"Poor Grendel!" the lonely hypocrite

          John Gardner opens Grendel with an image of an old ram minding his own business and staring intently into the distance. Grendel characterizes this ram as “stupidly triumphant” (5), in the way that it ignores Grendel completely. Hating this treatment, Grendel stomps and yells and even throws large rocks at the ram, but it doesn’t budge. This irritates Grendel to no end, because it’s tells the story of his sad life: being either ignored or feared by all creatures. The ram’s apathy represents the detachment Grendel feels from the world and all the creatures that inhabit it. When Grendel asks bold questions about his existence, he is met by the unresponsiveness of the sky, which “ignores [Grendel], forever unimpressed” (6). Like the ram, the sky symbolizes all the forces that isolate Grendel; in turn, he is tormented by the futility of a purposeless, lonely, and charge-less life.

          The dispassion Grendel encounters in the natural world contributes to his view that life is unnecessarily harsh. He views animals as stupidly simple in their joyful repetition of tasks, such as mating and growing, year after year. However, Grendel’s criticism of the mechanical actions of the “brainless budding trees, these brattling birds” (6) around him are juxtaposed with his own, repetitive deeds of murder. Whenever he kills a Dane at the mead hall, the action is mindless, just like the mating of rams or the growing of grass. Grendel is aware that he is trying to fool himself “with thoughts that I am more noble” (6). Anguished, conflicted, and confused, Grendel searches for meaning in a world that he wants to both abandon and enter.

          Of course, Grendel isn’t entirely alone: he has his mother. Although she is described as miserable and lethargic, Grendel’s mom might actually be in better shape than Grendel, in the way that she refuses to dwell on the “dusty mechanical bits of her miserable life’s curse” (11). But, seeing as Grendel’s mom is entirely incommunicable, she cannot properly articulate to her young son the occasional necessity of apathy. Frustrated by extreme loneliness, Grendel assumes the archetype of a crazy old man who yells at unassuming pigeons in the park.

Despite his frequent outbursts directed at the sky, Grendel is very aware that what he feels may not be genuine anger. For example, Grendel says, “I toy with shouting some tidbit more – some terrifying, unthinkable threat, some blackly fuliginous riddling hex – but my heart’s not it” (10). Grendel fakes powerful emotions in an effort to feel something, anything; he would rather feel flares of artificial rage than acknowledge that he numb of all feeling. In fact, a slight tweaking of the Lumineers’ song “Stubborn Love” matches Grendel's scenario rather well:

It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of life’s indifference

Now, George Willard employs a very similar concept in “An Awakening” (what is a blog post without a connection to Winesburg, Ohio?). Like Grendel, George is also an adolescent male who has trouble deciphering his personal role – or lack thereof – in the grand scheme of existence. Ceaselessly racking his own brain for answers, George walks the streets at night and shouts “words without meaning, rolling them over his tongue and saying them because they were brave words, full of meaning” (An Awakening, 155). Similarly, Grendel tries to prove to himself that he is capable of having emotion by screaming angry, impassioned words to the skies. Exaggerating his emotions is Grendel’s way of affirming that he is a sentient being. In this sense, Grendel tries to be more human, despite the fact that he outwardly ridicules the lunacy of human emotions. 

Fish scare me, but so does growing old and ugly

Mirror

by Silvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Fish are fast – much quicker and smoother swimmers than humans, who power through water with calculated strokes and breaths. Ubiquitously, they bullet past us, around us, and underneath us; the sea is their terrain, and fish know exactly how to navigate its waters. Humans, on the other hand, do not. Wading hip-deep in unclear water, I feel alarmed, taunted, and teased, when a fish brushes against my unsuspecting leg. It’s as if the creature’s saying, ‘I know you can’t see me from up there, that you’re basically blind. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and leave?’ By comparing a woman’s fear of senility to a “terrible fish”, Sylvia Plath delivers maximum impact at the end of her poem. Like the alien fish whose unblinking eyes inch closer and closer to my paranoid body, the concept of growing old and ugly is an unwelcome, nagging, and utterly irrational fear for many women.

