e une
School One’s Journal Of Ideas
Volume 22: June, 2023
Welcome to our twenty-second issue of e une, School One’s Journal Of Ideas. This is an opportunity for our writing and reasoning intensive school to publish some of its students’ best work. The brave authors volunteered these pieces to enlighten you. The topics in this issue largely cover literature, science, history, and some creative writing, which we’re saving for the end. The works run in roughly chronological order by topic.
Find a comfortable chair, and open your mind. E une plurimus.
Contributors:
Lila Boutin
Iysis DaSilva
Suki Enos
Abby Gilliatt
Cara Gilliatt
Caleb Goodman
Noah Lindsay
Ethan Lisi
Aubree Miller
Ava Pollard
Saylor Skidds
Sienna Smyth
Ada Sobota-Walden
Deren Sozer
Cover Art: Ava Pollard
Contents
Historical Encounters
Noah Lindsay explains the importance of Cyrus the Great, who really was, and our World War expert, Deren Sozer, relates the story of Alan Turing, who helped win the second one.
Why?
Ethan Lisi and Ada Walden-Sobota tackle causation along with William Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy.
Victorian Tsoris
Aubree Miller, Cara Gilliatt and Abby Gilliatt explore the deeper meanings of Victorian horror fiction while Ethan and Ada analyze John Stuart Mill’s Victorian feminism in light of some very odd Victorian literary marriages, including Mill’s own.
All American
Ava Pollard critiques Puritan hypocrisy, Deren Sozer and Saylor Skidds assess Thoreau’s theory of Civil Disobedience, Iysis DaSilva and Suki Enos address the notion of family, Lila Boutin assesses the use of the past in Beloved, Deren addresses the crux of The Piano Lesson in this section devoted to American literature and Caleb Goodman brings us up to date by explaining Gamergate and its link to the Alt-Right.
Scientific Method
Lila shares a physics lab report about energy and speed.
Fictions
Sienna Smyth and Saylor share creative writing pieces, and the Rehoboth Mafia – Abby, Ada, Aubree and Cara celebrate the joys of Rehoboth, MA in the style of James Joyce’s stories in Dubliners.
EARLY ENCOUNTER
Cyrus: Our Father
Noah Lindsay
As collectives, many civilizations have paved the way for what we view as the West today. From the Babylonians to the Romans, all had their own role. However, rarely does history remember the names of individuals who shaped those civilizations. Among the few names that have been recorded by the ancient world, one is still celebrated today. In 2016 protests opposing the Iranian government erupted at The Tomb of Cyrus the Great. This was the start of the Iranian Democracy Movement. The approximately twenty thousand protesters were heard shouting, “Cyrus is our father; Iran is our country.” Even 2575 years after his ascension to the throne, Cyrus II is still hailed as a hero. However, unlike the Anti-Islamic protests, Cyrus II practiced unprecedented religious tolerance for his time. The Persian king has become a model for the leaders of the west.
During his conquests of Babylon, Cyrus II encountered the Jewish population that had been imprisoned by the Babylonian government. Cyrus II took it upon himself not only to free the Jewish people, allowing them to return to Zion, but also to commission a new temple for them. What is now known as Herod’s Temple would stand for 420 years. Because of this deed, the Book of Isaiah refers to him as Messiah, which means anointed one. Cyrus The Great was the first and only gentile to be referred to in that light. While he would eventually halt the building of The Second Temple, this was only due to a lie told to him. The person who told him this lie is unclear; however, the temple was finished in the reign his successor, Darius I. His religious tolerance extends beyond the Jewish people. Wherever he would conquer, he would allow the people to keep practicing their religion. This led to what was truly the first multicultural society.
Cyrus II was one of the few to hold the title “King of the Four Corners of the World.” Although he was given this title in 539 BCE, his influence on the world would not be felt until much later. Cyrus II inspired many Enlightenment ideals, and his work went on to inspire Jefferson’s writings in the United States’s Declaration of Independence. Closer to home, Cyrus II would go on to become a posthumously discussed figure in Athenian politics, defining the role of a statesman. Today, Cyrus The Great is a national hero of Iran. Monarchs and citizens alike have invoked his name so his ideals may liberate them as he liberated many peoples of the West.
History rarely cares for the names of the billions who have lived and died as every great ruler has. The same cannot be said for Cyrus II. The King of Persia left a humanitarian mark on all the land he and his 10,000 Immortals have walked. People of all religions could look to him as fair and could practice as they wished. The democracies of today find their origin in the power Cyrus II left to those same people. No matter where you are, Cyrus might not be your father, and Iran might not be your country, but Cyrus II helped to father Western democracy for all.
Alan Turing
Deren Sozer
History is full of eccentric people. Those who are misunderstood often have the most interesting and consequential stories. Imagine, for a moment, a man who sits at the cross section of mathematics and philosophy, pioneering new sciences and playing an integral role in world history. That man is Alan Turing, and he is one of those eccentrics of history with a very interesting story. During his life, Turing revolutionized theories in mathematics and logic, paved the way for modern computer science and artificial intelligence and changed the course of history forever in more ways than one.
Alan Mathison Turing was born to father Julius Mathison Turing and mother Ethel Sara Turing on June 23, 1912 in London, England. The Turings were an upper middle class family and their son received a traditional British education. He showed interest in science at an early age, and it influenced the way he saw the world. “From earliest life his fascination with the scientific impulse—expressed by him as finding the ‘commonest in nature’—found him at odds with authority. His skepticism, and disrespect for worldly values, were never tamed and became ever more confidently eccentric” (Alan Turing (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)). Turing’s lack of interest in traditional pillars of British education, such as Classics, caused him to do badly in school, and his grades were either mediocre or outright bad. He constantly frustrated his teachers, one of whom wrote: “I can forgive his writing, though it is the worst I have ever seen, and I try to view tolerantly his unswerving inexactitude and slipshod, dirty, work, inconsistent though such inexactitude is in a utilitarian; but I cannot forgive the stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament” (Jacobson). Even his math and science grades were rather disappointing, and he nearly didn’t take his national School Certificate exam, which was an educational qualification in Britain at the time.
In 1931, Turing enrolled in King’s College at the University of Cambridge where he studied mathematics. There he was recognized for his research into probability theorems and was elected as a fellow of the college in 1934. In 1936, Turing delivered his paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem,” where he, “presented the notion of a universal machine (later called the “Universal Turing Machine,” and then the “Turing machine”) capable of computing anything that is computable” (“Alan Turing”). The method and findings of this paper are considered to have led the way in the emerging field of computer science. The paper was recommended for publication by Alonzo Church, an American mathematical logician who had written a similar paper that came to the same conclusion. Turing later moved to Princeton University where he completed a Ph.D. in mathematical logic with direction from Church.
After completing his Ph.D. in 1938, Turing returned to England just in time for the beginning of the Second World War. In 1939, Turing began to work at Bletchley Park, the cryptology section of the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6. The section got its name from the English Estate outside of London where its cryptologists did their top secret work. At Bletchley Park, Turing was not alone in his eccentricity. Intelligence was one of the many areas of the war where people were recruited for niche skill sets that normally wouldn’t be considered valuable in war. “In addition to mathematicians, Bletchley Park also recruited linguists and chess champions, and attracted talent by approaching winners of a complex crossword puzzle tournament held by The Daily Telegraph” (The Enigma of Alan Turing – CIA). This meant that units like Bletchley Park had a concentration of people who could be considered weird or eccentric but were nonetheless integral to the war effort.
As previously mentioned, Bletchley Park was a cryptologic unit. Cryptology is the science of secret communications, and there are two distinct uses of it. The first is cryptography, which The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica define as, “The practice of the enciphering and deciphering of messages in secret code in order to render them unintelligible to all but the intended receiver.” The second is cryptanalysis, the process by which such codes are broken. The job of the men and women at Bletchley Park was to perform cryptanalysis in order to decipher the coded communications of the enemy, and Turing’s skill in mathematics and logic made him very good at this kind of work. The most famous accomplishment of Bletchley Park was the breaking of the German ENIGMA code. Turing and his colleagues actually had to break ENIGMA multiple times because the Germans periodically upgraded their enciphering ability. The first time it was thanks to Turing’s invention of The Bombe, an electro-mechanical device which would cycle through millions of ENIGMA setting possibilities in order to find the settings in use by the enemy. “The Bombe searched through different possible positions of Enigma’s internal wheels, looking for a pattern of keyboard-to-lamp board connections that would turn coded letters into plain German. The method depended on human instinct, though; to initiate the process, a code breaker had to guess a few words in the message” (Copeland). Once The Bombe had provided cryptanalysts with a cypher, they could use it to decode other ENIGMA messages from around the same time. These messages could then be translated and disseminated across Allied commands.
The intelligence provided by Bletchley Park and its cryptanalysts was code named Ultra, and it allowed Allied commanders to make decisions with the intentions of the enemy in mind. Ultra intelligence likely saved Britain’s Atlantic supply lines from being cut in 1941 by reading U-boat (German submarine) communications and rerouting convoys around the submarines. It allowed the Allies to confirm the success of intelligence ruses and to track German troop movements in preparation for the landings in Normandy. Bletchley Park also broke Japanese codes and shared information with the Soviet Union in its fight against Germany in the east. These are only a few of the most famous applications of Ultra intelligence throughout the war. It is likely that without the work of Alan Turing and the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, the war would have ended differently.
In the years after the war, Turing worked on developing new electronic computers. He was first recruited to the National Physical Laboratory in London in 1945, and then, frustrated by a lack of progress, he took up the Deputy Directorship of the Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester in 1948. The Computing Machine Laboratory had developed the world’s first electronic stored-program digital computer using Turing’s theories from before the war. He programmed the first marketable electronic digital computer and wrote the first ever programming manual. In 1952 Turing was outed as gay, and he was convicted of “Gross Indecency,” since homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. With his new criminal record, Turing lost all hope of working for the Government Communications Headquarters, essentially the post-war Bletchley Park. This, however, did not discourage him from more pioneering work. He began working in chemistry and biology to develop the foundations of the field of artificial intelligence. “He published ‘The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis’ in 1952, describing aspects of his research on the development of form and pattern in living organisms. Turing used Manchester’s Ferranti Mark I computer to model his hypothesized chemical mechanism for the generation of anatomical structure in animals and plants” (“Alan Turing | Biography, Facts, Computer, Machine, Education, and Death”).
In the middle of his work on artificial intelligence, Alan Turing was found dead in his bed on June 7, 1954. The cause of death was determined to be cyanide poisoning, and the manner was determined to be suicide. There are, of course, many theories that reject the suicide explanation. There was never any evidence that Turing intended to commit suicide, and his state of mind prior to his death is thought to have been quite good. Even after being outed as gay and his subsequent treatment, Turing is said to have taken it with “Amused fortitude” (“Alan Turing | Biography, Facts, Computer, Machine, Education, and Death”). Some have speculated that Turing was exposed to excess cyanide during his research or that he was assassinated by British intelligence for knowing too many government secrets, since homosexuals were considered to be threats to national security.
Whatever the case, it is clear that with Alan Turing’s death, the world lost a brilliant man whose contributions stretch across many fields of study and whose work has had a profound effect on the world. His life’s work represents great progress for the development of mathematics, logic, philosophy, cryptanalysis and countless fields of science. Life as we know it today, with our computers, cellphones and even innovations like wireless digital signals can all be attributed in part to his work.
Works Cited
Alan Turing (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 30 Sept. 2013, plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing.
“Alan Turing.” Biography, 22 July 2020, www.biography.com/scientist/alan-turing.
Copeland, B. “Ultra | Allied Intelligence Project.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Apr. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Ultra-Allied-intelligence-project.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Cryptography.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Sept. 2022, www.britannica.com/topic/cryptography.
Jacobson, Rebecca Inside Energy. “8 Things You Didn’t Know About Alan Turing.” PBS NewsHour, 28 Nov. 2014, www.pbs.org/newshour/science/8-things-didnt-know-alan-turing.
The Enigma of Alan Turing – CIA. www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-enigma-of-alan-turing.
WHY?
Causation and Justice
Ethan Lisi
The works that I will be discussing are King Lear by Shakespeare and the poem Hap by Thomas Hardy. Both works focus on causation and justice. Two characters from King Lear will be central to this discussion: King Lear and Edgar. King Lear was the king of Britain. During his older years, he wanted to pass down a part of his kingdom to each of his daughters. Two of his daughters believe that by kissing up to Lear, they will get a better portion of the kingdom. He has a third daughter named Cordelia. Cordelia doesn’t want to have to kiss up to him. She believes that her father should already know how much she loves him. In other words, Cordelia doesn’t want to come up with a whole speech of pretty words just to prove that fact. Lear decides to banish her for not showing her affection towards him. Eventually, Lear ends up regretting Cordelia’s banishment when he is stuck with his cruel daughters. King Lear believes that the gods have no right to put him in such a bad position because of how long he has served his kingdom. King Lear has very strong opinions about justice, meanwhile Edgar mainly has strong opinions surrounding causation. Edgar is the son of an Earl. He also has a bastard brother by the name of Edmund. Throughout the play, Edmund makes the Earl believe that Edgar wants to kill him for his inheritance. By doing this, Edmund becomes closer with his father. The Earl, being upset with this, attempts to talk with Edgar. Edmund makes sure that they don’t get that chance. Eventually, the Earl attempts to hunt down Edgar and have him killed. Edgar disguises himself as an insane person so that no one would want to even look at him. Edgar helps his father have faith later in the play. He does this by making the Earl feel that he is important to the gods. Within the poem Hap, causation is looked at as purely being based on luck rather than by a god’s whim. In other words, the poet seems to believe that there are no gods controlling people’s fates but rather luck. These works portray causation differently. Both works depict justice in a similar manner, but the writers seem to have different viewpoints.
A moment in the play where causation is brought up would be when Edgar pretends to bring the Earl to a cliff. The Earl at this point had his eyes gouged out by Lear’s daughter. After that he came across Edgar in disguise. He asks Edgar to lead him to a cliff so that he can jump off it. Edgar, not wanting to let his father die, takes him to a shorter hill of sorts. The Earl survives the fall off the so-called cliff. Edgar then acts like a person at the bottom of the cliff so that the Earl thinks he really fell a long way. Edgar says, “Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, so many fathom down precipitating, thou’dst shivered like an egg; but thou dost breathe, hast heavy substance, bleed’st not, speak’st, art sound. Ten masts at each make not the altitude which thou hast perpendicularly fell. Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again” (Shakespeare, Act 4, Scene 6, Lines 49-55). Edgar is trying to make the Earl believe that his life is so special that the gods spared it from death. He in turn prevents his father from committing suicide. Shakespeare may be trying to show that having faith makes life more bearable. In other words, having a sense of importance to someone can get you through life.
Thomas Hardy’s poem Hap is based heavily on causation. In this poem, the poet brings up the belief that there isn’t a hidden force that wills good or bad things to happen. He portrays events happening by random chance. He first brings up the idea of there being gods. Thomas Hardy starts out by depicting a vengeful god controlling a person’s fate. He then brings up the idea that this isn’t necessarily the case for why things happen. As said in the poem, “Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so” (Hardy 5-9). At another point, dice are alluded to in the poem. As said in Hap, “–Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, and dicing Time for gladness casts a moan….these purblind Doomsters had as readily strown blisses about my pilgrimage as pain” (Hardy 11-14). He uses the word “casts,” which brings up the thought of casting dice. Dice are predominantly associated with luck. The words that he chose seem intentional in that he puts the word “dicing” close to the word “casts.” This also brings up the meaning of the word “Hap,” which is luck or fortune. In short, Hardy portrays luck as being the core factor of causation rather than gods.
Within King Lear justice is brought up frequently, but the best example of this is with what becomes of King Lear. He regrets banishing Cordelia and is finally seeing how wrong his decision was in the long run. He makes this realization soon before he flees outside in a storm. As stated in the playwright, “You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age, wretched in both: if it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts against their father, fool me not so much to bear it tamely; touch me with nobel anger, and let not women’s weapons, water-drops, stain my man’s cheeks. No you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both that all the world shall–I will do such things–what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth” (Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 4, Lines 461-471). In the beginning of the quote, it seems that Lear is trying to say that the gods have no right to punish him with these cruel daughters. He is saying that he has been around far too long to have to deal with this injustice. This could point to Shakespeare’s opinion about the topic of justice. King Lear does deserve to see the consequences of his actions. As he becomes less and less sane, he realizes more how he deserved said consequences. Shakespeare could be pointing to the fact that we all have to deal with the repercussions of making poor decisions. In short, if there are gods that distribute justice, they know better than we humans.
In the poem, there is an apparent lack of justice. The poet does not put any belief in a higher force that deals out justice. The main point to this is how he describes the possibility of there being gods. He later refutes this theory. As said in the poem, “If but some vengeful god would call to me from up the sky, and laugh: ‘Thou suffering thing, know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, that thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting’ ” (Hardy 1-4). It seems that the poet is showing this vengeful god tormenting him for no apparent reason other than to have some enjoyment. He believes that if any being was put in the position of a god, that justice would not be dealt out fairly to everyone, if dealt out at all, but at least there would be something to blame. Without gods, there is no justice or blame.
