Are We All Cursed?

Titles are important to any analysis of a literary work. They give the readers clues about symbols, character, or theme. At the end of his short story, “The Curse,” Dubus states “The curse moved into his back and spread down and up his spine, into his stomach and legs and arms and shoulders until he quivered with it. He wished he were alone so he could kneel to receive it.” In your opinion, what is the “curse” Mitchell receives? Post your ideas here.

BONUS POST:

You all seemed to like discussing these pieces so much I added an extra Severance post.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6363905

Listen to the October 2006 interview with Robert Olen Butler about his novel, Severance. What insider information did you glean from the interview? How does listening to the author’s reading of the piece help you imagine the final moments of the Dragon slain by St. George? There are also five more readings on the same web page, including the author’s own imagined “severance”. Post your thoughts on the contemplation of the incomprehensible – death.

“Six Pieces of Severance” from the magazine Glimmer Train

Reflect on Jacob Russel’s blog commenting on reading Severance by Robert Olen Butler.

“I was a young man, hardly more than an adolescent, when I first reflected on a curious inconsistency in the ways I thought about death. On the one hand, stated as a fact, an item of knowledge, that we are all going to die, myself included; how was it possible that I could state this fact--given the existential enormity of the subject----alone or in company...with complete indifference? Why should this idea have so little affective resonance? We have no knowledge of death, no experiential knowledge, I told myself. In that light, there was no reason that an idea, absent of content--a mere word, in effect, should make one anxious. What then, I had to ask, was I to make of those brief moments of absolute terror: waking at night to an absence, a black hole that seemed to have replaced the world, and was, perhaps, it's true reality?” http://jacobrussellsbarkingdog.blogspot.com/2008/01/review-robert-olen-butler-severance.html

Can you explain Russel’s “indifference” to the idea of death? How does Butler help us gain knowledge of something which “we have no knowledge of”? What are your thoughts, reflections, curiosities on the idea of death?

Taboo

Taboo: unacceptable or improper for society, to exclude from practice. There are many types of taboos. Taboos about death. Taboos about sex. Taboos about rebelling about against authority. Even taboos about taboos.

Petronius’ anecdote of the “Widow of Ephesus” (Chapters 110-112) in his longer novel The Satyricon attempts to prove the frailty of women through a series of outrageous events which accost the taboos of virtuous Romans. The widow metamorphosizes from a virtuous creature wailing at her recently deceased husband’s tomb (spiritual), into a lustful creature of carnal appetites (hedonist), and finally into a savior whose present desires outweigh those of social propriety (realist). Petronius’ intent was to humorously show lower class Roman society, and satirize their fickle nature toward more serious subjects.



Having read and discussed the anecdote, what are your thoughts on taboos? Does society need them? How do taboos about the dead help society? What insights about Roman culture can we glean from this surviving novel, only one of two complete novels of the time period?

Life's Little Ironies

Maupassant was a meticulous writer who wrote mostly about the common everyday experiences of people. His talent was in creating a “real” world on the page and addressing problems which arose in the common course of daily life. His stories often compared social classes, a common theme for writers of his time. They juxtaposed the lives of bureaucrats with those of the peasant classes to show the complexity of social life in Paris in the mid to late nineteenth century.

Because he focused on social juxtaposition of the classes, most of Maupassant’s short stories are laden with ironies. These ironies are often the direct result of a fatal flaw, as in “The Necklace” we see Mrs. Loisel affected by her desire to appear more respectable which is a direct result of her vanity. This short story is littered with judgments about women: their role in society and the expectations placed upon them both socially, morally, and personally. Find some examples in the text where Maupassant is passing judgment on women. Look for examples from all the female characters. Then choose one you feel strongly about and comment on how that judgment functions in the text. Is it an example of a common everyday experience? Is it a common social convention of the time? Does it reinforce the irony? Would Maupassant’s view be accepted in today’s world?

Paranoia and the Body

Bob Bolin, in his piece from Skirting the Interface: Surface Anxiety and Gender in Cyberpunk, uses Gibson’s Burning Chrome as a vehicle to describe the overwhelming detachment of humanity in the information society. He successfully defines gender roles as presented by Gibson as being “self-referential” or “a cultural construct validated (only) by the events of the story” and contrasts that newly evolving cultural idea with the old world of “corporeal existence.”

So, what he is saying is that our reality is no longer defined by our bodies. Our use of machines to communicate through time and over longer distances changes our perceptions of reality and therefore our perceptions of self. The computer world is becoming more visceral and lively than our everyday life. And, we no longer need a physical body to exist in this world dominated by information. This destruction of the self is seen by many as obscene. How can we exist without bodies? We begin to question our “selves” and this heightens our ever increasing sense of paranoia about our ability to control our surroundings.

Bolin asks “does this flood of the obscene (in stories like Burning Chrome) terrify because of its proximity, or is it the suggestion that since man cannot figure himself in his culture, and cannot keep himself separate from what has been previously proscribed, he can no longer find a comfortable place in his culture?” Are our current customs and cultures then obsolete because they are based on “meat” rather than “information”? Can humanity exist without corporeal existence?

Practicing VOICE LESSONS

Read Karen Bernardo's commentary on Updike's "A & P" at this site: http://www.storybites.com/updikeaandp2.htm .

Notice how she interweaves the voice lessons of detail, diction, tone, and imagery into a single essay. Her examples connect Updike's stylistic choices to what she sees as his theme, "a contrast of worldviews: the conservative...against the free-spirited."

Post some examples of where you see Bernardo using the "voice lessons." What does she do successfully? Where do you disagree with her assumptions or evidence? What can you learn from her style writing to use in your own?