was a kid and learning to ride a bike without training wheels. I lived in Arizona, on a narrow road with cactus on either side. As many people do when learning to ride a bike I fell and landed on the cactus. For a few weeks, I didn’t want to try to ride again, because I was afraid of falling again. Eventually with the help of my mom I realized that I needed to face my fears and get back on my bike. There was something freeing in being able to accomplish something after a bad experience. I think that Pollard would have felt the same way I did after I got back on my bike and it gave him a kind of peace from his tormenting memory. Chase never did find peace, had horrible headaches, and died insane.


Keith Anderson's "Every time I hear your name?" reminded me of the idea of a tormented memory. He thinks he is doing ok and then something triggers it and you are haunted by that memory.







My Own Tormenting Memory:
In class, Suzanne asked us to think of our own tormenting memory and how we think about it. My memory deals with my uncle who passed away in 2008. But before I tell you what it entails, I need to fill you in on some details about my relationship with him. His name is Robert, and after my parents got divorced him and my aunt became like another set of parents to me and my sister. We would spend weeks during the summer at their house, and they even went on family vacations with my sister, dad and me. We had a close relationship with them until my grandmother passed away. After she passed, a rift was created in my family. Because of a large fight between everyone in my family, I stopped talking to my aunt and uncle and was very upset with everything that was going on. I allowed this fight to affect our relationship and I quit talking to him. The last day I saw him, I left him bitter and mad at him. It torments me that I never reconciled with him and that I can now never fix our relationship. I allow myself to think about the memory, but a lot of times I choose not to because it makes me sad that I held a grudge and ruined the last day I ever had with him. This memory affects my dreams and the dreams come out of nowhere and catch me off guard.

"Nantucketers saw no contradiction between their livelihood and their religion. God Himself had granted them dominion over the fishes of the sea." (pg. 9) The people of Nantucket were Quaker and therefore nonviolent people, yet the men on the whaling ships were violent, greedy and brutal. I think it is very interesting that Quakers are pacifists and yet they thought it was ok to brutally murder whales and even praised those who were on those expeditions.

We also discussed in class how the whale acted with the vindictiveness of a man. The whale was given human qualities. Asma said that “human qualities in monsters must mean monster qualities in us.” I thought this was a very interesting way of thinking about the men aboard the Essex. Were they trying to kill the whale because they saw something in the whale that was also inside of them? We lose superiority when the whale can be vengeful and angry. If we humanize the whale, than it is like killing another person because the whale can show emotions like humans can.
Some may take the view that the whale was revolting against a kind of tyranny, sort of a “give me liberty or give me death” kind of statement. It could be considered that the whale’s attack was calculated because no whale had ever attacked a ship before this time.


Another thing that I found ironic was that the crew of whalers made for the coast of South America which was 3,000 miles away in 3 tiny boats to avoid the closest island because their feared cannibals. They themselves had to resort to cannibalism because they were starving to death and began feeding off of each to in order to survive. The idea of cannibalism brings about questions in our own minds about whether we would be able to do something like that in order to survive. I don’t know how I would react when put in a situation like that, but I think the instinct to survive would prevail above all else.

Character traits from two leaders:

Pollard Chase
Democratic confident
Sloppy bragging
Weak Flexible: more men survive
More emotional, invested in people Diligent: controlling food supply
More logical, keeps log

Fight Club:

At the beginning of the movie, Jack is introduced as a corpselike corporate drone whose only idea of pleasure is about consumer goods from Ikea. He looks empty with dark circles under his eyes. He was alive but not really living, just going through the motions of his day unable to even sleep. Someone in class pointed out that you are never more yourself than when you are sleeping. I had never though about it like that and thought it was a very interesting point.

When Tyler is introduced he becomes a sort of cure for Jack and helps him begin to really start living. Tyler gives Jack advice and told him that “things you own end up owning you.” I find this to be very good advice as most of our society is consumer based on material possessions. Tyler has some ideas that are very Emersonian. The idea that you should not follow what society wants for you and to make your own future is one of them. Tyler displays that by not being materialistic to the point that his house was falling apart and he had to shut off the electric every time it rained. He lives simplistically to live life to the fullest. He wants to feel so he has Jack punch him. It takes violence to free them both from the drone of their lives. They also use the violence of fight club as a vehicle of self- formation and Jack feels more empowered through fight club.

Questions:
What definitions of evil govern the men of the Essex?


Music video by Keith Anderson performing Every Time I Hear Your Name. (C) 2005 BMG Music

Trust Thyself

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,- that is genius.” (pg 80) I believe that this sums up what Emerson is saying in this piece. He believes that the individual should think for themselves and not conform to what society says they should think or do. “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” He thinks that each person is made unique and has a divine purpose. He says that people should never be afraid to voice their own opinions, even if they believe that their opinions may be unpopular with the majority.

Dead Poets Society is a movie that reminds me of Emerson’s idea of non-conformity. John Keating, the boys’ teacher urges them to think for themselves. He also urges them to seize the day. (Carpe Diem) Keating also told his students, “Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Break out!”(Keating, Dead Poets Society) I believe that Emerson would agree with Keating.

Not only does Keating have the same views as Emerson with becoming their own person he also believes that every person is unique. “Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, that's baaaaad." Robert Frost said, "Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." (Keating, Dead Poets Society)

In the film clip, Keating encourages his students to think outside the box and strive to look at situations in different ways. Some of his teaching styles would be considered to be strange or nonconventional, but I think it is through this style that he makes the most impact on his students.

As a future teacher, I want to try to make an impact on my students like Keating did in the film. I also agree with Emerson that every person is unique and that trusting yourself should be more important than thinking about what the majority think. I want my future students to realize that they can have a voice and that what they have to say and think is important even if their views may be unpopular. I hope to convey some of Emerson's views to my students.




"Dead Poets Society (1989) - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=deadpoetssociety.htm.