The Hero that exposes himself to the White Heat

For Emily Dickinson to be a poet is to have a social obligation. The obligation to rebel against what others demand us to do. Very similarly, Hemingway also believed that being a writer was a moral obligation, more specifically he had a commitment with telling the truth. What’s more, Hemingway wrote The sun also Rises in a style that tended to avoid ornaments, and over descriptions. He wanted to unsettle the reader.

Similarly, Dickinson through her style full of elisions, ambiguity also tried to challenge and unsettle the reader encouraging him to react and find out what was going on .

In one of the poems written by Dickinson, specifically the one regarding white heat, she tries to express that passion is a dangerous and a perilous thing. If you get too close to the ''heat '', you can get burned. So, she invites the reader asking him if he/ she dares... if he / she has the guts to confront intensity.

This idea is very similar to the one presented by Hemingway. As we know, in the Hemingway world there are two types of people, those who are true aficionados, heroes with a code or those who are tourists.

So, in a way, Hemingway also points out that in life being a hero with a code implies, resisting stubbornly, defending your values, learning how to extract them from your experiences, defend your principles to the end and feel true passion for what you do and never give up. Even if that passion implies suffering. So, when Dickinson invites the audience to confront intensity she is also asking the reader if she or he is brave enough to be under Hemingway vision a ''true hero'', a heroe that dares to ''confront intensity'', to give up illusions, false and banal things in life.

In the same token, Dickinson in her poems highlights that the heat may leave scars and may cause pain and hurt if you get closer. Essentially, she is telling us that things in life might leave scars and dissatisfaction. Even reading her poems implies effort and pain, but you get the truth, and truth sometimes may hurt.

Only trough hardships we get closer to our own soul, and our strength arises from the need to resist to the true fir, very similar to Hemingway's vision. Only trough suffering and pain we get to be heroes, never giving up and always resisting stubbornly.

References

Dickinson, E. (1986). The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press.

Rovit, E. H., & Brenner, G. (1963). Ernest Hemingway (Vol. 41). Twayne Publishers.

Schneemann's 'Interior Scroll': playing with the concepts of body, beauty, gender and sex.

Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist who dared to show herself completely naked in 1975 to communicate a message.

Schneemann's 'Interior Scroll'.

Prior to my reaction to Schneemann's Interior Scroll, I would like to provide some context in the words of Elizabeth Manchester (2003):

'This print is one of several works documenting a performance Schneemann made at Women Here and Now, an exhibition of paintings accompanied by a series of performances, in East Hampton, New York in August 1975. In front of an audience comprising mainly women artists, Schneemann approached a long table under two dimmed spotlights dressed and carrying two sheets. She undressed, wrapped herself in a sheet and climbed on the table. After telling the audience she would read from her book, Cezanne, She Was A Great Painter (published 1976), she dropped the sheet, retaining an apron, and applied strokes of dark paint on her face and body. Holding the book in one hand, she then read from it while adopting a series of ‘life model “action poses”’ (Schneemann in More Than Meat Joy, p.235). She then removed the apron and slowly drew a narrow scroll of paper from her vagina, reading aloud from it.' 

Not only does Schneemann show her entire body but she also performs and reads in a vibrant way in front of the impressed audience. In this context, Schneemann gives art and reading a whole new sense: she wants to show human body as a beautiful painting, a sexy sculpture, a thriving tree, a love song and a holy prayer. Once again, postmodernist artists are deconstructing and re-creating the concepts of body, beauty, gender and sex.

In her book 'More Than Meat Joy' (1979), Schneemann explained why she chose her vagina as the source of the text she read during the exhibition:

'I thought of the vagina in many ways – physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the source of sacred knowledge, ecstacy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model:

enlivened by its passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiralled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual powers. This source of ‘interior knowledge’ would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh ... the source of conceptualising, of interacting with materials, of imagining the world and composing its images.'

'More Than Meat Joy' (1979).