In conclusion, justice and causation are predominantly focused on within both works. The writers seem to depict justice in a similar way. However, they both seem to have different viewpoints about how justice should be distributed. On the other hand, they both portray causation differently from each other. Shakespeare shows the idea of there being a higher power that may control your fate as being good. It gives people a sense of importance in their lives. Thomas Hardy portrays causation as only revolving around luck rather than a higher force. They both portray justice given out by a higher power as being unjust to the characters. However, Shakespeare shows King Lear slowly understanding that he deserved the consequences of Cordelia’s banishment. I agree more with Shakespeare’s opinions about justice and causation. We all have to learn how to deal with consequences and also feel important.
Sorry, Taylor, Karma Is Not A God (Because There Is No Justice)
Ada Sobota-Walden
Although Shakespeare wrote King Lear approximately three centuries before the Modernist period, the famous tragedy bears many resemblances to Modernist thinking and literature. A heavily modified retelling of a well-known Elizabethan English folktale by the same name, Shakespeare’s King Lear tells the story of an ancient English king who wrongfully exiled his loving youngest daughter, Cordelia, and was betrayed by his two other daughters after he gave them his kingdom. Lear descends into madness but reconciles with Cordelia before his heart gives out when he sees her hanged corpse. King Lear explores questions of causation and justice, divine or otherwise; through that exploration, the play compares to Thomas Hardy’s poem Hap, which also seems to have thematically predicted the Modernist intellectual movement. Although Hap was written approximately a century and a half after King Lear in1866 and differs from King Lear with its decisive conclusion on the presence of divinity, both seem to claim that natural “justice” in the world is random to the point of nonexistence.
In King Lear, the existence of the gods is left uncertain. Most of the characters believe in them but believe —at least by the end of the play— that the gods are either cruel or indifferent to humanity. The Earl of Gloucester is one such character. He, at least, believes gods to be real, malicious, and all-powerful. Gloucester was betrayed by one of his sons and had his eyes gouged out by Lear’s daughter Regan’s husband after he chose to align himself with the disgraced but significantly less evil Lear. Gloucester tries to kill himself, saying that the gods are malevolent and he cannot live under them with that knowledge. He says:
“O you mighty gods,
This world I renounce and in your sights
Shake patiently my great affliction off.
If I could bear it longer and not fall.
To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,
My snuff and loathed part of nature should
Burn itself out” (Shakespeare IV, xi, 42).
Other characters also refer to the gods as deciders of human fate. Kent, one of Lear’s few allies, says of him:
“If Fortune brag of two she loved and hated,
One of them we behold “ (V, iii, 279-280).
Kent says that a deity, Fortune, must both have loved Lear when his luck was excellent and must have started to hate him for his life to go so downhill. Both he and Gloucester seem to think that the gods are fickle and cruel, albeit powerful. Alternately, the more optimistic Cordelia beseeches the “kind gods” to heal her father’s madness despite all prior events providing that the gods did not pity him. She says:
“O you kind gods!
Cure this great breech in his abused nature” (IV, vii, 14-15).
Although all of the characters in King Lear express belief in gods (however uncaring those gods may be), Shakespeare’s personal thoughts on the matter are debatable. His exploration of these questions, though, provides significant evidence that he did not believe in a God with a predictable pattern of benevolence and cruelty. Under the assumption that the pagan gods of King Lear were a vehicle to explore all ideas of divinity (including the Christian God), Shakespeare’s conclusion seems to have been of uncaring God(s). It would have been blasphemous for Shakespeare to set this play in a time and place where the Christian God was worshiped (such as Elizabethan England), for that would mean he was saying that the Christian God is uncaring and random. Instead, by using the seemingly foreign and abstract (to the Elizabethan audience) gods, Shakespeare allowed himself to write of sympathetic characters who were wronged by fate, experienced no divine justice, and decided that the gods were cruel. He asked the audience to empathize not with blasphemous critics of the Christian God but with ancient (and fictional) people wronged by an entirely different pantheon. Through this vehicle, Shakespeare may have been suggesting that the God he knew, too, was harsh, uncaring, and random.
In his early poem Hap, Thomas Hardy came to a different conclusion than Shakespeare on the subject of God. He says that it would be nice if there were a cruel god to blame for the unfairness of life, but that the only things shaping the world are “Casualty” and “Time,” natural forces without consciousness. In the poem, he laments:
“If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: ‘Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!’
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited,
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed” (Hardy 1-8).
Hardy describes a god revealing themself and their malice to him, saying that he would feel somewhat better once he knew that he had suffered for a reason other than pure chance or his own error. However, as he says next, he does not believe that would ever happen:
“But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan…
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain” (Hardy 9-14).
Hardy describes forces of nature such as Casualty (presumably meaning causation) and Time as blind to the targets of their destruction and therefore random. He ends the poem by saying that given nature’s blindness, it is also random in distribution of good fortune.
As referenced in its title, Hap suggests that “justice” is pure happenstance because the defining natural forces of the world are utterly blind to their targets. In saying that the blind forces of nature that brought suffering also granted happiness, Hardy seems to have been saying that good fortune, too, is given regardless of whether its recipient is deserving. Interestingly, Hardy does not provide any suggestions for an alternative way to find justice —such as humanity’s free will— if nature does not provide it. The poem implies a grim acceptance of the injustice of the world. It is possible that Hardy accepted this injustice because of the potential for random good fortune as well as bad fortune, but he gives no indication that he likes or thinks he profits from the state of the world he describes. Rather, his worldview seems to be somewhat nihilistic or willingly inert.
Similarly to Hardy, Shakespeare seems to have concluded in King Lear that there is no strong natural justice in the world. Characters die indiscriminately, regardless of their moral standing within the story and generally accepted social codes. Perhaps the best example of this is Cordelia, Lear’s loyal and loving daughter. She brings her husband’s army to war with England to save Lear from her older sisters, Goneril and Regan, when they had cast him out into a storm. Although she manages to reconcile with her father, Cordelia and Lear are captured, and Cordelia is hung in her cell: the murder made to look like a suicide. With a final change of heart, one of the play’s antagonists, Edmund, had tried to save Cordelia from the fate he ordered her to, telling Cordelia’s ally:
“I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,
Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send –
Be brief in it – to the castle, for my writ
Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia,
Nay, send in time” (V, iii, 241-245).
Edmund also dies, despite his final attempt to save Cordelia and Lear from his own past orders. In some narratives, this attempt would have succeeded and simultaneously been enough to save his character, providing an almost heartwarming story of redemption. However, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Edmund’s repentance changed nothing. These two characters’ fates suggest that Shakespeare was saying that there is no natural justice and that justice is the responsibility of humanity. Edmund’s last-minute attempt to undo his own actions did not work because he had already set things in motion. Perhaps if Shakespeare believed in natural or divine justice based on what people deserved, Cordelia would have survived despite Edmund’s actions, as she is arguably the character most deserving of a happy ending. This idea of humanity creating its own justice or lack thereof may also be present in the play’s final scene. In it, the three surviving “good guys,” Kent, Albany, and Edgar, agree to divide up the power in England amongst themselves, as Lear’s royal bloodline has ended with his daughters. This decision echoes the beginning of the play, in which Lear decides to divide up the kingdom among his daughters. Ultimately, that decision led to the death of the entire family as well as general chaos and destruction. Goneril and Regan managed to share power while they had a common goal (overthrowing their father) but once their goals shifted and they both set their sights on the ubiquitously attractive Edmund, the sisterly dream team dissolved. Eventually, Goneril poisons Regan and promptly stabs herself, as Edmund reflects to himself:
“Yet Edmund was beloved,
The one the other poisoned for my sake,
And after slew herself” (V, iii, 238-239).
By ending the play with another division of power, Shakespeare illustrates a cycle of the same mistakes repeating themselves. If Shakespeare was suggesting that there are no gods responsible for human fate, then the natural conclusion is that humans, the ones making the mistakes, are doing so of their own free will. Through that, one can assume that he was saying either that justice is impossible and humans are to blame or that justice is possible, albeit difficult, but that humans must take responsibility for bringing it about.
Both Shakespeare and Hardy seem to have concluded that any divine beings are irrelevant or nonexistent when it comes to human life. However, Hardy said that life’s events were a result of abstract natural forces, not human choice, while Shakespeare provided many examples of human choice as the precise cause of events within King Lear. Although both Hap and King Lear are fairly pessimistic, Shakespeare’s interpretation of life provides some room for optimism. After all, if human choice is the cause of most events, then humans can choose better, right? I certainly hope so.
Victorian Tsoris
Existential Questions in 19th Century Horror
Aubree Miller
Victorian British literature contains the building blocks for many of the tropes in current literature today, especially in the gothic horror genre. . With uprisings in neighboring countries such as France, the talk of a class revolution was on everyone’s minds. Religion started to thin out as more and more people fell below the poverty line during the nineteenth century The absence of religion and the rising tension between the classes gave many people the idea that it was up to them to choose their path. Without Christianity to tell them what was right and wrong, morality was often questioned if it meant getting what one wanted. The living conditions of impoverished England gave writers lots of material to create a classic horror story. Classic pieces of literature during that time were Carmilla and Green Tea by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde in 1891. From vampires to immortality, the many fears of the nineteenth century can be seen through their stories, such as topics of morality, mortality, and the relationship between the classes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde tells the story of a young man who goes by the same name as he wishes that the painting his friend painted of him would age and wither instead of Dorian as time passes. This wish comes true, and as the years pass Dorian stays ageless while his painting carries the burden of his age and sins. Dorian quickly learns to take advantage of this new power and starts committing crimes without facing any consequences of the law, shutting out his friends in the process. However, Dorian still faces the consequences of having a conscience, and his paranoia soon overpowers him. The Picture of Dorian Gray ends with a withered and ugly Dorian lying on the floor with a knife in his chest as he lies beside a perfect painting of a young and innocent man of the same name. This story plays with morality and its importance. Dorian starts with a decent sense of right and wrong, but because of how young he is, he becomes easily influenced. When Dorian is getting his portrait painted, he meets Lord Henry, the painter Basil’s friend. Lord Henry is a man with controversial opinions, and he is not afraid to share them, and because of this, Basil warns Lord Henry to stay away from Dorian due to fear of his influence: “Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don’t take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him” (Wilde 10). Lord Henry brushes aside Basil’s warning, however, and almost instantly Dorian gains a liking to him and the two become close friends. Once Dorian becomes aware of the painting’s abilities, his original moral compass is led astray, especially with Lord Henry whispering ideas into his ear left and right. For example, after discovering the painting’s secret, Dorian often visits the painting and compares his youth to its increasing ugliness: “He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and often with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs” (93-94). Dorian likes to see his portrait change for the worse because he knows that it will never affect him and that he is free of consequences. He seemingly has no conscience because it’s in the painting he’s constantly comparing himself to. When he does decide to do good, it’s only for his benefit, such as when he ends his relationship with Hetty Merton: “It was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell?” (161-162). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Stevenson also plays with morality and the thin line between right and wrong. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about a doctor who attempts to split himself into a purely good and purely evil person. The experiment fails, however, and Dr. Jekyll ends up with only an evil personality that he can transform in and out of. After a few months, he loses control over his body to his evil persona Edward Hyde and takes the opportunity to commit crimes without being convicted. By the end of the story, Hyde is found dead in Jekyll’s house with poison in his hand and a notebook detailing Jekyll’s experiments beside him. While Jekyll is technically the same person as Mr. Hyde, he has no control over what Hyde ultimately does. This causes a moral dilemma for both Jekyll and Hyde because if either of them dies, so does the other, “Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin” (Stevenson 53-54). Jekyll tries to repress Hyde and keep him from fronting, but Hyde’s thirst for sin overpowers Jekyll’s will, and Hyde takes over the body. Whether it was Jekyll’s influence or not, however, Hyde does die. This could be because Jekyll had accepted his fate and forced Hyde to kill himself, or because Hyde was afraid of being caught. Nonetheless, London was saved from Hyde’s murderous tendencies. Green Tea by Sheridan Le Fanu deals with the morality of a doctor who fails to cure his patient. The story talks about Dr. Hesselius as he attends to a patient with visual and auditory hallucinations. Mr. Jennings, Dr. Hesselius’s patient, was a reverend who was haunted by a monkey for three years. The monkey progressively got worse by following him around, distracting him from prayers, and yelling blasphemies at him. By the time Dr. Hesselius sees Mr. Jennings about his case, Mr. Jennings is already at the end of his rope, and a few nights after meeting he is found dead from suicide. Doctor Hesselius had the opportunity to save him, but he didn’t take Mr. Jennings’s case as seriously as he should. The night Mr. Jennings confesses that he is on the verge of suicide, Dr. Hesselius half heartedly assures him that he is okay and leaves for the night, asking servants to watch over him. After Jennings dies, Dr. Hesselius claims it’s not his fault and blames it on the severity on the case when he could have just stayed with him that night, “I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in eighteen months, or possibly it might have ex tended to two years. Some cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task, will effect a cure” (Le Fanu 206) Like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dr. Hesselius uses excuses to make himself morally right and makes the situation seem like it’s out of his control.
The Picture of Dorian Gray also relates to the theme of mortality. The painting is the one thing keeping Dorian alive by keeping him from facing any of life’s consequences and his deteriorating body. As long as the painting stays intact, so does Dorian and his beauty. This quickly leads to Dorian having a superiority complex where he views himself in the highest esteem due to his invulnerability. It’s only in the final chapters does Dorian realize how trapped he truly is and kills himself as a means to free himself from his sins: “It had given him pleasure once to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it” (Wilde 264). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ends with Hyde dying similarly. After realizing he has almost full control of Dr. Jekyll, Hyde murders a man, knowing that he wouldn’t suffer any consequences. He soon after locks himself away in Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory and poses as him, waiting until the noise dies down about the murder. Once he is discovered by Mr. Utterson, Dr. Jekyll’s friend, and Mr. Poole, Jekyll’s butler, he resorts to killing himself by poison: “Right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back, and beheld the face of Edward Hyde, He dressed in clothes too large for him, clothes of the doctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self destroyer” (Stevenson 33). Mr. Hyde thought he was invincible as long as he hid behind Jekyll, meaning he couldn’t kill him without killing himself. He ultimately kills himself out of fear like Dorian, worried that he will be convicted and found out. However, Hyde feels no remorse for all the crimes that he has committed, while Dorian feels remorse only if it affects him directly. Green Tea also ends with a character’s death as a means of ending the suffering. Mr. Jennings was tortured for three years by a monkey before consulting Doctor Hesselius about it. At that point, the monkey was distracting him constantly and yelling blasphemies at him. Despite Dr. Hesselius advising that Mr. Jennings stay with someone for the night, Mr. Jennings is so consumed by his fears and hallucinations that he isolates himself. By the morning, Mr. Jennings is found dead because he was driven insane by the monkey: “I went upstairs with him to the room–what I saw there I won’t tell you. He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two men had laid him on the bed, and composed his limbs. It had happened, as the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a carpet under his dressing. table, but none on the rest of the floor, for the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom” (Le Fanu 204). Jennings died as a means of ending his suffering, and like both Dorian and Mr. Hyde, he felt death was the only way he could escape the evils that consumed him. The difference separating Mr. Jennings from Dorian and Mr. Hyde, however, is that he was morally good, and did not view himself as the problem: rather that the monkey haunting him was unstoppable.
Finally, The Picture of Dorian Gray has the theme of class relationships. From the beginning of the story, Dorian is a young aristocrat who is about to come into a large sum of money once he comes of age. For most of his life, he is either attending or hosting parties with other aristocrats or going to the opera with Lord Henry. However, Dorian is hard to keep entertained, and he abandons hobbies as fast as he gains them: “ It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true object, or among the true objects, of life; and in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then, having, as it were, caught their color and 96 satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardor of temperament, and that indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it” (Wilde 96). A frequent activity of Dorian Gray was to go to the poorest places in London and live out his fantasies without the pressures of the upper class. Any sins he committed would be transferred over to the portrait, and his youth allowed him to look as if he were merely an innocent boy. This led to Dorian having sudden urges to commit sins and being able to do so without any consequences: “Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day, until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times, with that pride of rebellion that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own” (102-103). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is rather similar to Dorian Gray in how the class relationships are depicted. For instance, Dr. Jekyll originally uses Mr. Hyde as a way to break from the pressures of society before Mr. Hyde lets his murderous tendencies get the best of him: “Men before have hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete” (Stevenson 46). Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu tells the story fo a young girl who is preyed upon by a vampire named Carmilla. Carmilla lures her victims by seducing them and then sucks their blood nightly. By the end of the story, Carmilla is discovered and killed by her most recent victim’s father. He puts a stake through her heart while Laura, the current victim, stays home. Even as a vampire, Carmilla has preferences, targeting specifically young women. She takes longer killing those who are upper class, while killing her lower class victims instantly. Laura’s father comforts his daughter by saying she can’t die like several others have recently because she is not of the lower class: “All this… is strictly referable to natural causes. These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their neighbours” (Le Fanu 36). This is a commentary on how the poor are less valued during this time and how being upper class meant one was sophisticated and superior to the lower classes. This is unlike The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Strange Case Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where in both instances they use their power to leave the pressures of being upper class.
The common fears of the Victorian era are many of the same fears experienced today. The themes of morality and mortality were used in The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Green Tea. In these stories, characters had to die to save the rest of the world or make bad choices that were more or less out of control. Class relationships were also used in The Picture Dorian Gray, Carmilla, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both being about a man who uses his unfortunate situation to escape from the demands of being in the upper-class. Carmilla displayed class relationships by having the upper-class characters abuse their power over the lower class, such as Carmilla and her victims. Victorian England was struggling with the idea that there could be no afterlife due to the decrease in people of faith. The constant battle between the upper and lower classes damaged the relationship between religion and the lower classes. Once Christianity was questioned, so was everything else. Christianity at the time promised an afterlife to people as long as they kept a strong moral compass and did what was right. All of these fears still exist today, allowing these Victorian stories to maintain their elements of horror to an extent. Humans are naturally curious, making the existential and ethical questions not so surprising.