Now, I’d bet money that ‘fear’ and ‘apprehension’ are AP exam-worthy ‘tone’ words for this timeless poem; although it was written fifty years ago, “Mirror” continues to be relevant to our glossy, airbrushed world. Told from the honest perspective of a mirror, the piece pinpoints the crippling insecurities of girl- and womanhood. “Unmisted by love or dislike”, the frank reflection of the mirror agonizes the woman who stares so intently at it. Through the mirror, she might see a wrinkle, a gray hair, a pimple, a frown line – all of which fade away in the presence of “those liars, the candles or the moon.” The lights cast by the moon and candles symbolize romance as much as they do deception. The woman knows this. No matter how many times lovers and friends tell her she is beautiful, she assumes that they do not know enough about her, the ‘true’ her. Their compliments are as ill-defined as candlelight is on her features and as fickle as promises made by ‘lovers’ under the moon.

In an effort to differentiate the real from the sugar-coated, the woman trusts only the mirror that is “silver and exact....not cruel, only truthful.” But no matter how truthful the mirror is, it cannot speak to the woman. If we really wanted to be technical, we’d see that nothing would be beautiful or ugly, black or white, right or wrong, good or bad, trite or fresh, in a view that is 100% 'true' . Everything would just be. A view that has zero preconceptions does not hold an opinion of any kind; therefore, a reflected image only means something – anything – if someone's there to interpret it. The irony of the poem is that the woman turns to the mirror for an unbiased perspective, only to batter it with her own, critical judgment. She seeks validation from a mirror that holds no opinions, thereby setting herself up to be disappointed, time and time again, by her own preconceived notions of herself. 

Art isn't a privilege; it's a necessity.

As a female, I’ve always prided myself in having an interest in Science. I feel like there isn’t enough support for girls who want to pursue careers in math/science/technology, and I want to be part of the change that is this generation (I never said this blog post wouldn’t be cheesy. Take this as a warning). But even though I dream of being an oncological researcher one day, I can’t ignore the fact that my interests in the arts also define me. For years, I’ve been slightly embarrassed by my love for reading and writing and music, because I felt like it was just too stereotypical girl. It fit the gender roles I loathed far too well: little boys play with trucks, little girls tend to ‘crying’ baby dolls; teenage boys learn to solve the world’s problems, teenage girls write poems about their feelings; grown-up boys hold a briefcase, grown-up girls hold Windex. I detested the prospect of seeming less intelligent than a male, because I would rather read a book than solve a Calculus problem.

In recent months I’ve realized the utter idiocy of this insecurity. All my life, I’ve been told that scientific and mathematical knowledge are the avenues to actually making a tangible difference in this world. From the invention of the light bulb, the steam engine, the telephone, who can argue that careers in numbers change the world? But, I felt like I was missing some integral part of the equation. Does the development of civilization depend only on mechanical calculations, or do the softer sides of our brains play an equal role?

These questions had lingered in the recesses of my mind for years, but did not come to fruition until I heard Professor Cook-Gailloud deliver a presentation dealing with the processing of language and learning at Johns Hopkins University. She began her presentation with eight simple words: “Art is not a privilege; it’s a necessity.” She explained how the spread of language fostered communication and a sense of community among disparate people thousands of years ago, and how it continues to do so. Many evolutionary biologists, even, hold the view that a high level of communication between Homo sapiens led to the extraordinary development of cognitive intelligence that distinguishes our species from all others in the animal kingdom. Before humans had invented the wheel, men and women were producing cave paintings in an effort to understand the natural world that they belonged to; before the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution, people were singing and telling stories around fires, spiritually linking themselves to each other through the art produced by their own voices. The point I’m trying to make out of all this is that art precedes mechanics. If humans cannot sit and think and make sense of the world we live in – as our ancestors once did – our sense of purpose will cease to exist.

