Saturday, October 31, 2009

"What kind of evil you got in here?"

How appropriate that we begin our ghost story the weekend of Halloween. But Beloved is not a traditional ghost story, not scary in the manner of Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe horror tales, but scary in untraditional ways. Of the three main characters, only Paul D. reacts with some shock to the otherworldly presence at 124 Bluestone Rd. Sethe and Denver have lived with it too long to be horrified at all. "It's not evil, just sad," says Sethe in reaction to Paul D.'s condemnation. And Denver---her view of the presence is even weirder. Recount the attitudes of these three characters to the ghost's presence in the house as shown in the opening few chapters of Beloved. In your view, what is Morrison's intention in painting us a ghost who, on the one hand, can hurl a little dog across a room and scare two teenage boys out of their own home, but on the other provide company and comfort to a lonely and isolated girl? Scary...or what?

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Romance or Comedy

Shakespeare's 12th Night, as director Charlie Fee declared, presents us with two female heroines unique in their society in that both are cut loose from parental and societal demands and placed in the revolutionary position of choosing their own love interest. Though we see little of their respective courtships, we see enough to make some judgments on these two women and the bases of their choices. Evaluate the love relationships of Orsino and Viola and Olivia and Sebastian/Cesario. For the sake of his comedy, what aspects of each relationship does Shakespeare target satirically? Is the Bard making any universal pronouncements about love and its role in society?

Friday, October 16, 2009

Committed, Body and Soul

Doc Daneeka ministers to the body while Chaplain Tappman ministers to the soul.
Heller opens the novel saying that he “fell in love” with the Chaplain the first time he saw him, establishing at least some figurative connection. Yossarian’s first encounter with Doc Daneeka in the book, though, introduces him and the reader to the ubiquitous Catch 22, that becomes Yossarian’s nemesis, the ultimate trap. Is Heller making some comment through these characters about the relative importance of the body and the soul? Or is there some other reason for their presence in Yossarian’s life at Pianosa? Consider some of the following in writing your blog. Or come up with some questions and answers of your own that you find more intriguing.

--How is each man characterized? Which character is more sympathetic?
--How does Yossarian relate to each of these men? How do they relate to him?
--What happens to each of these men in the course of the novel?
--What other characters seem sympathetic to these two men? Who do the Doctor and Chaplain particularly befriend and why?

What, if anything, is Heller saying about the body and the soul through the depiction of these characters?

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Yossarian: Slacker or moral hero?

What follows is one of the first paragraphs of an essay I wrote several years ago about Catch 22. I'd like you to respond to my take on Yossarian as a moral hero in the world of this novel. At this point in your reading do you empathize or sympathize with his plight or not? And why?


Catch 22 is a bitterly funny book set during the end of World War II about an unlikely American moral hero, John Yossarian. Heller signals the throw-back status of the moral hero Yossarian represents by making him an Assyrian, survivor of a dead civilization. The book's time-altering structure and use of absurdist writing techniques further disorients the audience, forcing us to empathize with Yossarian who himself feels alienated and threatened in an irrational world. On the surface Yossarian seems initially concerned with physical survival and understanding of his world only insofar as understanding will enable him to survive the war. The evolving of the story, however, which does follow a psychological if not chronological sequence, shows Yossarian to be one of the "good guys" in that he respects life, cares for his friends, and harbors a deep-seated moral outrage at the injustices he witnesses in this irrational world. To find this moral core, Yossarian and the reader must examine and discard traditional guides of value. Nationalism, patriotism, romantic love, free enterprise, personal identity and individuality, even literature and language all become twisted or lost in the monolithic whirling void of the material world, symbolically shown in the motif of the vicious circle that echoes throughout the novel. Yossarian must not merely survive the circle, he must find a moral center and survival will follow.