Works Cited
Fanu, Sheridan Le. Carmilla, Deluxe Edition. Pushkin Press, 2021.
SheridanLe, Fanu. Green Tea. 1872.
Stevenson, Robert. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1886.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. [A Novel.]. 1891.
The Inherent Homoeroticism of Immortality
Caroline Gilliatt
If there was one thing that Victorians were known for, it was their fears. Whether that be the fear of a ruined reputation, the fear of mortality, or the fear of the wrath of God, the Victorian era was a fearful one. These fears most likely came from the increased notoriety of the revolutions, the progress in science, and the lower classes gaining wealth. The upper classes were sickeningly aware of the progress that some of the lower classes were making and were fearful of what this meant for them. On a broader scale, Darwin’s theory of evolution terrified and confused most. This enhanced the already growing fears of science and led to one of the many popular themes in horror novels at the time: the fear of morality. This fear stems from the fear that science was going too far. Some other popular themes were stemming from societal pressures at the time such as the fear of the tarnished prominence of a person or of being deemed unfit. These themes are best exemplified in A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, Green Tea also by Sheridan, and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. These stories show the fears that were eating away at society at the time.
The first fear that was most prominent throughout the reading of Dorian Gray and A Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the fear of the consequences of one’s actions: very specifically the fear of other people’s reactions to one’s actions. Dr. Jekyll and Dorian are both terrified about being found out and go to ridiculous lengths to make sure that no one would connect them to their actions. Dr. Jekyll figures out a way to physically alter his appearance and creates an entirely new identity to escape the consequences of his actions. “I knew myself, at the first breath of new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine” (Stevenson 122). Dorian Gray does the same. He hides the portrait away from the general public. However, they both start to unravel once they have killed someone. Dr. Jekyll begins to transform into Hyde when he does not wish to, and Dorian Gray becomes increasingly paranoid that Basil’s disappearance will arouse suspicion. “Harry, did it ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?” Lord Henry yawned. “Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he have been murdered?” “I am very fond of Basil,” said Dorian, with a note of sadness in his voice. “But don’t people say that he was murdered?” (Wilde 156). Now it is important to note that they are not afraid of the action itself but rather others’ reactions to it. This is also reflected in A Tale of Two Cities: when the Marquis ran over and killed a child: he was not afraid of the murder itself but rather how the lower class would react to it. “Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.” It was done… “Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here.”…, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels” (Dickens 105). This demonstrates a greater fear of the aftermath of an immoral action than an actual fear of the action itself.
The second theme most prevalent is the fear of mortality: the fear of death or the end. This is present in Dorian Gray, Carmilla, and Green Tea. In Dorian Gray Dorian fears growing older and growing ugly. “How sad it is!’ murmered Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will always remain young. It will never be older than this particular day in June…. If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that–for that–I would give everything!” (Wilde 19). He fears death and the end of his prime. He again goes to great lengths to prevent this. He protects the painting by hiding it in the attic. However, in Green Tea, there’s a bigger fear of losing yourself to outside forces. The fear of mortality while still present takes the form of a man attempting to stay alive knowing it’s futile. Referring to the possibly imagined monkey that taunts him, Rev. Jennings says, “When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and in the same way. It grows at first uneasy, and then furious, and then advances towards me, grinning and shaking” (Lefanu 13). This quote shows Mr. Jennings’s fear that death will always advance toward him: that the monkey will never cease until his death. In Carmilla, the fear is best shown in Laura, who states that she is worried about the plague and fears that it will take her and her father. “Are you afraid, dearest?” “I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were.” “You are afraid to die?” “Yes, everyone is” (Le Fanu 45). All of these stories have an aspect of fear of the end although each character handles it differently.
Finally, the third theme was the fear of God’s wrath. This fear is present in almost all works from this time period. This is most likely due to the progress of science leading to a fear of a loss of faith and therefore leading to a fear of God’s wrath. This is present most in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as Dr. Jekyll attempts to escape God’s wrath by changing his physical appearance. He later swears off Hyde for fear of God’s wrath and his being exposed as Hyde. This fear is also present in Dorian Gray where Dorian kills Basil for even attempting to pray for him. “It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow’?” “Those words mean nothing to me now.”… He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table and stabbing again and again” (Wilde 162). Dorian’s relationship with God is strange, but by the end of the book he seems to be desperate to escape everything including Hell. The final good example of God’s wrath would be the monkey from Green Tea. There seems to be no way to stop the monkey in Green Tea with science. As the unreliable narrator Dr. Hesselius says, excusing himself after his patient’s suicide, “You are to remember that I had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings’s case. I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in eighteen months, or possibly it might have extended to two years. Some cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task, will effect a cure” (Le Fanu 23). This implies that the monkey is something of a supernatural threat, and these stories all have to do with the wrath of God.
In conclusion, the Victorians feared many things, and these fears influenced their works a great deal. The three themes that were recognized were the fear of a ruined reputation, the fear of mortality, and the fear of temptation. The fear of a ruined reputation persists through Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, and A Tale of Two Cities. In these stories the characters are less affected by their actions than by the fear of how others would react. The fear of mortality tended to lead to these actions. Dorian Gray is desperate to stay young and beautiful to the point where he believes there’s nothing else worthwhile. Laura simply wishes for her family to carry on throughout the ‘plague’ spreading through her home. Mr Jennings only wants to live, however the monkey refuses to let him: driving him mad and eventually driving him to commit suicide. The fear of temptation and the wrath of God is one that is very omnipresent throughout the stories; in Dorian Gray, the fear of God and sin floats around until Basil attempts to clear it and save Dorian: he prays for Dorian’s soul, and then Dorian kills him. In Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, it’s one of the reasons Doctor Jekyll fully swears off Hyde. It is also why he created Hyde in the first place: to attempt to fulfill temptation in a way that would not endanger his immortal soul. However, this fails, leading to his death. Green Tea also experiences the fear of God as a theme. The monkey is unbeatable by science and therefore represents something supernatural but anti-God and how during the Victorian period people were afraid of science’s perceived hubris. These themes and books represent the Victorian fears of hubris, the meaning of life, and their fellow man.
Morality, Mortality and the Meaning of Life in Victorian Horror Fiction
Abby Gilliatt
Like all aspects of British history, the Victorian Era consists of many changes for the citizens in England. One of the most important things that this era put into the spotlight was science. While science was a concept and study for long before the Victorian Era, the Victorians put a lot of effort into new scientific discoveries. Things like electricity and the theory of evolution were at the forefront of a lot of brilliant minds. Some of these minds were writers. These writers used science and the religious beliefs popular at the time to write many interesting novels, including many horror novels. One such writer was Oscar Wilde, who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel follows the titular character, Dorian Gray, throughout his life following the painting of his portrait. This portrait will keep Dorian young and pure forever, and bad things that happen to Dorian will only be demonstrated in the portrait. Eventually, Dorian is overcome by all his sins in the portrait and stabs it. This kills the real Dorain and causes his body to turn old and cruel, just like the painting. Other stories in the horror genre were Jekyll and Hyde, Carmilla, and Green Tea. Jekyll and Hyde, by Robert Stevenson, is about a scientist who splits his personality into two: his normal self and an evil man. Carmilla, by Sheridan Le Fanu, is about a predatory vampire, and Green Tea, by Sheridan Le Fanu, is about a man haunted by a demon monkey. There were also poems written in the Victorian Era. I use The Bishop Orders his Tomb by Robert Browning. These written works discuss themes like morality: a religious issue, mortality: a nature issue, and the meaning of life: a personal philosophy.
Morality is a contentious topic. Throughout time, the concept of objective mortality has been debated by many philosophers and religious men. In the Victorian Era, people were most likely to go with the morality dictated by the Bible. Lord Henry had an interesting idea of morality in Dorian Gray. He believed that there was no such thing as an immoral piece of art because art does not make anyone do anything. He believed that people called books immoral because they were mad that the books showed the world as it truly is. “‘The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame’” (Dorian Gray 161). He also believed that influence itself was immoral. He thought that everyone should come up with their own ideas and live in their own realities. He believed that people seeking their own pleasure was truly moral and that copying the things other people seek is immoral. “‘There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view… Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him’” (Dorian Gray 13). Henry’s views on morality are very self-centered. He believes that immorality solely comes from unoriginality. Victorian readers would most likely see Henry as incorrect because he didn’t define morality through religion. Jekyll, from Jekyll and Hyde, saw morality as something that people had in equal amounts good and bad. “It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” (Jekyll and Hyde 43). He believed that you could split off the bad and good parts and create humans. His hypothesis was correct in that man had two parts; it’s just that there was no good part. In creating Hyde, he made a perfectly immoral man. In the end, Jekyll found that the only way to get rid of either side of morality in a man was to kill them both. “Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the face of Edward Hyde” (Jekyll and Hyde 33). Jekyll’s story shows a view that there is no truly good and moral man. Every man has both evil and good in him, and to try to get rid of either would only end in disaster. For an example of a moral man, Victorians would have looked toward Sydney Carton. Sydney started out without morals. He didn’t care about acting in a way that benefited other people. He chose to live in a way where he contributed nothing and actively chose a profession where being morally good wasn’t necessary. “Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver’s great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king’s ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and un- steadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat” (Tale of Two Cities 75). As a lawyer, he didn’t care about getting justice. By the end of the story, Sidney had learned the value of being a good and moral person. He chose to make the ultimate sacrifice, his life, as a way to better the lives of those around him. He chooses to take Darnay’s place in jail and get executed instead. “‘It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your
hair like this of mine!’” (Tale of Two Cities 307). This martyrdom made up for his life of being amoral. To the religious Victorians, this would have been seen as Sidney absolving himself of his life of sin in his final moments. Victorians saw life lived with no thoughts for other people as immoral. They also saw a life lived without religious morality as immoral. While they believed that there was immorality in everyone, they also believed that people should choose to overcome that immortality and be good.
Mortality was a theme in a lot of Victorian works. Almost every story ends with someone dead, and in some cases, quite a lot of people dead. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian dies at the end of the novel. His death is significant because he had been given a gift. He had a portrait that would keep him young forever. The only signs of Dorian growing old or being cruel appeared in the portrait. “He got up and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he looked upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside and saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had altered” (Dorian Gray 69). This portrait was the result of his fears of growing old and losing his beauty. This supernatural beauty came at a cost. Dorian lost the ability to see the consequences of his actions until he looked at the portrait. Dorian eventually becomes so consumed in his own beauty that he kills his dear friend Basil. “He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table and stabbing again and again” (Dorian Gray 116). This causes him to lose his purity for good. He realizes that he will never be able to make up for the things he did and stabs the painting reflecting his sins. By stabbing the painting, he kills himself and reveals his sins to the whole world. Despite how much Dorian fights the natural will of mortality, it eventually consumes him in the end. His story reflects the fact that no matter what supernatural things come around, nature always finds a way to set it right. It shows that the supernatural will never lead to a long life of happiness and that it is just better to accept the state of the world rather than fight what is natural. In Carmilla, the character of Carmilla dies a sudden death at the hands of a vampire. “A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons” (Carmilla 55). She is brought back in the form of a vampire who preyed on young women in the same way she was preyed upon before she died. Carmilla, like Dorian, resists the natural state of death and, in doing so, loses her purity. She becomes a monster willing to kill. The only way to get rid of Carmilla was to kill her and return her to her natural state. “The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony” (Carmilla 53). Carmilla is another example of resisting mortality having disastrous consequences. In Green Tea, Jennings becomes cursed with visions of a demon monkey. This eventually contributed to his excessive consumption of green tea. The monkey haunts him until he eventually commits suicide. “His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania” (Green Tea 207). This story does not show resistance to mortality in the same way. Jennings resists in the sense that he holds out against the monkey who constantly tells him to kill himself. Eventually, Jennings does give in. Jennings is unlike Dorian and Carmilla in that he is a good person. This story shows that even good people cannot resist nature. Nature isn’t always a good thing. Mortality is a terrifying concept. Humans, however, have no place in trying to fight against the inevitable. This seems to be the message the stories were given to the people in the Victorian Era.
The meaning of life is an important message in many Victorian Stories. To Lord Henry, the meaning of life was to find pleasure in life. His philosophy was that other people in life did not matter. All that mattered was living in a way that satisfied you personally. “The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked” (Dorian Gray 13). Henry passes on his way of thinking to other characters like Dorian. This way of living ended with Dorian dead, having lost almost everyone he ever considered a friend. Henry’s ideas were very shallow. He did not really understand the things he proposed and did not care to think about the implications of those things. Henry is not a sympathetic character by the end of the book. Unlike Dorian, he doesn’t see the flaws in his outlook. His character is supposed to show the audience what a bad philosophy looks like. To an audience in the Victorian Era, who would have most likely been religious, Henry would be the character meant to show why the meaning of life without God is worthless. This also ties back into morals in the sense that Henry’s outlook did not consider the harm to anyone else. In the poem The Bishop Orders His Tomb by Robert Browning, we see another character who the audience should see as a bad role model. The Bishop in this poem should find meaning in life through God. As a man of God, the afterlife should be all he cares about. This Bishop, however, is only concerned with his death on earth. He is selfish and preoccupied with money and power. The meaning of life for the Bishop was dying and being buried in the perfect spot. “Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And ‘neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse” (The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church 20-30). He couldn’t have cared less about God. The Victorians would have recognized this man as the hypocrite he was and would have taken the poem as a depiction of the terrible Bishops who were in the churches at the time. A character whose outlook on the meaning of life the audience is supposed to sympathize with is Sydney Carton. Sydney is a character with nothing at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. He has no family, no love, and no sobriety. He was an alcoholic with a shaky law career. By the end of the book, however, he finds his own meaning in life: love. He lives and dies for Lucie Manette. Carton’s story is tragic. He finally finds someone he can love, but she marries another man, and he ends up dying for her husband. He dies because, to him, the meaning of life is making sacrifices so the people he loves could lead happy lives. He knew Lucie would not truly be able to live if Darnay died, so he took his place. In Carton’s last moments, he sees his plan work out in his mind, Lucie living happily ever after, and he finds comfort in his choice. “‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known’” (Tale of Two Cities 330). Victorians would see Sydney as the ultimate hero and his worldview as just.
The themes in these stories are not uncommon in literature. Just like the people in our modern day, Victorian people were very concerned with morality, mortality, and the meaning of life. In the texts of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Jekyll and Hyde, and A Tale of Two Cities, morality is seen as a responsibility. People have both good and evil in them, as seen with Dr. Jekyll, but, as demonstrated in Dorian and Sydney’s stories, they are responsible for choosing to be good. If they chose to be evil, then nothing can help them when it comes to the afterlife. As shown in Sydney’s story, absolving one’s sins, in the end, is the only way to become morally good. For people like the Victorians, who were very concerned with the afterlife, being morally good by the time of your death would have been very important. For mortality, the Victorians would have seen death as inevitable. The attempts of many characters to resist death, and in exchange resist nature, only end in tragedy. The way that the resistance to death is shown in the stories is through the supernatural. Characters like Dorian and Carmilla end up monsters by the end of their stories for going against death. The meaning of life is a topic that every era thinks about in some way or another. For Victorians, the meaning of life was to live by good morals and standards. Sydney is the perfect example of a character who finds meaning in his life and decides to live by it. He realizes that living only for himself was not fulfilling. It is only when he lets himself love others that he finds true meaning. This is unlike the Bishop, who dedicated himself to a meaning, God, but in the end, doesn’t care to live by it. He was too preoccupied with material goods to care about eternity in Heaven. After reading the texts, I see that the Victorian Era was in some ways similar to our own. People then and people now are still concerned with finding meaning in our lives and living morally. Even if the situations have changed, there are still worries and questions inherent to all human lives.
The Subjection of Women and Parallel Lives
Ethan Lisi
The works that I will be discussing are Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives and John Stuart Mill’s philosophical essay The Subjection of Women. I will present two Victorian marriages and one unmarried partnership, each from Parallel Lives. The first married couple is John Ruskin and Effie Gray. They have very different interests and expectations. Their marriage did not last. The second marriage is between John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor. They had a close companionship before the death of her first husband. After his passing, John and Harriet were married. They were both equals who did not let society’s views dictate the aspects of their relationship. The final relationship I will be discussing is between George Eliot and George Henry Lewes. Lewes was married to a woman by the name of Agnes. She had four children with another man while being married to Lewes. Eliot and Lewes were interested in each other and started living together. During the Victorian era, marriages were better for men than they were for women. Women did not have power in marriage or outside of marriage. Women had a certain dependence on the men in their relationships. There was a struggle for the woman in the relationship to have her voice heard and respected by the man.
According to Mill, the reasons why there is subjection of women include the beliefs that: “The male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal” (Mill 3). In other words, men have a need to oppress women in order to build themselves up. Mill also states that “It would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of character” (Mill 3). The foundation of a woman’s character is based on the belief that their focus should be making themselves appealing to men. In turn, England would lose out on potential valuable contributions to society all because of gender stereotypes. As Mill said, “When we consider how sedulously they are all trained away from, instead of being trained towards, any of the occupations or objects reserved for men, it is evident that I am taking very humble ground for them, when I rest their case on what they have actually achieved” (Mill 5). These are the three most prominent reasons why there is subjection of women. Due to male intolerance, societal norms and gender stereotypes, England ultimately loses out.