My encounter with Professor Cook-Gailloud helped me understand the vital importance of Literature as a means for expression; instead of being ashamed of my fascination with the arts, I’ve come to truly embrace it. I realize that Science and Language have similar aims: to make sense of the world. While Physics achieves this purpose through means of formulas to explain concrete occurrences, Language describes both the abstract and the tangible through words and ideas.

Suicide's Note by Langston Hughes

I’ve read my fair share of suicide literature, trust me, I have. Of course, such a statement is generally bound to raise suspicion…but I don’t think my fascination with people who are about to jump off the ledge has anything to do with a personal desire to do the same. On the contrary, I simply find it interesting to see how suicidal speakers are portrayed by their writers. Very rarely does the speaker actually seem crazy (at least, not as far as I can tell). In Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why, Hannah Baker – the girl who leaves behind a set of audio tapes for the 13 people who pushed her to commit suicide – arranges her death in a way that would make many wedding planners proud. Hannah thinks so far ahead as to record herself speaking for hours on end, so that these 13 little lovelies will know exactly what prompted her decision to die. She is practical, she is calculated, she is even a little bit robotic.

Now, Ellen Hopkins’ Impulse takes a very different approach. The poetic novel concerns three teenagers whose lives intersect in a psychiatric hospital after each of them attempt suicide. By keeping each attempter alive to explain what pushed him/her to the brink of self-destruction, Hopkins gives a very human angle to suicide. Told from three different perspectives (all in a first-person point of view), Impulse is far more introspective than 13 Reasons Why is. The narrators in Impulse are paradoxically compassionate in their attempts to leave the world – and all its inhabitants – forever.

While flipping through my Perrine's textbook, a poem by the name of "Suicide's Note" stuck out to me. By simply judging the work by its title, I assumed the speaker’s tone would be on one or the other end of the spectrum: calculated and robotic (like Hannah’s in 13 Reasons Why) or heartfelt and emotional (like the trio’s in Impulse). What I found in Langston Hughes’ poem defied either expectation.  

     The calm, 

     Cool face of the river

     Asked me for a kiss. 

By asking the speaker for a kiss, the river is personified as the speaker’s lover. To an extent, this comparison is eerily appropriate. As her lover (let’s assume the speaker is a woman, for simplicity’s sake), the river is requesting the woman to jump into its depths and spend the rest of her life there. Just like two newlyweds - who plan to live the rest of their days together, to die in each other’s company – the girl makes a promise to the river.

Although one would assume that a reference to a lover (inanimate or not) would make the poem more personal, it actually makes the speaker seem less tied to reality. Like Hannah Baker, the speaker in Hughes’ poem sees life differently after whatever experiences have prompted her to kill herself. The personification of the river as the woman’s lover implies that the woman cannot find love or comfort or any form of desire in the real world. The suffocation beneath the “calm, cool face of the river” is the only solace the speaker can find, and it is an apathetic escape from the frenzied emotions of the real world.

What took me by surprise, more than anything else, was how tiny the poem is. In twelve words, the poem sums up the message that takes Hopkins and Asher hundreds of pages to get across: suicide is a hot, complicated mess.

Let's start a book club

I read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five a few weeks ago and fell in love with the rhythmic clarity of its sentences and the understated cynicism of its author. However, the more time I spend in AP Lit, discussing the significance of the boundless themes and motifs in Winesburg, Ohio, I can't shake the feeling that I haven't sufficiently wrapped my mind around Slaughterhouse. 

Similar to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Slaughterhouse Five consists of fragmented stories. But, instead of being about the many people and faces in a small town, all of Slaughterhouse's stories revolve around the clear protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Although there are many phrases that repeat in different contexts of the novel, one in particular caught my attention: "blue and ivory." These three words are used to describe disparate situations in Billy's life. A middle aged Billy's bare feet are "ivory and blue" as he sits at the ancient type writer in his house. About twenty years earlier, a younger Billy notices the "blue and ivory claw" of a hand that clings to the vent in his miserable boxcar that travels to a German prisoner of war center. Soonafter, the feet of the dead hobo who had sat by Billy in the boxcar are described as "blue and ivory."