What I find amazing about Schneemann is the fact that she ignores taboos while she

tells the world that the body itself can be another art piece. Furthermore, she is encouraging people to re-discover human bodies in order to find beauty in oneself and perfection in one's own imperfection.

It is also worth-mentioning that the vagina is not just a sexual object but a door to new life (creation).

All in all, I believe that artists like Schneemann have helped to expand the global artistic spectrum.

References:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schneemann-interior-scroll-p13282/text-summary

http://museum.cornell.edu/collections/view/interior-scroll.html

The Holocaust.

For some reason, I'm not keen on reading books or watching movies related to the World War II, specially the ones about the Holocaust. They give me weird feelings. I remember the very first book I read related to that and it was "The Diary of Anne Frank", however, as I was very young - I was ten or eleven years old - I

wasn't aware of how terrible the story was, even though at that time I knew that it was based on real facts. I suppose that I wasn't very mature to understand something like that, though. Then, when I was in highschool and had to study the World War II for my history class I couldn't help feeling sick about all the atrocities that happened at that time. Although I really enjoyed studying history, I just couldn't enjoy that topic. Since then I've been avoiding watching or reading things related to that. However, a couple of years ago I watched "The Boy in he Stripped Pijamas" and my old feelings appeared again.

Nevertheless, I dared myself to read Maus, even though I always avoid anything related to the Holocaust, mainly because never have I read a graphic novel before, and also because this story was told in a very different way, so I decided to give it a chance. The first thing that caught my attention was the fact the characters of the story are animals, but not any animals. There were mice, cats, pigs, etc. and they all represented a certain group of people. However, I'm still trying to come up with an idea of why the author decided to do that. In addition, I couldn't get why such a tragic story was portrayed in that way, using drawings, because at first I thought that this book was meant for children. But it wasn't

. Another interesting thing that caught my attention is the way Vladek tells his story to his son Art and the fact that he burned his wife's diaries that contained her experiences during the Holocaust. It seems to me that, as his wife died years ago, he didn't want his wife's story and perspective to be told, who knows why. But it certainly makes a difference in the relationship between Vladek and his son.

I would say that reading Maus gave me a more real perspective of what happened in the War, even though half of the story was based on drawings, which I think is kind of weird because most of the movies related to the Holocaust have characters that are portrayed by real people and most of the stories I have read are written in first person. But there is something about Maus that makes this story something different. What do you think? What makes Maus different from the other ways used to tell these kind of stories?

Maus, realistic examples and metaphores

Since I haven’t finished reading the comic, I would like to comment what has caught my attention about it so far.

First of all, there are many movies, books and documentaries which have tried to make us imagine how horrible the Nazi holocaust was, and I have to admit, that it was hard for me to connect a comic with this deplorable episode of history.

There are two aspects which I would like to emphasize about this master piece, which are how it relates the story of the holocaust and how its characters are represented using animals as a metaphor.

In this comic, Art Spiegelman narrates how terrible was the holocaust providing us with details which were provided by his father, who is a survivor of Auschwitz. It is interesting how he makes us to understand how awful and devastating this time in history was with clear and realistic examples of events, without sanguinary and sadistic details. I think it Art was really smart, since I personally believe that bloody details would make us morbid readers, losing the real sense of the story.

Also, what caught my attention was that I have seen different movies and documentaries related to the Nazi holocaust and also I read a book related to the atrocities of Auschwitz and none of them use metaphors as the comic does. The use of animals which represent the different character gives the novel and special and catching touch.

As a final comment, I have to admit that I have never read a comic before, since I prefer books than comics. However, I have enjoyed reading this comic and I would totally recommend it since it provides historical facts with a special taste. 

Jews as mice

Mice are seen as plague everywhere, and obviously no one wants to take care of them frightened of getting one of their infections. Besides, mice come from the streets, from the underground, and sort of interrupt with the normal development of life... Can you imagine how terrible would be to compare mice with people? Well, it happened.

This comparison did happen during the Holocaust, when Nazis had the idea of a superior human race, in which Jews did not fit in and were almost eliminated through horrific crimes and genocide.