Mill’s arguments against the subjection of women include the belief that: “When we add the experience of recent times to that of ages past, women and not a few merely, but many women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it successfully and creditably” (Mill 4). He could be pulling from his own experience with Harriet. As stated in Parallel Lives, “Practically all Mill’s later work may be seen in that shorthand list of ideas. Where he began did not much matter, so long as he began, and Harriet was happy enough to tell him what to do. She was the executive. She made decisions. Unhampered by the subtleties and nuances of thought which sometimes impeded Mill, unafraid of inconsistency, she cut crudely, perhaps, but emphatically and practically to important matters” (Rose 131). This showed that even in Harriet’s later years, she still was influential and indispensable to Mill. She was just as important as he was. Another example of Mill’s arguments against the subjection of women was when he talked about women being passive. As he said, “A great number of women do not accept it. Ever since there have been women able to make their sentiments known by their writings (the only mode of publicity which society permits to them), an increasing number of them have recorded protests against their present social condition” (Mill 2). This quote applies to Effie Gary and John Ruskin. Although Effie didn’t write any books or articles, she did stand up to her husband directly in court. She tried to get an “Order of Release,” and she succeeded. A while after she did, she married another man by the name of Millais. Millais treated her better than John treated her. Effie, by standing up for herself, was able to come to a better outcome than she would staying with John. A reason for Eliot’s and Lewes’s happiness was their stance outside of a marital unit. Eliot and Lewes had a very long-term relationship that defied society’s expectations. He gave Eliot respect, which in turn encouraged her. As said in The Subjection of Women, “The principle of the modern movement in morals and politics, is that conduct, and conduct alone, entitles to respect: that not what men are, but what they do, constitutes their claim to deference; that, above all, merit, and no birth, is the only rightful claim to power and authority” (Mill 7). In other words, men don’t have a right to power and authority only because they were born men. You earn power and authority through respect. In short, Mill says that people will treat you the way you let them. The more you stand up for yourself, the better results will be found.
Mill was far beyond his time. He believed that men and women should be equals. This counted both in marriages and outside of them. Mill explained the warped reality of gender roles. He believed that Victorian society did not give women the opportunities to excel in their environment. Victorian society, by doing this, is ultimately losing out on women who can do things as well, if not better, than men. His arguments are accurate and well made. Even today his essay still applies. Society today doesn’t give women as many opportunities as it does men. Women are still fighting to be treated equally. Women similar to Harriet Taylor, Effie Gray and George Eliot are prime examples of those fighting for their voices to be heard.
The Subjection of Women (Not a How-To Guide)
Ada Sobota-Walden
In his essay on Victorian gender and marital relationship dynamics, The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill argued for equality between the sexes by logically and methodically deconstructing the institution of patriarchy. Although some of his points might seem elementary to a modern reader, Mill had to persuade a much tougher crowd than modern readers: he was addressing his fellow Victorian men, amongst whom he was an outlier. As an advocate for gender equality, Mill used utilitarianism, a popular philosophical system, to appeal to his fellow thinkers. In The Subjection of Women, one of his main arguments is that gender equality would double the pool of candidates for every position in society, increasing chances of finding competent individuals. Essentially, Mill said that gender equality would benefit civilization. He also argued that given how men and women are socially molded since youth, there is no way to understand either sex’s true nature, and therefore, women’s natures are not inherently inferior or even necessarily different. Given that each person’s written ideas are a reflection of their experiences, it’s not hard to imagine that Mill was influenced by his relationship with Harriet Taylor Mill, his intellectual partner and later, his wife. Taylor Mill was married at age nineteen to John Taylor, a suitable and generally agreeable husband. However, once the good parts of married life wore off, she was left in what Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives, described as “a sexual contract in which one of the parties, the necessarily virginal woman, could have no idea of what she was committing herself to” (Rose 103). Resenting unwanted sex and intellectually bored in her relationship, Taylor Mill began a passionate (although sexless) intellectual relationship with John Stuart Mill. Many years later, soon after the death of John Taylor, the two were married. Given Taylor Mill’s strong opposition to marriage as it existed in Victorian society and feminist views, it’s not hard to believe that she influenced The Subjection of Women. However, even beyond Mill’s personal relationship, the essay itself is a well written and well-argued piece with points that are still relevant in today’s discussions of gender.
In The Subjection of Women, Mill says that the reason men continue to subjugate women is that they have been molded unnaturally to “worship their own will as such a grand thing that it is actually the law for another rational being [their wives]” (Mill 80). He says that although many marriages are not akin to medieval torture, the law makes such a marriage possible and that the law needs to be designed with the worst of humanity in mind: not the best or the average man. Essentially, even if most men are fond of their wives and subjugate them purely through the nature of their relationship in Victorian society, the law should not make it possible for a husband to become a tyrant. An example of this gentle subjection that Mill said is most common is in the case of Effie Gray and John Ruskin, a well-known Victorian art critic. Although Ruskin did not abuse Gray, she was lonely with only her emotionally distant husband for connection. As Phyllis Rose says in her essay on the couple from Parallel Lives, “Cut off from her family, from children, from her husband, Effie found nothing in marriage but emotional starvation” (Rose 70). This quote is reminiscent of one of Mill’s observations in The Subjection of Women. He said, “Every one of the subjects [subjugated women] lives under the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands of one of the masters -in closer intimacy with him than with any of her fellow subjects” (Mill 20). Mill was describing how women are in closer emotional and physical proximity to their husbands (and often oppressors) than they are to their families, children if they have them, and fellow women. This isolates the wife and makes the furthering of her subjection much easier. After all, the emotionally and physically isolated are amongst those most vulnerable to victimization. Ruskin did not victimize Gray, but he left her alone in life to wage a chronic (and losing) battle against his parents, who seemed to think her incompetent and lazy. Resentment between the pair built until their divorce, which was only legally possible because the two had never had sex and Effie Gray was a virgin. (The dubious and invasive Victorian medical techniques for testing virginity aside, it was quite lucky for her.) Mill also observed that “when we put together three things -first, the natural attraction between opposite sexes; secondly, the wife’s entire dependence on the husband, every privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition, can in general be sought or obtained by her only through him, it would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of character” (Mill 28-29). Given that being attractive to men was considered the pinnacle of female existence, Effie was essentially denied that ultimate goal (through no fault of her own and through no intention on Ruskin’s part).
One of Mill’s arguments against the subjection of women was that society needed more competent people, and equality between the sexes would double the pool of candidates from which to find such individuals. He said, “In all things of any difficulty or importance, those who can do them well are fewer than the need, even with the most unrestricted latitude of choice: and any limitation of the field of selection deprives society of some chances of being served by the competent” (Mill 35). He argued that, contrary to the idea that women are intellectually inferior to men, they had actually demonstrated extraordinary mental ability and achievement when given education and opportunity, such as in the case of royalty: “The ladies of reigning families are the only women who are allowed the same range of interests and freedom of development as men; and it is precisely in their case that there is not found to be any inferiority” (Mill 107). In the case of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes, George Eliot (or Marian Evans) was the superior writer out of the unofficially married pair. As a popular and respected Victorian novelist, Eliot demonstrated potential for women to excel in their chosen fields. Mill’s own life also demonstrated a potential for women to be more than subordinates in their marriages. Harriet Taylor Mill was, according to Phyllis Rose, the leader in their marriage. Rose says that “a female autocrat merely replaced the male” (Rose 137). Although it is clear that Mill bent to his wife’s will more times than not, one must examine Rose’s portrayal of their relationship. According to her, Taylor Mill was “confused, contradictory, bossy, intolerant of other people’s faults but unaware of her own” (Rose 134), although Mill idolized her. Although the list of unflattering adjectives may be impressive, and may have had some truth to it, I question Rose’s assessment of Taylor Mill as a domineering, overconfident tyrant with minimal intellectual ability. After all, Rose herself said in the same essay that “The public, whose relationship with any celebrity (writer, philosopher or film star) is partly erotic, resents another person’s coming between it and the object of its attention, and any artist who insists on giving more credit to a loved one than to the public thinks is appropriate risks bringing down upon him or her the public’s wrath” (Rose 132). Perhaps Rose was self-aware; perhaps she was oblivious of this connection between her criticism of Taylor Mill and the public’s criticism of Taylor Mill. Either way, Mill seems to have been aware of his own relationship’s power dynamic, and as someone who experienced it firsthand provides the best source on it. In The Subjection of Women, he said that “An active and energetic mind, if denied liberty, will seek for power: [having been] refused the command of itself, it will seek to control others” (Mill 188). This idea can certainly apply to Harriet Taylor Mill. Although she was not subjugated by Mill, she was married to a sexually aggressive and “inconsiderate” husband in her young adulthood and by the nature of her existence as a woman in Victorian society, Taylor Mill was “refused the command” of herself. She could not legally hold property; anything she owned was her husband’s or father’s. She could not vote; she could only influence her husband’s vote. She could not reach social success without being viewed as an extension of her husband, as Mill observed in Subjection. Considering how Taylor Mill was “denied liberty,” it follows that she would “seek for power.” Given Mill’s observant and logical mind, one can imagine that he observed this firsthand.
Overall, The Subjection of Women was well-argued, especially for its existence during the Victorian era. Utilitarianism was a popular philosophy, and the idea of the betterment of society was praised. It’s likely no coincidence that Mill used utilitarianism as one of his main arguments for gender equality. However, the essay also merits acknowledgment in today’s political landscape; there is still subjection of women in various degrees around the world. In American culture, I think that the points about the natures of the sexes and about women’s forced dependence on men are most relevant. Beyond that, it’s a logical deconstruction of many of the rationalizations for the patriarchy. As long as there are people who disagree with the essay, it is still useful for constructive discourse with those who are willing to listen.
All American
Hypocrisy in Puritan New England
Ava Pollard
The prevailing moral climate of Puritan New England was of extremely strict discipline and purity of life according to the Bible. Since the Puritan way of life was so uncompromising, it led to an intense feeling of pressure to conform felt by all of the townsfolk, and this is seen in The Crucible by Arthur Miller and The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne. When a member of the community sinned, with it came an intense social ostracism that could be cast onto that person’s name for generations to come. Of course, it is rarely possible for even the highest-ranking and most respected members of the community completely to abstain from sinning since everyone makes mistakes. Often, this led to priests or community leaders putting up a front of moral superiority while behind the scenes they were committing sins that would deem them criminals to their peers. Most people in Puritan New England were hypocrites because I believe it is not possible for anyone to be completely perfect or sinless. Especially given how strict and uptight the rules for Puritan life were, there was barely any room to make mistakes.
One character who is a hypocrite from The Crucible is Abigail Williams. Abigail is Reverend Parris’s niece. Abigail is also the main accuser of witchcraft in Salem. An example of her hypocrisy is when she baselessly accuses others of practicing witchcraft even though she herself is really the only one who was actually attempting to practice witchcraft in the first place. “You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!” (Miller 19). This is said by Abigail’s younger cousin who witnessed Abigail practicing witchcraft. She is trying to convince Abigail to confess what she did to her father instead of lying about other people practicing witchcraft instead. One character who is a hypocrite from The Scarlet Letter is Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale is the highly respected reverend who is known for being very well spoken and studious. An example of him being a hypocrite is when despite him being a reverend, he committed adultery and kept it a secret in order to retain the respect he holds in him town and to keep his job. “And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart” (Hawthorne 179). In this scene, Dimmesdale is so overwrought with shame and guilt from his secret that during the night, he stands on the scaffold that Hester once stood as punishment for committing adultery. Both of these characters are hypocrites because neither practice what they preach.
One character who is not a hypocrite in The Scarlet Letter is Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne is a townswoman condemned for committing adultery and birthing an illegitimate child. An example of why she isn’t a hypocrite is because she never claimed anything about herself that wasn’t true. She accepted responsibility for her sins. “She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real” (Hawthorne 66). This quote is from when Hester was released from jail and put on display to the town as a form of public humiliation. In my opinion, the way she endures this punishment shows bravery and strength. Throughout the book, she never tries to hide from what she has done. A character who is not a hypocrite in The Crucible is Tituba. Tituba is a woman from Barbados who was enslaved and bought by Reverend Parris. She was also one of the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft. Tituba isn’t a hypocrite because she never did anything wrong, she is honest, and she always lived up to her own values. “No, no, sir, I don’t truck with no Devil!…You beg me to conjure! She beg me make charm -” (Miller 44). In this scene, Tituba tries to tell the truth about what Abigail did while she is being interrogated by Reverend Parris. This shows that Tituba always tried to be honest, despite how difficult the circumstances were. In summation, these two characters do not exhibit hypocrisy.
In my opinion, Puritan society as portrayed in The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible rarely lived up to its own moral values. Even though there are some other characters that exhibit an exception from this hypocrisy, like Elizabeth Proctor from The Crucible and Pearl from The Scarlet Letter, I still think that overall, Puritan society was hypocritical. Characters like Arthur Dimmesdale and Abigail Williams are very typical. There are a multitude of other characters that are overwhelmingly similar in their hypocrisy to those two, such as Reverend Parris and Mercy Williams from The Crucible and Roger Chillingworth from The Scarlet Letter.
Civil Disobedience
Deren Sozer
Henry David Thoreau was an American writer, philosopher and naturalist in the 19th Century. A native of Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau worked with many of the famous writers and thinkers who lived in the town at the time. Among these were Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter; Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women; and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famed essayist and leading transcendentalist. A leader of the Transcendentalist movement himself, Thoreau’s writings focused on nature, idealism, and an opposition to the materialism he felt had corrupted the soul of the country. One of these writings was his essay Civil Disobedience, which advocated for deliberate disobedience against the state in order to effect change in unjust government. At the time of its writing, the United States was fighting the Mexican American War, and tensions over slavery were intensifying within the country. Thoreau felt that the government’s actions were immoral and that the people had no obligation to support an unjust state. In fact, he wrote that the people had a duty to themselves to do what was morally right even if it meant breaking the law. Thoreau made many good points, and we would do well to listen to his ideas about wealth and morality; his attitude toward government and his advice of civil disobedience, however, are not conducive to a functional society.
Thoreau believed that men had an absolute duty to themselves to do what is morally right, and if that landed them in conflict with an unjust state, then that was a tool to pressure the government into change. He said, “If one honest man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America” (Thoreau 230). He believed that refusing to participate in the system was the best remedy to injustice. Thoreau’s preferred avenue of civil disobedience was refusing to pay tax. Taxes, after all, were the main source of funding for the unjust acts of the government and represented a reach he did not believe the government was usually secure in its right to. He wrote in Civil Disobedience, “Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father had attended, but never myself. ‘Pay,’ it said, ‘or be locked up in the jail.’ I declined to pay. (Thoreau 233). He didn’t believe he should have to pay because he never attended this clergyman’s services and had never agreed that it was his responsibility. His view was that you should not have to pay a tax you never agreed to pay or that you don’t benefit from.
I believe that Thoreau’s theory of civil disobedience is taken to an extreme that makes it unproductive and counterintuitive. It is true that the government does many unjust things and could never pass as a moral institution, but it is also of vital importance. Without government, there would be no laws to govern society, and nothing would exist for the common benefit of neighbors; it would be every man for himself. I have little faith in humanity’s ability to act in the reasonable way Thoreau has set out as his ideal. In my view, government is essential. Therefore, taxes to fund the government are also essential. Thoreau said of the government, “It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it” (Thoreau 240). He does not believe the government has the right to tax him for anything he does not directly consent to, but what he fails to consider is that we live in a representative democracy; our consent is given at the ballot box. It is impractical to require the government only to collect taxes that each person specifically consents to pay, because any intelligent person would pay little to none and save their wealth for themselves. In such a society, the government would never have enough money for anything for the common good of the people. Things like infrastructure, the postal service and the military would never be funded.
There is often a debate that emerges in conversations about civil disobedience. It is about whether the remedy is worse than the evil. It is my view that it very much is, and on this point I am joined by Thoreau himself: “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse” (Thoreau 229). Thoreau feels it is the government’s fault but acknowledges the problem with breaking any law is that is unjust. It creates an issue of precedent and erodes the authority of just laws. If we are to break any unjust law, who is to say if it is unjust? What is to stop any individual from breaking a just law and calling that law unjust? The fact remains that any law, just or not, holds a certain power and authority; if we are to preserve the authority of law in the eyes of men, then we must respect them all. There are processes in place for the repeal of laws we have grown to dislike. We must use those processes whenever possible and resort to civil disobedience only as a last resort.
Overall, I agree with much of what Thoreau has written in Civil Disobedience. He makes many good points that society would do well to consider. However, his view of government is overly pessimistic, and I fear the tactics he recommends could have an irreversible impact on respect for the law. That is why I believe it is important to follow the democratic processes we have in place when you have a problem with the law. It is true it can be difficult, but it is possible to achieve your goal without an indefinite stay in jail.
Civil Disobedience in To Kill A Mockingbird and Inherit the Wind
Saylor Skidds
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a novel about a Black man on trial for rape in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. It is based heavily on the real life of the author with some fictionalized elements. Inherit The Wind is a play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee about a high school teacher put on trial for teaching evolution in Hillsboro, Alabama. Both texts center heavily around a trial. Both trials have a character who lives up to the standards and ideals of civil disobedience, as outlined by Henry David Thoreau. These characters are using their limited power to protest elements of the legal system that they do not agree with.