By repeating this phrase, among others - such as "mustard gas and roses" and "nestled like spoons" -, Vonnegut intertwines the fragmented stories in holistic, albeit anachronistic, way. There is no doubt that each story is connected to the other, and I really wish we had read Slaughterhouse Five in class so that we could discuss all the ways Billy's experiences specifically fit together.

Taking AP Lit has made me appreciate the principles of open discussion more than I ever thought I would. I've been a bookworm since I preschool, but I always regarded reading as a solitary activity. In elementary school, I never saw the purpose of the regimented reading groups we were sorted into that served to enhance our reading and verbal skills. In middle school, reading groups ceased to exist as teachers tried to instill in us the principle of taking responsibility for our work and reading outside of class. Even in AP Lang last year, class discussions seemed superficial and pervasive to my understanding of the work. It wasn't until out recent discussions of Winesburg, Ohio this year in AP Lit that I truly realized how amazing open dialogue can be in a room full of insightful people who have all read the same work. Talking about "Strength of God" - a story in Winesburg, Ohio that I had paid very little mind to the first time I read it - completely changed my perspective about discussing books. By seeping in the diverse perspectives of my classmates, I developed a take on the story that completely differed from my original, significantly shallower interpretation.
Doing so gave me a better view of the individual story, and a more complete understanding of Winesburg, Ohio, Modernism, and Literature as a whole.

The grotesque pursuit of perfection

My voice teacher tells me  that I think too much when I sing.

Of course, this isn't really anything new to me; the people who know me best have no problem identifying my slight case of OCD. At the age of six, I was first labeled a perfectionist by my loving and well-intentioned TAG teacher, Ms. Neal. At a parent-teacher night, Ms. Neal actually told my mom, "Trisha is so bright, but she spends all of her time trying to make her work perfect." And it's true. I've lived most of my life by a perfectionist's philosophy. Whether it's writing a blog or penning an article, writing is one of the more excruciating tasks I am faced with. I loathe the Scattered Writer's cycle of type-erase-type-erase, but I find myself falling into it unashamedly the majority of the time. I find writing to be daunting, because I know that what I produce will not only be subject to the scrutiny of others, but also to the more critical scrutiny of myself.

I'm starting to realize, though, that being obsessed with personal satisfaction and perfection is actually making for lower quality work.

"Just sing," my voice teacher says. "You already know the pitches, the rhythm, the words. If you stop thinking about what you already know how to do, you'll actually sound better. You'll be more expressive." Of course, these words apply to more than just singing. The purpose of writing isn't to state things perfectly - it's to make a point. Writing is an opportunity to be your own person by communicating the perspective that only you exactly have.

After reading Winesburg, Ohio, I'm beginning to realize how crucial the art of communication is. In "The Book of the Grotesque", grotesques are identified as people who dedicate themselves to a particular philosophy, or philosophies, and shut out the rest of the world because of it. As the old man in the story recounts, "it was the truths that made the people grotesques...the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood" (17).

Now, the idea of embracing a new truth or ideal is not a bad one. It is each character's inability to communicate these truths with others, though, which pushes him or her into a state of chronic decay that is characteristic of the Grotesque lifestyle. Characters such as Wing Biddlebaum, Dr. Reefy, and Elizabeth Willard torment themselves by suppressing their own thoughts. Dr. Reefy puts all of his thoughts on paper, but allows them to crumble into small, round, paper pills in his pocket. Wing hides his hands - which used to be his chief source of communication before he was accused of molestation and banished from his hometown -, thus eliminating his primary means for expression. Elizabeth Willard rots away in her own home for the majority of her life, unhappy in her marriage, but unwilling to express these thoughts in any way, shape, or form.

To cut to the chase, I don't want to be a grotesque, or anything that resembles a grotesque too closely. My ability to put concrete thoughts on a page or expressive melodies into the air should not be obstructed by a silly fear of imperfection. When one word sounds dissonant in a line of many words, I'll morph my sentence to make that dissonance fit. When one note in a song doesn't quite fit the mood, I'll alter the mood of the next few measures to make for a more interesting piece.