The German word “Maus” in the title of this comic means “Mouse”, what’s more these two words sound quite similar. This similarity has the intention of making the reader relate these two words, and make a comparison between Jews and mice, being both a plague.

In this way, Spiegelman wants to show how certain human beings were diminished during that time, at the point of being seen as a pest, and therefore killed and tortured. Nevertheless, what happens here is that the “plague” and the people lose: one becomes a victim and the other become murderers.

So, after all and after have read the comic the question that comes to mind is: “Were Jews really the plague during that time?” If we take into account what really happened and what Nazis were trying to find (a pure human race), the mice were not exactly the Jews...

Maus and Animal farm

When I was reading Maus I could not avoid to think that this book is a
contemporay version of Animal Farm. Both writers used animals as a methaphor
to talk about the totaliarism. But, what these animals represent?
The animals' characters in Maus represent different races and nationalities.
For instance, the Jews are represented by mices. Thus,they are a projection of
pests or vermin as less than humans since the point of view of Germans.
On the other hand, the "arios" are represented by cats.Aninal predadors that are always
trying to catch the vulnerable and inoffensive mice.
The dogs are American, who save the Jewish mice from German cats.

The French are frogs, and the Gypsies are moths. The Poles are pigs,
 which does not seem as random when we consider that the Nazis sometimes referred to the Poles as pigs.

But again, Maus plays off the racial stereotypes, and even stereotypical 

thinking in general, by indicating where the allegory falls apart. The mice are not universally good, nor are the pigs universally good or bad. Mice can pass for other animals by wearing pig masks or cat masks. 

The allegory falls apart at times when the animal-humans deal with actual animals, as when Art’s Jewish

 therapist has pet cats , or when Art and Françoise have to use bug spray to get rid of bugs

 when they are vacationing in the Catskills, a reference to Zyklon-B, the pesticide gas used 

to kill prisoners in concentration camps.

Post modernism and Ghost World:

Literature has many characteristics depending on what trend, style or type is focusing on, but conflicts are the element that can never be missed when talking about literature. As we already learned during this semester, Modernism deals with Inner Crisis as one of its most important conflicts, placing humanity between a rock and a hard place about life, beliefs, traditions, change, evolution, identity and the influence of external factors like industrialism, war, religion, among others, representing all that features in different works.

But, what about Postmodernism? What relation can be made between postmodernism and Ghost World? As you can see in the picture, post modernism makes the human being deal with reality: Enid and Rebbeca have to put up with their reality and face it, they have to deal with adulthood, responsibilities, studies, changes in lifestyle; Postmodernism refers that although change is not bad, it is a must to overcome it, and that is basically what we as readers see the girls doing. Furthermore, adolescent’s way of viewing problems as well as changes is more chaotic and frightening, Enid and Rebecca are perceiving that their world changes too fast that moments that can be utterly absurd for readers can be quite important for them, as for example the pair of pants on the street that has been there for God knows how much time or the Ghost World slogan in many different places of the city because all this moments give them a sense of continuity, peace and stability (not everything has changed). Contrary to that, when the author of those graffiti shows up, this “inner stability” disappears; even when Enid prepares a garage sell and she seems no care about it, when she is back she is glad of her “teddy bear” is still there, keeping her childhood memories.

After reading the graphic novels and doing a long research, common techniques of Postmodernism can be identified in Ghost World, as for example Irony, Playfulness and black humor: those characteristics are the essential part of Enid, who most of the time is the one who plays mean jokes, highlights bad qualities of men and people in general, etc. Referring to the graphic novel, its fragmentation attempts the reader complete the rest of the story before and after each sequence of events/chapter; it is only shown what the girls can see and live that form part of their reality.

The lack of narration in the novel makes that images and dialogues transform in the only vehicle to give meaning and context to the story, leaving to character’s development and reader interpretation, reading images and looking at words. This can be related to Reader-response Criticism that places the reader with an active role during the reading in order to give meaning to the missing parts of the story. 

Do you think you can identify with Enid and Rebecca' life? Did you have so many problems when facing adulthood?