Atticus Finch is the main character who exercised civil disobedience in To Kill A Mockingbird. Atticus Finch is the lawyer who is defending Tom Robinson in his case. Atticus is a prominent lawyer in the town of Maycomb and has garnered a reputation for defending Black people. Atticus is usually paid in services rather than in set cash payments. Atticus believes that the one institution in which all men are equal is the court, as it is the great equalizer. “‘But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal… That institution, gentlemen, is a court… Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal” (Lee 205). Many of Atticus’s beliefs line up with those outlined by Thoreau. Atticus states that only judges should have the power to fix the penalty in a trial. He says that all jury men are reasonable until racism makes them unreasonable. “‘Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night in front of the jail… In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins” (Lee 220). This is analogous to Thoreau’s comment “The lawyer’s truth is not truth” (Thoreau 228). He follows the idea that there is no objective truth in a court. Even though Atticus does not protest the trial verdict in any direct way, he does contradict it in his final speech. In his speech Atticus flips the perspective of the trial and says that Mayella Ewell is the one who is truly guilty because this is her attempt to hide the evidence of her breaking a moral code. “‘What was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was her daily reminder of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a Negro” (Lee 203). In Atticus’s line of work, he is enacting incremental changes to the legal system in his town. Atticus is not practically supporting the laws that he disagrees with.
Henry Drummond is the main character who exercised civil disobedience in Inherit The Wind. Henry Drummond is by far the less popular of the two lawyers in the trial. Many of the townspeople are afraid of him and regard him as a devil figure. This is in stark contrast to how they view Matthew Harrison Brady as a national hero. Henry Drummond is steadfast in his beliefs about evolution. Henry Drummond has taken on the case to prove his political point rather than on behalf of his client. He is trying to challenge the validity of the anti-evolution law itself rather than the actions of Bertram Cates. The most important value to Thoreau is “The right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable” (Thoreau 225). Henry Drummond follows a similar line of thinking towards the end of the trial when his case is in dire straits and he does not have many options left. Throughout the trial, Henry Drummond attempts to call leading zoologists and other scientists to the stand as witnesses. These are countered by Brady who says that their input is irrelevant. The judge also says the state does not need witnesses against the law itself. The state only needs witnesses against the prosecution. “The language of the law is clear; we do not need experts to question the validity of a law that is already on the books” (Lawrence, Lee 74). The court has ruled out any testimony in regard to Darwin but not on the holy Bible, so Drummond calls Brady to the stand as a witness. Drummond questions Brady in a highly unorthodox way until he manages to get Brady to admit that some of the words of the Bible are vague and/or metaphorical. Drummond is able to challenge the validity of the law itself by convincing Brady to admit that he views himself as a sort of prophet or surrogate for the word of God. Drummond then says that if Bertram Cates had the influence Brady had, everyone would view Darwin in the way they do the Bible. “Then what is Bertram Cates doing in the Hillsboro jail? Suppose Mr. Cates had enough influence and lung power to railroad through the State Legislature a law that only Darwin should be taught in the schools” (Lawrence, Lee 89). This is very similar to how Thoreau thinks majority rule is based on strength and not fairness. “A majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest” (Thoreau 223). Drummond argues the same point because by the end of the trial, he is saying that the law was only passed based on the self-assurance of those in support of it and their faith in the Bible rather than any measure of reason or general conscience. Thus, he is able to challenge the law itself as well as the prosecution through civil disobedience.
Neither work references Thoreau directly, but they both have a character who aligns their principles with his very well. Atticus follows Thoreau’s idea that the government is not based on conscience or reason and that it forces individuals in governing bodies to sacrifice some part of their consciences. Drummond follows Thoreau’s idea that majority rule is based more on brute force than on the quality of the concepts or laws being pushed. Neither outright defy the law. Their actions may be highly unorthodox, but everything that they do is perfectly legal. This also fits the criteria for civil disobedience. These characters would likely hold some respect for Thoreau’s theories themselves if they had heard of him. These characters may have objections in regard to his other views on taxes and the nature of the corporate society, but this would mainly be due to a difference in time period as opposed to a conflict in values. Civil disobedience is a concept found in many works about civil unrest, and the core premise remains the same even if the circumstances change.
Family and Culture
Iysis Dasilva
Family is a crucial part of how you’ll turn out in the future. How you connect with your family during development will incessantly affect you. Family Album is a story told by Mikal Gilmore. In the story, he talks about how he grew up with Gary Gilmore. Counterparts is a story written by James Joyce. In the story, it explains how a man copes through a rough day. Both of these stories include children interacting with their families, and neither interaction is good. Both parents in these stories project their anger onto the children. This confuses the children and starts generational trauma. Family initiates the trauma, and culture continues it.
In Counterparts, the father has a bad day at work after getting yelled at and not finishing the work assigned to him. Because of this, he goes to the bar in an attempt to wind down. While at the bar, he had ruined his opportunity to connect with a lady at the bar and lost an arm wrestling contest. This had made him even more angry. When he went home, all the anger that had built up inside of him was waiting to burst; his child heard his dad come home, and he offered food to his dad. However, the dad was angry and projected his anger onto his kid. This had an effect on the child. He had just offered his dad food and gotten beaten for it. In Family Album, Mikal was the youngest child. Growing up, his father loved him but hated all his siblings; the hatred was mutual. He grew up having to choose between the rest of his family or his father. His father had shown him love while his brothers hated him. Therefore, when he kept choosing his dad, his brother grew to hate him even more. “I could tell from the way my brothers were looking at me that they never would forgive me, would never let me into their fraternity” (Gilmore 18). His father may have never abused him, but he grew up to be confused just like the kid in Counterparts. Both of these children will grow up not understanding emotional cues because of how they were treated in their childhoods. However, family isn’t always bad either. Learning how to be there for a child going through development is difficult. You will never get it 100% right. However, this is what makes personalities. If we were all raised perfectly, we would be boring and all the same. If you grew up in a perfect environment, you would go into life expecting a perfect life. That itself is a mistake; humans are meant to make mistakes, but children still shouldn’t be put through things that will alter their mentalities for the worse. However, it raises the question: What is considered “good / bad” trauma? This is why there are debates among communities about whether spanking is traumatic. However, it is difficult to say one thing is wrong. Spanking is a culture for Hispanic/ Latinos if your child is misbehaving.
Culture is an umbrella term. If we are talking about culture passed down through families, when a parent is from a culture where they do not show their emotions, that can affect their family. The partner won’t understand what their partner needs, leading to anger in the relationship. If the child doesn’t see their parents show emotion growing up, they will think it’s abnormal to show emotion. The butterfly effect is very relevant in culture affecting families. However, culture can also be the people who are interacting with the family itself. An example is DCYF or the government in general. DCYF is a tricky topic. They could be helpful for physical abuse, however the children taken from abusive homes aren’t put in a much better place. They’re placed in foster homes, which are notoriously known for being terrible. Many foster families will take in as many children as they can for the monthly benefits. These benefits are supposed to help support the children but are often abused and used on the caretakers’ own desires. Lastly, if we are using culture as a values term, this can also affect children. If you hold your children to high standards with no time to take a break, this can affect them, forcing them to think they constantly have to give 100% of themselves at every minute. Eventually, they will burn out, and some of those people will go out on a manic rampage when being introduced to freedom and responsibility. It doesn’t have to be holding them to the expectation to achieve in life but to hold them to the expectation of doing what you as a parent want. This can be compared to Mikal’s father. Mikal’s dad expected Mikal always to choose him over his family. “My father grabbed me and said that we were leaving and would spend Christmas in a hotel. I did not want to go, and I said so. ‘Don’t you turn against me too’ he said. The look of rage on his face was enough to make me go with him. I was afraid of what he might do to all of us if I stayed” (Gilmore 18). This tore Mikal’s perception of his dad and family into two distinct things. Community can also positively affect children growing up. If you recognize you have unresolved trauma, you can go to therapy and expose yourself to ways to fix this trauma. This is why it’s important to have a healthy community that surrounds you. In Counterparts we don’t know where the mother of the child is. If the mother was present, she could have two roles in the situation. She could also be a victim of the father; this could lead to her being too weak to protect her child. Her position in a community isn’t effective if she is too weak to help herself. If she isn’t present in general, this is also unhelpful to the child’s situation. However, if she comes back, she can be an effective person considered as part of a community. She can help by taking the child away from the abusive home.
Overall, families can start trauma, and culture can fix or continue it. If parents bring their own trauma along into their new family, they will start generational trauma. The butterfly effect will be in effect. If a parent cannot communicate their emotions to their children, their children will not be able to express their emotions growing up and then to their new family. However, the cycle is able to be broken if someone recognizes their behaviors and tries to fix them. Being able to recognize your own patterns might be difficult; this is why it’s important to surround yourself in a good community that will help you. If you’re surrounded in a community with people who do not care for your feelings, you may never notice your behaviors.
Family
Suki Enos
Family can be defined in many ways, often situationally. According to the Webster Dictionary, a family is a “basic unit in society traditionally consisting of two parents rearing their children.” However, family is not limited to just your parents and offspring. In fact, the concept of family seems to grow and change with society. Chosen family is just as important and beneficial to you as a birth family can be, so long as people have the mutual love and support they need to thrive. Overall, family is a loose term that can be interpreted in many different ways.
The way I see it, your family should embrace the people who lift you up, help you when needed, and just support you overall. As newer generations arise, it becomes more widely accepted to choose who you surround yourself with. To this day, I find that I have had better luck with my chosen family. Since I was young, I have always vowed to value my family over everyone. In fact, I still follow this rule. However, my idea of family has changed. As I have gotten older, I have come to realize that my real family is made up of those who have kept me going when I needed it the most.
Family can also have a negative impact on your life, however. Not everyone has the privilege to have a great family growing up. In my experiences, my family by birth has had to learn to accept me as I am. This was a very difficult task for both sides, and it is incredibly draining for everyone who has to go through it. When the people who you consider to be closest to you put you down and try to change you, you can struggle with a sense of identity, stability, and support. A person should be able to grow up taught about love and support the way they need.
Overall, surrounding yourself with a proper family is extremely important and vital to a person’s life. No one should have to deal with things alone, much less have someone to make it worse. In this way, the government tries to step in to make sure a young person’s best interest is in mind when they cannot advocate for themselves. However, the government should make sure to keep in mind the best interest of the child, as well as what they want to do. Family is a great thing, but it can also have a negative impact in your life. Overall, it is important to have a healthy balance in your family in life.
Beloved: Wrestling With the Past to Construct a Future
Lila Boutin
A mother killing her child seems unimaginable. However, an author was moved to convey a story with an unbearable context that questions the clarity of this concept. Beloved, by Toni Morrison, details the horrors of slavery and post-slavery based on a fictional interpretation of an escaped slave’s tragedy. This novel communicates the intricacies surrounding an African American woman who feels compelled to kill her own children — and succeeds in killing one of them — so that they will not be returned to slavery. This mother, Sethe, lives with the only child still present in her life at a house called 124 that is haunted by the mysterious, powerful, and conflicted ghost of Sethe’s dead baby, who seeks the attention that she never received. When this ghost returns in an adult-human form, Sethe and the community around her, including a man who returns from Sethe’s enslaved past named Paul D., must cope with their own internal emotional restoration in addition to their relationships between each other and the ghost, Beloved.
Each of the main characters in this book endures shared trauma that destroys their sense of self-value and worth as humans. Regardless of the actions that the characters have taken, this trauma originates from the system of slavery and the unbearable conditions that were forced upon enslaved people. The destruction that slavery caused on these lives significantly affects all of the characters’ behaviors, personal self-values, relationships, and communities, even after the end of the Civil War. Once the characters are physically free, they are faced with finding their identities as independent humans. They each internally struggle with the concept of self-identity, knowing that while “[f]reeing yourself [is] one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self [is] another” (Morrison 95). In order to withstand their own physical and emotional pain, they also are forced to come to terms with their own methods of survival while accepting the actions of those surrounding them. This method of acceptance challenges the characters with a decision surrounding which events in their past they should acknowledge and which they should leave behind. Morrison illustrates that people who are trying to accept their own trauma and the trauma of others often struggle with wrong turns before actually finding the path that will allow them to move forward. This theme demonstrates that the understanding of one’s own past trauma enables acceptance of others’ pasts in order to make peace with their futures and heal from traumatic events; Morrison uses the characters’ experiences to express the importance of forgiveness and empathy toward oneself and others.
Beloved is a ghost who represents the horrifying effects of slavery that continue to act as a disturbance to the present. Sethe initially believes that bonding with Beloved is what will make her feel whole again. After Beloved returns to her family in a human form, and Sethe realizes that this mysterious girl is her own daughter whom she killed, Sethe becomes fixated on spending all of her time, financial resources, and emotional energy on Beloved (240). This is Sethe’s attempt to compensate for her actions years ago, as well as trying to find forgiveness in herself and Beloved. Sethe thinks that she doesn’t “have to explain” her past because Beloved “understands it all” (183). However, this mindset clearly does not succeed, as Sethe goes on to process all of her memories even more intensely than before (183). She believes that, with Beloved back, she “can look at things again because [Beloved’s] here to see them too”; she now thinks that she will finally be able to “look out the window to see what the sun is doing to the day” (201). However, Beloved sees Sethe’s obsessive care as an opportunity to manipulate Sethe through her emotionally vulnerable state (241-43). Despite Sethe’s beliefs, Beloved does not actually understand her history, and she only processes her memories from her infancy when she experienced abandonment; “Sethe never… even looked her way before running away from her” (242). Beloved’s gain of power and control over Sethe is representative of the difficulty presented in attempting to escape the permanent trauma of past actions. Although Sethe is dangerously weakened by Beloved’s abuse, she still clings to Beloved instinctively, believing that it is her only escape from her past and her memories; this is a crucial example of a character struggling at first to find a path that will truly allow them to heal. Despite this initial struggle, later developments in the story demonstrate that Sethe must understand her own individual worth in order to proceed in her life.
In order for Sethe to reach this realization, however, other characters in the story also have to wrestle with the past in ways that ultimately impact Sethe’s outcome. One of the most telling examples of characters moving on from past trauma occurs during Beloved’s final disappearance (263). Throughout the entire story, the residents of 124 are isolated from the rest of the community due to Sethe’s murderous actions. Ella, a respected member of the community, who is representative of the townsfolk, has the belief that repudiating 124 is the best way for her to exist. In a conversation with Stamp Paid, she considers how she is “unmoved” by anything related to Sethe and how, “[e]xcept for a nod at the carnival, she hadn’t given Sethe the time of day” (185). However, when news spreads that the baby ghost has returned in a real, human body, many members of the community become terrified or outraged (255). Even though these people have shunned Sethe from their community, they understand the threat of the situation, and they see the importance in finding a method of empathy toward Sethe in order to save her. When Ella hears the news of Beloved, she recalls and reprocesses her own past (255). She remembers her traumatic pregnancy from a white man who abused her; when she had given birth, she purposefully had not nursed the baby, which effectively killed her child (258-59). This action has resonance with Sethe’s killing of Beloved, and it allows Ella to put Sethe’s actions into perspective, as compared to her current situation. Ella realizes the significance of her empathy toward Sethe, and it leads her to gather the group of women who aim to rescue Sethe by removing Beloved from Sethe’s life (256).
Throughout the story, Paul D. struggles with the concept of validation as a human being and the concept of who or what makes him a man. When he was enslaved or in jail, he had no independence or opportunity for choice, and he was treated in a brutal, inhumane manner. Even once Paul D. is free, he continues to ruminate over situations that significantly damage his sense of self-worth as a man. In order to own his manhood, he needs to feel confident that he can control his decisions and actions. He questions whether he will ever be able to possess that self-efficacy or whether others who have controlled him always will define his character. It is demoralizing to him that other male slaves similar to him are able to demonstrate such clarity of confidence in their individuality: “That was the wonder of Sixo, and even Halle; it was always clear to Paul D that those two were men, whether Garner said so or not. It troubled him that, concerning his own manhood, he could not satisfy himself on that point” (220). When Beloved controls Paul D.’s thoughts and actions, “place[s him] where she want[s] him, and there [i]s nothing he [i]s able to do about it,” his distress grows even deeper, cementing his notion that he will never have control over his own humanity (126).
When Paul D. learns that Sethe killed her young child, he thinks that he must leave Sethe in order to continue on his own journey of self-discovery (165). The guilt that Paul D. carries from leaving Sethe contributes to the way that he views his value as an individual. Eventually, Paul D. returns to Sethe after Beloved disappears because Sethe makes him feel like a man regardless of his own feelings surrounding his self-value (271). For instance, he remembers when he was put in a neck collar after his Sweet Home escape attempt, and Sethe still “never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame of being collared like a beast” (228, 273). He also contemplates how “[o]nly… Sethe could have left him his manhood like that” (273). Since he realizes that Sethe gives him his manhood, he understands that he needs to give Sethe her womanhood: When he originally had left Sethe, he had told her, “‘You got two feet… not four’” (165). This triggers Sethe’s unbearable memories of being compared to an animal. Back at Sweet Home, Sethe had overheard schoolteacher, the plantation master, teaching his students about the animal characteristics of slaves, and it had shocked her into considering her validity as a human (193). This comment about a person’s humanity becomes significant again when Paul D. and Sethe finally reconcile; Paul D. shows that he now views Sethe as a woman when he reassures her that he is going to “‘[r]ub [her] feet’” instead of count them (272). When Paul D. sees Sethe again, he accepts Sethe’s actions that originally caused him to leave in order to allow both of them to heal and provide each other with a source of human validation (272). When these characters are capable of accepting their past, they are able to gain a sense of peace and move forward.
Meanwhile, Sethe considers whether to let Paul D. back into her life. Despite his similarity to schoolteacher in comparing Sethe to an animal, in addition to the rationale behind his leaving, Sethe is so weak, distraught, and alone that she gradually comprehends Paul D.’s reasoning for returning. She realizes that she needs to completely move on from the past in order to heal. As Paul D. requests to return to 124, however, Sethe first focuses on the emotional anguish that he could inflict on her again. She thinks about the “danger of looking at him” and how he could “walk in a house and make the women cry” (272). However, Sethe feels so exhausted and prepared to give up that she accepts Paul D.’s comforting presence and begins to cry about Beloved leaving her (272). When Sethe states that Beloved was her “best thing,” Paul D. eventually responds by sincerely telling her, “‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are’” (272-73). When Paul D. assures Sethe of this, she is skeptical and confused, but this moment is also the start of Sethe accepting her own past, in what seems like a healthier manner, in order to work toward understanding herself. They both understand that shared trauma forces everyone to act in difficult ways, but it is often necessary to leave the past behind in order to find peace, connections, and support.
Throughout the entire story, these characters experience the process of setting aside their own pasts in order to move forward. They learn that, as human beings, feeling care and connection from other people is a crucial aspect of well-being. This lesson leads them toward empathy and forgiveness, based on their personal experiences, so that both they and the people that they choose to have in their lives can heal. This theme is not only represented in Beloved, but it also can be related to events in the present that portray historical generational trauma in the Black community. Additionally, this theme can be applied more broadly to other past and current traumatic events beyond African American history, such as wars, famine, death, or displacement. In all of these scenarios, people have to reconcile or leave behind their own pasts and the pasts of others so that they can find a way to simply exist in their futures, as impacted and shaped by the past as those futures may be.
A Tapestry of Pain and Perserverence
Deren Sozer
When Black people in America were freed from slavery, most had nothing to their names. Everything they acquired in the years following emancipation was obtained through hard work in a supremely unfair situation. The most valuable thing for these people, who were still being held down in society by racist practices, would have been something spiritual or sentimental. In the play The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, we see a clash between financial need and a preservation of history, emotion and sentiment. The play is set in 1930s Pittsburgh, where several members of a Black family have moved from the south. With them, they brought a piano carved with the faces and events of their family history. It is jointly owned by Berniece and Boy Willie. The piano had belonged to their family’s White masters when they had been slaves and had been carved by their great-grandfather. When their family was freed, the piano remained with the White family, but their father, Boy Charles, stole it and hid it away. For stealing the piano, Boy Charles was killed by a group of White men, but the piano was safely in the hands of his brothers. Berniece and Boy Willie have very different ideas of the value of the piano. For Berniece its value is sentimental, representing memories; for Boy Willie, its value is financial, and he wants to sell the piano and invest the money in some land. Both sides of this argument have merit, but the evidence, circumstances and personal experience lead me to one conclusion. Due to its extensive familial and sentimental value and the circumstances of its acquisition, the piano should not be sold.
Boy Willie wants to sell the piano and use the money to buy land in their home town in Mississippi. Mr. Sutter, the son of Boy Willie’s family’s ex-masters, has died, and his brother says he’s willing to sell it to Boy Willie at a discount because of their families’ shared history. “Sutter’s brother selling th land. He say he gonna sell it to me. That’s why I came up here. I got one part of it. Sell them watermelons and get me another part. Get Bernice to sell that piano and I’ll have a third part” (Wilson 9). To his credit, Boy Willie has identified a very good opportunity. Land is not something that a lot of Black people had at the time. Most would have had to work on White people’s land for very little money, all the while becoming trapped in a cycle of debt. Buying the land could be a very good investment. Property is a great way to build generational wealth. Boy Willie could farm it and make some money that way, and then he or his family could sell it for significantly more and make a great deal of money. Boy Willie wants to do what most Black families at the time would have found impossible; he wants to do for his children what his father and grandfather were unable to do for him: leave something for them to build on. He says, “If my daddy had seen where he could have traded that piano in for some land of his own, it wouldn’t be sitting up here now. He spent his whole life farming on someone else’s land. I ain’t gonna do that. See, he couldn’t do no better. When he come along he ain’t had nothing he could build on. His daddy ain’t had nothing to give him. The only thing my daddy had to give me was that piano” (Wilson 46). If Boy Willie were able to buy the Sutter’s land, there is a possibility that it would make all the difference for his family’s financial situation in the future. He knows that this is his chance to level the playing field and give himself and his family greater opportunity.
The other side of the coin is the intangible value of the piano. Although Berniece is never explicit about why she doesn’t want to sell it, it is clear that the sentimental, familial and emotional value of the piano are among the major reasons for her opposition to Boy Willie’s idea. The piano is an important family artifact for Berniece’s family. Doaker, Boy Charles’s brother and uncle to Berniece and Boy Willie, says of the carving on the piano, “He carved all this. He got a picture of his mama…Mama Esther…and his daddy, Boy Charles. Then he put on the side here all kinds of things. That’s when him and Mama Berniece got married. They called it jumping the broom. That’s how you got married in them days. Then he got here when my daddy was born…and here he got Mama Esther’s funeral…and down here he got Mr. Nolander taking Mama Berniece and my daddy away down to his place in Georgia. He got all kinds of things what happened with our family” (Wilson 44). The carvings on it represent the struggles of slavery but also their perseverance. By depicting joys like weddings when they couldn’t have weddings, the piano can be a source of defiant pride. It holds a great deal of emotion including a lot of pain, but just possessing it might feel like a righteous ending to that part of the story: a small victory after centuries of torment. The biggest reason for Berniece’s tight grasp on the piano, however, is given by Doaker. “Bernice ain’t gonna sell that piano. Cause her daddy died over it” (Wilson 46). Berniece is not willing to give up the piano because she feels that if she does, her father will have died for nothing.
Although Boy Willie has very good reasons for wanting to sell the piano, and although his idea may be the more practical one, I believe that Berniece is right not to want to sell the piano. First of all, while Boy Willie is right that buying that land would open up a whole host of new opportunities, it is very possible that they might never get the chance to take them. Successful, land-owning Black families would have been seen by the White communities in the South as a major threat. My own family was one of these land-owning Black families. My great-great-grandfather inherited a large house and land from a White woman in Georgia and saw great success farming that land with his family. Soon, however, he received threats from the surrounding White community and was forced to modify the house in order to reduce its value. Eventually, he had no other choice but to flee Georgia for fear of being lynched. It’s quite possible and even likely that Boy Willie would receive similar treatment. Such a thing would cause the investment to be a total loss. Boy Willie also says that had his father been in his position, he would have sold the piano in order to buy the land. I do not agree with this assessment. This is based on what Doaker tells us about Boy Charles before he steals the piano from the Sutters. He says, “Boy Charles used to talk about that piano all the time. He never could get it out of his mind. Two or three months go by and he be talking about it again. He be talking about taking it out of Sutter’s house. Say it was the story of our whole family and as long as Sutter had it…he had us. Say we was still in slavery” (Wilson 45). With this in mind, I believe that the sentimental and familial value of the piano meant a lot to Boy Charles. I don’t think that he would want the piano, which was in his words “the story of the family,” to leave the family. As someone whose family puts a great emphasis on our history and the stories of all our Black ancestors, I have an understanding of what such artifacts can mean. I think that the intangible value of the piano must not be understated. It is similar in nature to a family tree or a quilt passed down from generation to generation. It is the physical portrayal of the family, its history and its will to keep going: a tapestry of pain and perseverance
Gamergate and the Mainstreaming of Alt-Right Culture
Caleb Goodman
In 2013, independent game developer Zoë Quinn released their first major video game, Depression Quest, to positive reviews. The game detailed Zoe’s experiences with depression in an unorthodox way, ditching game industry standards to tell their story in a more impactful way. On August 15, 2014, Zoë Quinn’s ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni posted his first draft of what he dubs “The Zoe Post” to the websites Something Awful and Penny Arcade, subsequently getting him banned. The post is a 9,000 word diatribe against Zoë Quinn, claiming they cheated on him multiple times during their relationship. After its removal, Gjoni quickly reposted it an edited version to 4-chan, this time calling for a mass harassment campaign against Zoë Quinn in order to “Drive her off the internet.” The post quickly gained steam online, with Eron Gjoni being invited to an alt-right group chat called Burgers and Fries, and many 4-Chan users mobilizing to Twitter to send harassment at Zoë. What followed was a multi-year harassment campaign that would come to define the tactics used by modern conservatives as a whole.
With the barest amount of research, it is easy to find evidence that every claim in the Zoë Post is false. However, to 4-Chan harassers, this fact was largely unimportant. With their main demographic being white, heterosexual, conservative men, the earliest harassers had an immediate vitriolic response to Zoë Quinn’s existence. Quinn represents everything that the Alt-Right hates: anyone who isn’t a cis het white male. This, of course, caused the post to spread like wildfire on 4-Chan, as the anger was quick to infect anyone on the platform. To these early adopters of the movement, they knew that the harassment campaign was exactly what it was: a xenophobic crusade. However, 4-Chan users knew that the larger public would quickly condemn an out-and-out harassment campaign and by extension die nearly instantly, so they did what any good politician does when they want to push a bigoted platform: they create a euphemism. Here is where the great lie of Gamergate began.
When modern politicians want to say they are afraid of Mexican people, they don’t say that out loud: instead they create a euphemism and say that they’re worried about immigration and border issues. This makes it much easier for voters to get on board with their platform because they’re not racist: they’re just economically conscious. The earliest harassers latched onto this ideology, and in order to appeal to the public chose ethics in games journalism as their euphemism. They championed Zoë’s supposed trade of sex for a good review as the greatest breach of conduct in the past century and used it to justify the mass harassment campaigns.
To get their movement off the ground, 4-Channers landed on the term Gamergate as a name. Much like the movement itself, the term is entirely meaningless: an amalgamation of buzzwords created to evoke one of the most heinous scandals of the past 50 years. By being meaningless, the term became enormously eye-catching. #Gamergate stood out on a page by novelty alone.
This revealed Gamergate’s main goal: recruitment. Ultimately, Gamergate targeted people who didn’t necessarily consider themselves political but still fit the bill of cis het white male gamers. Gaming is hugely dominated by this very specific single demographic and has been ever since games companies began marketing to boys back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. To see someone like Zoë Quinn entering the games space was terrifying to these people. When a person is confronted with the desegregation of a community, there are two main reactions they have. The first is to accept it and reconcile with how they may have had a role in the previous segregation of the community and improve. The second, and much more common, is backlash. The anger this backlash caused is a powerful motivator, and Gamergaters knew this. By targeting these people who felt threatened by the presence of non-white men in the games space, Gamergate was many people’s first real introduction to any kind of politics.
The irony of this is that Gamergate claimed to be an apolitical movement. To Gamergaters, white is seen as an absence of race, and male is seen as an absence of gender. To them, these are the defaults. By claiming that game companies were “putting politics where it doesn’t belong,” by having a black or female character in a game, they strengthened their hold on people who considered themselves apolitical. Throughout the movement, the designation of things being political or apolitical became a weapon to wield against their own members. To members of the Alt-Right, anything apolitical is anything about which everyone agrees. For example, “Hitler is good,” would be an apolitical statement because everyone can agree that that statement is false. So when someone makes an off-color Hitler joke painting him in a positive light, to object is to inject politics into your personal life: the cardinal sin of the alt-right. However, “Feminism is good” is a deeply political statement, because not everyone can agree on it. In this way, the Alt-Right is able to carefully prune their own members into spouting the rhetoric they want them to.
On August 22, Gamergate held a contest to decide a mascot. They chose a character called Vivan James, a woman in a purple and green sweatshirt holding a game controller. To the uninitiated, Vivian appears harmless, however her design creates an in-group/out-group dynamic emblematic of the whole movement. Years earlier, an image posted to 4-Chan of the He-Man character Skeletor raping the main character of the show, He-Man, gained huge popularity. It gained so much traction that any image containing the colors green or purple, Skeletor’s color scheme, was coded as a visual rape joke. Vivian James, much like the hundreds of other images containing purple and green posted to 4-Chan, was no exception. Gamergaters hid their ultimate goal, harassment of women, entirely out in the open.
Vivian also served as a kind of shield for the movement. The campaign was happening under a woman’s aegis, so how could it be sexist? In reality, she represents the campaign perfectly. Vivian James is the only woman Gamergaters would allow into the gaming space. She is a facsimile of a real woman: infinitely silent and subservient and entirely fine with making jokes about rape.
Ultimately, Gamergate serves as a gold standard for garnering support for Alt-Right claims: so much so that their tactics became a part of the mainstream conservative movement. Much in the same way Gamergate settled on the meaningless term of Gamergate, modern conservatives use “wokeness” and “the war on whiteness” as a way to gain attention. Once they have that attention, they send you down the rabbit hole, much like Gamergate. After the massive success of Gamergate, Conservatives began applying the techniques to other demographics. Contemporary conspiracy theorists like Q cater to an older, more financially wealthy audience. At the end of the day, neither Q nor Gamergate stand for anything: the end goal is always to indoctrinate, and usually, that process ends in some form of Nazi-inspired antisemitism. By now, the tools of the alt-right have become so well-crafted that a tiny minority of people control a huge majority of the discourse.
Works Cited
“Gamergate.” RationalWiki, rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#.22The_Zoe_Post.22_and_.23BurgersAndFries.
Stuart, Keith. “Gamergate: The Community Is Eating Itself but There Should Be Room for All.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Sept. 2014, www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/03/gamergate-corruption-games-anita-sarkeesian-zoe-quinn.
Gjoni, Eron. “Thezoepost.” WordPress, 12 Sept. 2014, thezoepost.wordpress.com/.
“Timeline of Gamergate.” RationalWiki, rationalwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Gamergate.
Roy, Precious. “Vivian James.” Know Your Meme, Know Your Meme, 23 Jan. 2023, knowyourmeme.com/memes/vivian-james.
Scientific Method
Energy and the Roller Coaster: Modeling the Speed of a Marble
Lila Boutin
Introduction
The purpose of this experiment is to model the relationship between potential energy, translational kinetic energy, and rotational kinetic energy to predict the speed of a marble along different positions on a roller coaster track. For reference throughout this experiment, it is necessary to understand the definitions of potential energy, translational kinetic energy, and rotational kinetic energy. Potential energy is the energy that an object holds that is not actively being used to do work; potential energy is dependent on the position of the object in relation to other objects. The equation for potential energy is PE=mgΔh. Kinetic energy is the energy that an object possesses due to its motion. Translational kinetic energy refers to the energy that an object’s center of mass possesses due to its motion in one direction. The equation for translational kinetic energy is KEtrans=12mv2. Rotational kinetic energy refers to the energy that an object possesses/has due to its rotational motion, involving situations in which the object is rotating around itself. The equation for rotational kinetic energy is KErot=12Iw2 where I equals rotational inertia and w equals angular velocity. This relationship can also be defined in terms of mass and velocity as KErot=12(25mr2)(vr)2. Another purpose of this experiment is to display the conservation of energy through the relationships between these types of energy in objects; in a scenario where gravity is the only force doing work, all potential energy can be converted to kinetic energy.
It is expected that the speed of the ball will increase when rolling down the slopes of the roller coaster and decrease when rolling up the slopes of the roller coaster, due to the force of gravity. It is predicted that the experimental data will slightly differ from the mathematically estimated data. It is also predicted that the updated predicted speed that represents both rotational kinetic energy and translational kinetic energy will be closer to the measured speed than the predicted speed that accounts only for translational kinetic energy.
Procedure
In order to perform the experiment, it was necessary for the stand and the roller coaster to be assembled. The roller coaster was attached to the stand at the fifth hole from the bottom of the stand at a height of 0.37 meters, and the stand and track were tested to ensure that they were both level with the floor. A steel marble was released to roll along the track and land in the stopper at the end of the track. Test runs were conducted before recording data in order to ensure that the marble was rolling smoothly.
A photogate was placed near the beginning of the roller coaster to measure the time that it took the marble, with a diameter of 1.9 centimeters, to pass through the light beam as it rolled through the device on the track. The photogate was plugged into the input A plug of the timer machine in interval mode. When screwing the photogate tightly and securely to the roller coaster track, it also was ensured that the photogate was flat against the bottom of the track so that the light beam of the photogate would cross the center of the marble and the calculated experimental speed would be as accurate as possible. When the ball broke the beam, the timer would begin to count until the marble left the beam, and the photogate would record the length of this time. The photogate was placed at 12 different distances along the roller coaster. For each one of these 12 trials for each of the photogate distances, the ball was released, starting from a position against the peg and rolling to land in the stopper at the end of the track. The time of the ball passing through the photogate was recorded in order to calculate the speed. The distance where the photogate was placed was also recorded by looking at the measurements, in centimeters, already written and provided along the track. Finally, the height of the photogate was measured with a ruler from the floor to the beam of the photogate at the center of the marble. The speed, the height, and the distance for the photogate were recorded for each of the 12 position trials.
Results
Table 1: Data with original predicted speed
| Position (m) | Height (m) | Predicted Speed (m/s) | Time from Photogate (s) | Measured Speed (m/s) |
| 0.03 | 0.37 | 0.0708 | 0.2683615819 | |
| 0.15 | 0.3 | 1.171921499 | 0.0189 | 1.005291005 |
| 0.23 | 0.26 | 1.469081346 | 0.0139 | 1.366906475 |
| 0.33 | 0.19 | 1.879255172 | 0.0114 | 1.666666667 |
| 0.44 | 0.16 | 2.029827579 | 0.0112 | 1.696428571 |
| 0.53 | 0.185 | 1.905177157 | 0.012 | 1.583333333 |
| 0.6 | 0.23 | 1.657347278 | 0.014 | 1.357142857 |
| 0.83 | 0.32 | 0.9904544412 | 0.0357 | 0.5322128852 |
| 0.95 | 0.285 | 1.291394595 | 0.0198 | 0.9595959596 |
| 1.05 | 0.22 | 1.715517415 | 0.0132 | 1.439393939 |
| 1.15 | 0.15 | 2.077594763 | 0.0107 | 1.775700935 |
| 1.3 | 0.11 | 2.258583627 | 0.0106 | 1.79245283 |
Table 1 displays the positions, heights, and times from the photogate measured during the procedure. This table also shows the predicted speed that was calculated by deriving an equation from the potential energy and translational kinetic energy equations. It also contains the experimentally measured speed in meters per second, calculated by dividing the diameter of the ball, 0.019 meters, by the time from each photogate.
Table 2: Data with updated predicted speed
| Position (m) | Height (m) | Predicted Speed Updated (m/s) | Time from Photogate (s) | Measured Speed (m/s) |
| 0.03 | 0.37 | 0.0708 | 0.2683615819 | |
| 0.15 | 0.3 | 0.9904544412 | 0.0189 | 1.005291005 |
| 0.23 | 0.26 | 1.24160035 | 0.0139 | 1.366906475 |
| 0.33 | 0.19 | 1.588260504 | 0.0114 | 1.666666667 |
| 0.44 | 0.16 | 1.715517415 | 0.0112 | 1.696428571 |
| 0.53 | 0.185 | 1.61016858 | 0.012 | 1.583333333 |
| 0.6 | 0.23 | 1.400714104 | 0.014 | 1.357142857 |
| 0.83 | 0.32 | 0.8370867851 | 0.0357 | 0.5322128852 |
| 0.95 | 0.285 | 1.091427636 | 0.0198 | 0.9595959596 |
| 1.05 | 0.22 | 1.449876842 | 0.0132 | 1.439393939 |
| 1.15 | 0.15 | 1.755888054 | 0.0107 | 1.775700935 |
| 1.3 | 0.11 | 1.908851562 | 0.0106 | 1.79245283 |
Table 2 also displays the positions, heights, and times from the photogate measured during the procedure. This table also shows the updated predicted speed that was calculated by deriving an equation from the potential and kinetic energy equations with an intention of presenting a more accurate result. It also contains the experimentally measured speed in meters per second, calculated by dividing the diameter of the ball, 0.019 meters, by the time from each photogate.
Discussion
The objective of finding this data was to model the relationship between potential energy, translational kinetic energy, and rotational kinetic energy to predict the speed of the marble along various places of the roller coaster track. In order to further analyze this data, two graphs were created.
Graph 1
Graph 1 compares the predicted speed, calculated using a derived equation (explained below), on the x-axis, and the measured speed, calculated using the equation detailed in the results segment. The predicted speed was calculated by deriving an equation from the potential energy and translational kinetic energy equations. This derivation uses the principle that the potential energy and translational kinetic energy are equal to each other, due to the assumption that all of the potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy due to the movement of the marble, thereby making them equivalent; therefore, the equations for these two types of energy can be set equal to each other to solve for the velocity component, which represents the predicted speed. This equation is 12mv2=mgΔh. To solve for v, both sides of the equation are divided by m and 12, resulting in the equation v2=2gΔh. The square root of both sides of the equation is taken, resulting in a new equation of v=2gΔh.
Once this data is graphed, the slope of the trendline from the data points can be found: the closer to 1 that the slope is, the more accurately the equation models the experiment. The slope of the line representing the comparison between the measured speed and original predicted speed was 0.949.
Graph 2
Graph 2 compares the updated predicted speed, calculated using a derived equation, on the x-axis, and the measured speed, calculated using the equation detailed in the results segment. The updated predicted speed was calculated by using an equation derived from the potential energy, translational kinetic energy, and rotational kinetic energy equations. With the intention of creating a more accurate model with a slope that is closer to 1 than the model using the original predicted speed, the sum of the rotational kinetic energy and the translational kinetic energy were set equal to the potential energy using the equation 12mv2+12(25mr2)vr2=mgΔh. Accounting for both the translational and rotational kinetic energy should present a more accurate model to represent the motion and energy of the marble. This derivation uses a similar principle as that used to create the original predicted speed: the potential energy is equal to the sum of rotational kinetic energy and the translational kinetic energy, due to the concept that all of the potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy due to the movement of the marble, while the ball is both traveling in the x-direction and rotating around its center, thereby making the potential and kinetic energies equivalent; therefore, the equation for these types of energy can be set equal to each other to solve for the velocity component, which represents the predicted speed. The result of this equation being solved for velocity is v=107gΔh.
When the updated predicted speed is calculated and graphed on the x-axis, and the measured speed is graphed on the y-axis, the slope of the trendline was found to be 1.12. This is a surprising result, given that the updated predicted speed is intended to model the conservation of energy in the experiment more accurately. However, this analysis unexpectedly shows that there is a difference of 0.051 from a slope of 1 in Graph 1, which is a relatively smaller difference from a slope of 1, and the difference from a slope of 1 in Graph 2, the graph intended and expected to present a more accurate result, is 0.12, a relatively greater difference from a slope of 1. To quantify these differences, Graph 1 has a percent difference from a slope of 1 of 5.23345%, and Graph 2 has a percent difference from a slope of 1 of 11.3208%, as shown in Table 3.
Table 3
| Difference from Slope of 1 in Graph 1 | Difference from Slope of 1 in Graph 2 | |
| Absolute Difference | 0.051 | 0.12 |
| Percent Difference (%) | 5.23345 | 11.3208 |
This experiment did not result as expected, in spite of the relatively linear data, shown by an R2 value of 0.927, which is close to 1. This unexpected result may represent human error in the experimental process with the measured speed. This result does not prove the original hypothesis or purpose of this experiment, and further experimental data and mathematical calculations would need to be conducted in order to do so.
Conclusion
The purpose of this experiment was to model the relationship between potential energy, translational kinetic energy, and rotational kinetic energy in order to predict the speed of a marble along various positions along a roller coaster track. Although it was expected that the updated model that accounted for translational and rotational kinetic energy, rather than just translational kinetic energy, would be more accurate with a slope closer to 1, this did not prove to be true in this experiment. The slope of the graph displaying the original predicted speed and the measured speed was 0.949, and the slope of the graph displaying the updated predicted speed and the measured speed was 1.12; the difference between these two numbers is 0.171.
Fictions
Symphony
Sienna Smyth
As I lay in my bathtub fully clothed, I start to become hyper aware of everything around me. I start to notice the baby blue chatoyant bathtub I am laying in. I notice how frigid my fingers start to feel as they trace the outlines of the bathtub’s cool edge. I then start to become hyper-aware of how I am feeling. I soon realize I don’t feel much of anything. I stare into the blue glossy shower that soon slowly blurs into a dark abyss almost mirroring my mental state. I start to hear the beating in my chest increasing with each breathe I draw. I start to fear I had not been breathing at all at one point because of how fast my heart is racing. My teeth started to hit each other up and down while my lips vibrated in sync with the motion. My hands started to follow lead by twitching as almost to let something out. My whole body started to beat with my heart at the same tempo. I learned that if my heart went fast enough, my body will start to mimic it.
My whole body fell into almost a musical symphony: all parts of my body working as an instrument to deliver breath taking music. The type of music I refer to left me begging to make it stop. The hairs on my skin start to rise in preparation for the final measure. My throat started to burn and become tighter. My brain started to wander to the what ifs of the entirety of the universe’s inner workings. This led to the feeling of my body completely and utterly leaving myself. My body stayed in its panicked state as my mind floated to an unknown place.
My mind starts screeching until it convinces my physical body to follow lead. My body starts failing as if to let out the unknowingness and utter fear my mind could never comprehend but tries to. I start to work up enough sense of reality to allow my body to turn the knob on the shower. This was an attempt to shock my physical body that would eventually awaken my brain back to its usual state. As the freezing water touched my skin, my mind and body became one.
I didn’t realize I had been crying until the saltiness touched my tongue. My ears start to ring until I heard a voice coming from downstairs. That voice brought me back to some sense of reality. It belonged to one of my parents or maybe both of their voices, it all blended into a sense of familiarity. My mind was daring my body to go back into the state I had just started decreasing out of. I forced myself with some power I didn’t know I had to keep listening to that voice. Despite my memory starting to fog and my brain whispering that the voice is completely anonymous, I remind myself who the blending of voices belongs to. I start to decipher them. My mom, my dad, my sister, possibly my brother: I force myself to play fond memories of these seemingly unknown people in my mind. I attempt to remind myself of my name, where I live, what day it is, and eventually who I am.
This leads to the very end of the musical symphony: the release of the long breath in. I started to sob utterly and uncontrollably. This time I knew I was crying. Flashes of my life and what I would like my life to be come at a fast pace. I start coming back to myself. I start to question whether my life will always be this way. I question whether I will ever be able to go one day without making the painful music. The aftermath was always the saddest part. The realization of what the mind and body are capable of hits me. I cry as if to release everything my body was trying to get rid of in the climax. I am left with a terrifying thought. When will this happen again?
Delicate Wash: a screenplay
Saylor Skidds
EXT: CATHOLIC CHURCH- JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT
We open on a small, somewhat dilapidated Catholic church surrounded by overgrown hedges. The stained glass windows are dark, but a smaller window underneath one of them is partially open for ventilation. Wind rattles at a set of wind chimes by the sacristy entrance. The windows of the priest’s apartment above the church are the only ones lit up. We push forward into the chapel itself.
INT- CATHOLIC CHURCH- CHOIR LOFT- JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT
The choir loft is small and dingy. It is rarely used, and the supplements in the pews have not been replaced for several years. Everything in it is coated in a layer of inch-thick dust. A stained white sheet is messily draped over one pew close to the railing. It begins to twitch, and a form rises inside of it, drifting down the aisle. It’s TRAVIS on his way to group.
TRAVIS
(To himself)
Time for group. It’s gonna take so long to get to the high school.
TRAVIS pauses by the stairs on the way to the main chapel area. He stares at a newspaper the custodian must have left behind the last time he was up here. There is a headline towards the bottom of the front page about a girl throwing herself in front of traffic.
TRAVIS
Huh. I wonder if she’ll show up at some point.
TRAVIS drifts down the stairs and towards the open window. He hops up onto one of the pews and slides through. He lands outside next to one of the unkempt bushes and his hem is coated in mulch.
TRAVIS
Dammit.
TRAVIS brushes off the dirt and makes his way over to the parking lot. He keeps out of sight of the priest’s lit up window and makes it to the empty road. The street lights are encased in plastic cones so the light shines directly onto the ground. TRAVIS steps carefully around each of the yellow circles and rides the breeze further down the sidewalk.
FRONT DOOR OF LAUNDROMAT
TRAVIS stands in front of an old laundromat. The paint on the sign is peeling, and the windows and glass-plated door are streaked with dirt. TRAVIS brushes some gravel off of his sheet and looks expectantly at the front door. The front door opens slowly, and the bell strung up inside does not ring. TRINITY slides out, her sheet almost completely flattened against the brick. Once she slides out of the door frame, TRINITY uprights herself and adjusts a small barrette clipped into a hole in the top of her sheet. The fake stones on the end form the shape of a poinsettia flower.
TRINITY
Hi, Travis.
TRAVIS
Hey.
They keep walking and round the corner. The gravel road that leads to the abandoned school comes into view.
TRINITY
I hear Danny got some new detergent. For the sheets. I heard it’s honeysuckle this time. Or maybe he’s gotten that weird pumpkin spice one from last year?
TRAVIS
Any scent would be better than the sandalwood he brought to the last meeting. I don’t even have an actual nose, and I still can’t erase the smell.
TRINITY
(Nodding, bobbing the top half of her sheet up and down)
That made me gag. It was almost as bad as that bubblegum one he got on special in March.
TRAVIS nods. They begin to climb the dirt road, passing by an oak tree that had been hit by lightning. When they get to the parking lot, there is a small orange placard put up over what was once a parking sign. TRINITY goes over to read it.
TRAVIS
What’s it say?
TRINITY
You’ll never guess what. They’re finally doing it. I can’t believe they’ve waited so long.
TRAVIS
Doing what?
TRINITY
The school is going to be torn down! Can you believe it? It blows my mind that it took this long. The new school was built, like, seven years ago? We’ve only started meeting here since Valentine’s, but it’s been around for ages.
TRAVIS
That’s crazy.
They pick a window on the first floor that has almost no glass left and drop into what must have been the old art room. The door is off its hinges, so they keep walking.
TRINITY
I guess that’s what we’ll be talking about in the group today. It’s probably the most pressing. I wonder what the suggestions will be for the next location.
TRAVIS
Mm.
They continue down the stairs. They pause and float briefly over the section that had caved in from wear and tear. They take one more left at the bottom of the stairwell and enter the school band’s storage area, where the rest of the group is. NICK had put up a few ghost stickers on the door and on a few of the cabinets. There are five ghost kids in the group other than them. SUMMER, age 13, is sitting right inside the bell of a tuba. NORA and James, each 15, are sitting close together in an open music case that was made for a trombone. LIZZIE, age 14, is by the small folding table where DANNY has set up 2 yellow bottles of detergent with pictures of honeysuckle flowers printed around the caps. NICK, the facilitator, sits at a chair towards the middle of the room. TRAVIS sits, lost in thought and jumps at a loud interjection from LIZZIE.
LIZZIE
All I’m saying is that I’ve been around the longest. I think that based on group seniority I should be able to claim more of the detergent supply.
DANNY
I’m sorry, Liz, I don’t know what to tell you.
DANNY pulls out 8 small plastic bottles and starts pouring portions of the viscous liquid into each. He has safety pinned part of a Buccaneers bandana to the middle of his sheet to resemble a jersey.
DANNY
I get two bottles a week. If I steal any more, people will start to get suspicious. With this number, each person can get a quarter of a bottle. And I think that’s plenty.
LIZZIE
That’s SO not fair.
DANNY
Then get your own bottle.
DANNY finishes pouring the detergent out and starts passing around the bottles.
NICK
Now that Travis and Trinity are here, let’s begin.
JAMES
What’s going on with the sign out front? Do you know when the building is going to be torn down?
NICK
That’s mainly what I wanted to talk about. In a little over a week, this school is going to be torn down. I’d like to find a new location so we can leave before there are construction workers and contractors in here all the time. Does anyone have an idea of where we could meet? I have a proposal that I think could work, but I’d love to hear if you have any ideas of your own.
SUMMER
What about the laundromat Trinity haunts? Is that still in business? I’ve never seen anyone go in there.
TRINITY
It’s still technically in business. It’s just more of a dry-cleaner with very few customers who go. But it closes pretty late, and there’s an apartment above it. We’d have to go very early in the morning and be extremely quiet. So probably not the best place.
NICK
It’s a good suggestion, though. Does anyone else have a place to go?
NORA
How about the hayloft in the barn by Travis’s church? It never seems used.
LIZZIE
That’s too small And way too uncomfortable. Even though it has a 600 thread count, my sheet is getting old-
DANNY
(quietly)
Here we go.
LIZZIE
(snapping)
Hey! As I was saying, my sheet is much older than all of yours and is now worn very thin. Hay is very prickly and uncomfortable to stand or sit on, even for living people. And for me, the slightest tear could ruin everything.
SUMMER
Why not just get a new sheet? One that isn’t sateen?
LIZZIE
What reason do I have to get one that isn’t sateen?
SUMMER
Whatever.
Summer adjusts her own little trinket, a hair bow she attached to her sheet with duct tape.
NICK
(hastily, trying to mediate)
Okay, sounds like the barn would be a bit too much. Anyone else? I only want to meet in a location we all agree on and are comfortable with.
LIZZIE
(loudly)
MY idea is to meet in the cemetery, in the mausoleum with the Virgin Mary painting on the door. I’ve been over there a bunch. I have a paper clip, and I can pick the lock and everything. I liked meeting in the cemetery, even though we were in the shed. We’re ghosts. It’s what we should do!
TRAVIS
(quickly and loudly)
No.
NICK
(concerned)
Why not?
TRAVIS does not typically voice any strong preferences.
TRAVIS
My grandfather’s ashes are in the mausoleum. I don’t feel comfortable violating that.
His tone is guarded. He isn’t telling the full truth. He starts to speak slowly, backtracking to cover what his original concern was.
NICK
That’s fine; of course we won’t make you do that. Does anyone else have any ideas?
The room is completely silent.
NICK
Well, then, I want to know what you all think. I’ve been studying the area, and I think a good location for our next few meetings would be in the church you haunt, Travis.
Everyone turns to look at TRAVIS.
TRAVIS
Wait, what?
Rehobothers
After most of a third trimester spent reading James Joyce’s Dubliners, complaining about Rehoboth and trying to get Taylor Swift tickets, the Rehoboth Mafia decided to combine the first two interests into their own short stories in the style of Joyce. These are their stories.
Abby Gilliatt
Like most kids in Rehoboth, Bryce rode the bus to school every day. It was supposed to pick him up at precisely 7:10 every morning, but it was always running late, rushing to pick up kids and deliver them before school started at 8. The air outside that morning was cool: Autumn weather started to overtake what was once a scorching summer. The bus came for Bryce at 7:16, and the noise onboard was loud enough to be heard outside the yellow exterior. Bryce welcomed the noise, greeting familiar friends as he walked to the same seat he always sat in. The conversations were the same as most mornings: complaints about homework, gossip about relationships, and the particular brand of off-color jokes that only middle schoolers are capable of. The jokes were Bryce’s favorite part of his long trip to school.
Bryce sat smiling and laughing when he looked around the bus. His eyes glazed over the white faces and white interior before landing on someone sitting toward the back of the bus. He recognized the girl; how could he not? Ellie- he drew a blank on her last name. She had moved to Rehoboth only last year, and in all that time, she had seemingly made no friends. He looked closely at her frowning face and wondered aloud what her issue was.
“Come on Ellie, we’re just joking.”
“And nothing about what you’re saying is funny; why should I laugh?”
He didn’t even know why he tried getting her to understand: people like her just had no sense of humor. Bryce kept his eye on Ellie as she turned back toward the window. Her long brown hair was tied in a braid that went all the way down her back. She was doing her history homework, something that Bryce himself had forgotten to do. He didn’t understand why, but something about her intrigued him. She was just so different.
His first few classes of the day were easy. He sat with his friends and talked through the teachers’ boring lectures. Bryce didn’t understand the kids who paid attention; none of what he was learning in middle school was going to matter in the real world anyway. His parents had always made it clear to him that the academics he was taught in school were useless and sometimes even incorrect. None of his first classes were with Ellie, a fact he was grateful for. He didn’t know if he would be able to keep his wandering eyes off of her.
Lunch couldn’t come quickly enough. Unfortunately, it was still too early in the school year for open seating, so Bryce was stuck sitting with a couple of kids from homeroom. Luckily, one of those kids was Aiden, Bryce’s long-time best friend. Unluckily, one of those kids was also Ellie. Fortunately, Bryce spent most of lunch joking with Aiden about anything and everything. He barely had time to eat between fits of laughter. He caught Ellie frowning at them more than once, but she never said anything. Right before lunch ended, Aiden turned to Ellie:
“You know, I have a couple questions about you: I thought all of your people died of disease when America was built; how come you’re still around?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“And another thing, I thought people like you wore feathers in your hair; where are yours?”
Ellie looked annoyed; Bryce almost felt bad for her. He understood why no one wanted to hang out with her. She wasn’t even trying to see the humor in Aiden’s words. She was too busy being offended to get the joke.
“Next time you’re in history, you should try actually paying attention for a change; maybe then you’ll learn the answers to your idiotic questions.”
The speakers buzzed, announcing the end of lunch and the return to the boring classes and even more boring teachers.
Bryce’s last class of the day was American History. He usually stuck to his routine of barely paying attention and asking for notes from other people later. However, Ellie’s words from lunch stuck with him. He opened his book to the chapter they were on: the British colonization of the Americas. Today’s lesson was specifically on the Northeast coast of North America. Bryce read about the Native Americans: their traditions, their culture, and their way of life. Then Bryce read about what happened to all of that after the early settlers came. He felt sick looking at the paintings of the colonizers and seeing himself staring back.
Potted Plants
Ada Sobota-Walden
The very nice CNA was saying something about bowel movements. Lori caught that much in her haze of lists before her mind wandered again like Natalie, who’d gotten out again and of course she’d be meowing at the window the moment she got hungry, but they needed to pick up more cat food and would Mark remember to do that at the same time as the grocery run?
Groceries: was milk on the list? Last week we had too much milk, but now James decided he likes cereal after all so —focus, goddamn it, Lori! Bowel movements. Right. They were probably bad in some way, if Mari-something was talking about them. No news is good news, after all. Was her name Mariella? Marian? Marinette? No, definitely not Marinette. Christ, she really had to cut back on Sylvie’s screen time.
“Ms. Campbell?” Mari-Something-The-CNA’s voice finally pierced through thoughts of that goddamned insect-girl in Paris. Lori glanced down at her Your Mom Is Dying But At Least You’re Organized About It notebook (a grudgingly accepted recommendation from Dr. Ryan). That day’s page was shamefully empty of notes. She leaned forward to prop up her chin with her hand and pulled the notebook closer, hoping that a strategically placed elbow would cover her deep negligence and daughterly failings.
“Ms. Campbell, do you think we might be able to convince Grace to come for a walk around the garden? Even five minutes of movement might help, ah, get things moving.” Maribelle’s —yes, that’s her name— kind brown eyes flickered over to the end of the hall before meeting Lori’s.
“Right,” Lori said faintly. “More walking.”
Grace Caruso’s garden was only a garden in the sense that it had plants of several shapes and sizes arranged in a group. Lori privately thought that indoor collections of potted plants and actual gardens were somewhat different. (Well, privately in the privacy of Kathy-From-Book-Club’s intimidatingly nice bay window that was designated for wine-ing, as Kathy called it). But you have to pick your battles, Lori internally sighed—her inner voice sounded like a broken record— and the criteria for a garden would be a spectacularly stupid battle to ruin her relationship with her dying mother over.
It’s just basic interpersonal effectiveness, Lori sternly told herself. The phrase sounded stale and phony. A Bachelors in Psych and a two decade mostly-winning streak in marital negotiations were hardly enough to justify playing therapist, even with herself.
Pursing her lips, Lori glanced at the door to the room that contained Grace. It was probably —fine, it was absolutely— time for Maribelle to return to her life and her firefighter boyfriend and her new dog who wouldn’t complain about having Antonio’s for dinner again, because “I mean I like pizza, but remember when I threw up after eating all that ice cream at Carter’s birthday? Maybe it’s kinda like that?”
Lori sighed and stood up, flipping her notebook to the calendar page. Maribelle took the signal and stood too, gracefully pushing in her chair and gathering her things.
“All right, Ms. Campbell, I’ll be here tomorrow morning at 7:00?”
“Sounds great,” Lori reflexively smiled and then hoped that it didn’t look too much like the bared teeth of a cornered animal.
With Maribelle gone, it was all quiet. Lori only had to stay until Alexa came for the night. She had a couple —more like never ending— calls to make, and Grace needed to sleep. When had Lori started calling her mother Grace? She tried to imagine Owen or Sylvie calling her anything other than Mom and felt a little sick. And, oh God, she’d forgotten Owen’s teacher’s email about the bake sale for… probably something important and underfunded.
C’mon, Lori, you’re a big girl now. Swallow your pride, and call to ask Kathy if she can cover for you with the 3rd grade bake sale.
She grimaced at the thought of it but got up to go make her call in the garden.
Paralysis
Aubree Miller
The room filled with shadows as the rain pattered against the window pane. The downstairs tv sounded like nothing but a low hum compared to the roaring of thunder, growing continuously louder as the rain poured down harder. The humidity of a Rehoboth Summer had clouded around me as I lay in the fetal position on my bed. Covered in a cold sweat, I had had little sleep that night, having bouts of intense heat and chill. It was about two in the morning by the time I gave in and turned on the lights. The shadows that haunted me pushed to the corners of the room, waiting to return.
I picked up a book beside my bed, returning to the chapters that always made the darkness fade. Pages marred by a Friday’s fidgeting, a Saturday’s coffee, and a Sunday’s tears bring back memories of sorrowful joy. Instantly I’m transported to a world more familiar than my own. The room dissolves around me as I am fully immersed in magic and whimsy, heroism, and loyalty. I’m traveling alongside wizards and knights, fighting for the greater good, protecting those from a greater evil. I spend days and nights with this faraway family, sharing drinks by a campfire and singing together at a bar. No bond is like ours and we can weather any storm. However, despite all we’ve gone through together, I can’t help but keep a deep secret. No valiant hero is afraid of the dark, so neither am I. No brave soldier is scared of his own shadow, so I lie. Even as I can feel something crawling on the back of my neck, I don’t react. This isn’t the first time and certainly won’t be the last. I have never been judged by my fellowship as I would anywhere else. They see me as I am, and I don’t need to cater to their expectations. They are all charmed by my quirks and laugh at my jokes. While I am known for my heroic deeds throughout the kingdom, I can’t help but blush whenever receiving a compliment. I have never had to earn their love, for I have always been accepted. This fellowship is my family, and I shall make it my reality.
My fellow knights notice something is off, as they always do. They want me to confide in them as they do in me, but I can’t bring myself to say anything. Only when my closest companion corners me am I truly forced to answer. Maybe it’s my anxiety, and perhaps it’s all in my head, but as we talk, there it is again: shadows creeping in. Should I warn him? Would he believe me? The conversation ends as we hug, but the shadows grow bigger and his grip grows tighter. I’m suffocating as the darkness encroaches upon us, pulling and tugging at the fabric of pages and fantasy.
Lightning flashes briefly as thunder rolls over my house once more, the lights in my room flickering and turning off. While the sweat has ceased, my heart rate has done nothing but quicken. No one would be home until tomorrow. All alone in my dark humid house, I sit silently, waiting for another strike of lightning or light to flicker. However, in all those minutes of motionless anxiety and cautious listening, nothing happens. Rain continues to fall but the thunder fades. Immersed in the darkness, I put my book down and breathe heavily. Something must be waiting for me. I am no longer the hero who protects but rather the mouse who scurries. In my painful solitude, I lie down and close my eyes. Of all the lives I’ve lived with knights and elves, I can’t seem to return to any of them. My heart feels emptier than my house and heavier than my burdens.
It had only been a few more hours until I woke up again, drenched in sweat. While the sun had risen, the humidity from yesterday still lingered. The year was almost out, but the end managed to feel farther away than it had ever been. Before leaving, I scan my room for any left behind books or papers only for my gaze to land on last night’s reading. As I reach for the book, I stop myself, daring myself to live my own adventure. I start the day as I usually would: alone all the way from the bus to school, staring at the shadows forming in the cracks of the seats. At lunch I take my daring step and sit at a table of children with nameless faces. Still, no matter how hard I try, no words can escape my mouth, and I am left in my solitude as I tune in and out to other conversations:
“I’m literally so lonely, like I swear everyone hates me.”
“That’s not true, everyone loves you.”
“…stopped talking to me, so I think I would know”
There they are again: the shadows. Slithering out from under the tables and chairs as they crawl to me, whispering to me. I keep my head down, hoping to blend in with all the others and pray I don’t stand out. I should have said something to the other children, and maybe then I would have been less noticeable. Wanting to disappear, I reach for my book, only to come to the sad remembrance of leaving it at home. I need to get up and leave before it’s too late. No one can know about my fear of the dark. No one can see the tears as they form at the corners of my eyes.
The Lawn
Caroline Gilliatt
A lazy summer breeze flows through the air: it’s that odd time, oh so frequent during the spring, when the shiny sun peaks out of the drizzly gray clouds and many are given the first taste of the warmth to come. They are given the taste of sunshine and heat. The intoxicating glow of the warm sky brightens the birds and the flowers, finally freed from their winter trap. Even though they know that soon it will be over, and even in spite of the bugs who have just started getting their feet in many of his and his neighbor’s doors. (Once he had joked to his friend Aiden that the exterminators and bugs were clearly in cahoots with how the prices rose just as they started to come out.) It is the time when mothers yell out to their kids to go play outside: “It’s so nice out!” They yell, “You won’t get a chance like this every day, you know!”
Jamie Flynn is lazing about on the couch, half awake watching ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ when he hears his own mother caw the same. He is much older now, taller and bigger than even his father, who once when he was thirteen threatened to cut him down to two feet if he kept on growin’. He wonders snarkily about which friends he’s going to go play with. Many have already left graduation caps tossed into the breeze. He soon will too. He almost chides his mom but refrains; he’s smart enough to know what she really wants.
So instead of replying, “Spring comes every year, Mom,” he peels himself off of the couch and half-heartedly says that he’s going out with Ryan. He wanders outside with car keys in hand and debates where to go.
Cumbies is a safe bet, but then he would have to ask what anyone would want unless he wanted the myriad of, “Why’nt ya get me anything?” He could always go to the soccer field, but then some well-meaning parent might ask whose kid is his. He’s turning the corner when he realizes the answer: Chartley’s. He gets into their faded red Honda, affectionately dubbed “Little Red,” and struggles with the seat belt. The car’s been around for longer than he’s been alive, yet despite the wear and tear, it was still a bit charming to him. The familiarity of the seats was as sweet as the maple trees that dotted his childhood.
He turns and drives the winding back roads and crumbling cement that defined practically every memory he had. It’s a bit of a drive, but he never minded driving.
He finally arrives and parks in one of the maybe spots. The paint lines having either been long worn away or never there in the first place always made parking a bit of a nightmare. He debates going into the Honeydew near it but decides against it. He walks past the various stores that he’s grown accustomed to: only stopping briefly by Portside to double-check that they didn’t need any fish. He walks into the store, lingering just a bit in the entry, as the cold air from the store ran at him.
“Hey!” The familiar voice behind the counter calls out, “Jamie!”
And there is Bryson casually sitting behind the counter, Shit, he inwardly curses, I forgot he was working today. Bryson was the type to drag, in every sense of the word. He would slow every conversation down, he would linger on meaningless subjects, and most annoyingly to Jamie he had the tendency to use yeah after almost every sentence. Jamie quickly grabs the bread and the spicy garlic sauce thing his sister loves.
Bryson remarks casually about it, “They’re building another subvision over there, yeah?”
His brows furrow, “Really? Another one?”
Jamie can’t help but feel the pang of anger, They just keep building those things. He knows why there’s a market for those ugly plastic houses with their shiny styrofoam lawns. People want to put down roots even if it means pulling out the old ones.
Bryson doesn’t care and keeps leisurely scanning his few items,
“Yeah, by the Country Club, Sun something.” He says, scratching his back, “12.36.” He rang up. Jamie reaches into his pockets clumsily, searching his wallet for his card. The black leather wallet, one of the few gifts from his father, felt heavier in his hands. The worn surface, a history etched onto the skin, for some reason feels delicate in his hands. Bryson is still staring at him: his tired permanent eye bags perched on his figure.
“I’m getting it. Just gimmie a sec.”
“Mhm.”
“You said it was by the country club?”
“Yeah, the Sun one in Seekonk.”
“Seekonk.” He grimaces and Bryson laughs,
“You surprised?”
The club isn’t in Seekonk, he thinks bitterly. He grabs his groceries, waving his hand in the air in the vague direction of Bryson.
“Have a good one!”
He walks to the lineless cement, passing a mother trying to cajole her sobbing toddler. He trips on one of the many old cracks that lately seemed to be the size of a ravine. He gets into the old beat up car, tossing the groceries in the back, and sets a course for the Sun Valley Country Club.
That’s entirely too close, he thinks bitterly. Those doll houses shouldn’t be so close to reality.
He arrives at the course, and it is only a minute walk before he knows. He can hear it before he can see it: the grating, ear splitting, screams of the chainsaws. He can smell it too: the disgusting tainted smell of gas. He hurries over even though he already knows. He sees the giant metal box housing the remains. The machinery is clearing and moving and destroying. The air around it is hot and stifling; he feels like he’s being choked by its mere presence.
He can only imagine the people who want this: the beautiful fake people. The people who want white picket fences and manicured lawns. The people who would get mad at him for not mowing his own once a week. The people who would keep sprinklers on during the drought. The people who would rather rip out an unseemly patch then deal with it.
Jamie never found the idea of suburbia appealing, and while he didn’t care for those who wanted it, it was different when they were tearing down his place.
Then he sees her: she sticks out like a sore thumb in a pale yellow floral top and shorts compared to the uniforms of the workers. There is no doubt that she will be one of the residents. He didn’t know exactly what he was thinking when he marched over to her.
He remembers these paths, these stones they carelessly toss to the side. The forest he and his friends would play in: the forest where his ideas could take shape and he could be free. The beauty of the nature around him. He remembers these woods.
He tries at least to keep the friendly appearance and says,
“New to town?”
The woman seems to have been caught off guard by him, and she smiles: “Oh yeah, hopefully by next year!”
She has dirt brown eyes, and her wavy hair is the same. She holds her hand out and has the type of polite smile he’s only seen his mother wear.
He coughs and takes it: “Where’re you from?”
Her hand is sweaty, he realizes. She replies, “Washington, are you from here?”
He subtly wipes his hand and says a little awkwardly, “Yep, why move here?”
He doesn’t know why he’s still talking to her. He doesn’t even know her. Hell, he’s not even going to be here next year.
“Why?” She smartly replies.
“Yeah,” He says, despite knowing the answer, “Why here?”
She’s thoughtful for a moment before delightfully saying in a sort of joyous emotion Jamie can’t place, “The woods, I guess, was the main draw!”
The pine tree, the one Jason broke his leg climbing, thuds to the ground.
For a moment Jamie thinks she may be making fun of him, but she’s so genuine about it. There are no lies in her smile or her eyes when she says it. She’s sincere. And he almost wants to scream.
She talks a bit more, and Jamie barely half listens, only really taking notice when she complains about the state of her future neighbor’s lawn.
“Would it be so hard to mow once in a while!” she jokes, and Jamie’s laugh is hollow.
He leaves after about fifteen minutes, driving back in the summer heat through the old roads.
He drops the groceries on the counter, calling to his mother that he’s back. Before going out to the creaky wooden shed.
The lawnmower is not as buried as he thought it would be.
