Revenge of the Sith

In class we have been studying John Gardner’s Grendel and analyzing a lot of the different existential and philosophical aspects of the novel, looking at how the brutal monster from the Old English classic, Beowulf, is actually an intelligent, insightful, and angst-filled creature who has a lot to say about criticizing both society and the universe itself. As part of a chapter project we were assigned a specific chapter of the book, in my case Chapter 6, where Grendel has just accepted his role that the dragon has given to him as a terror to Hrothgar’s people and also torments the want-to-be hero Unferth, leaving him embittered and angry. The other night, while watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for the first time in years, I immediately saw and realized I could make a connection between Anakin’s turn to the dark side and what he does following his fall to Grendel’s own transformation and what the creatures turns into as well. The film chronicles the birth of the most iconic villain in film history, Darth Vader, but explores how a good man like Anakin could fall from grace into the world of brutality, lies, and deceit. Like Grendel and the Shaper, Anakin has his own belief of what his role in life is and what gives him purpose, which is to be a Jedi Knight who guards and protects others for the better good of the galaxy. This is the role that he has had his whole life, just like Grendel, but he longs for the discovery of more truth and knowledge which could help him to assure the safety of his wife Padme. To find the answer, Anakin seeks out his own “dragon”, which is Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine for answers, who forces him to question all that he thought to be true. In a slithery tone he tells him, “All who gain power are afraid to lose it. Even the Jedi…good is a point of view Anakin, the Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power”. Both Grendel and Anakin go to the character who is representative of the devil and are offered a Faustian-deal with them. For Grendel, it was to accept his role that the dragon gave him as a vicious mead-hall wrecker without a conscious because of the lack of meaning that the world really has to offer compared to what the people think. For Anakin, the Emperor makes him a deal that if he accepts his teachings he can help save his wife. He entices him, saying, “You have much wisdom, Anakin. But if I were to die, all the knowledge you seek about the true nature of the Force will be lost with me. Learn the power of the Dark Side, Anakin. The power to save Padmé”. To this, Anakin and Grendel both sign their deals with the Devil and selfishly consume their new power. For Grendel it was to pointlessly decapitate a soldier. For Anakin, it means storming through the Temple and killing every Jedi knight and child all to satisfy his ferocious desire to prevent Padme’s death. As democracy collapses with the rise of the Galactic Empire, along with the violent death of the Jedi order, Obi Wan finally confronts Anakin, but finds that he is not the same boy that he once trained. As Yoda noted, “Twisted by the Dark Side, young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained, gone he is... Consumed by Darth Vader”. Grendel also found himself to be transformed, or “born again” as he so ironically put it, by his deal with the Devil. Anakin is “born again” as well, with the new name of Darth Vader as evidence of it. Each of their pacts seemed to have led to a transformation that superficially satisfied their quests, as Grendel found himself to be existentially enlightened and Anakin felt himself to be advancing in his knowledge to work to save Padme. When confronted by Obi-Wan, he boldly declares, “I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire”.  But it is ultimately the nature of Faustian deals to never turn out as they initially planned. For Grendel, that meant him immediately realizing just how alone in the world he really was. For Anakin, it meant inadvertently destroying the love that he was trying so hard to keep intact. When Padme finally sees what Anakin has become, so says, “You're going down a path I cannot follow… because of what you've done... what you plan to do” With this, Anakin chokes his wife to the point of death, and following this ultimately loses in his confrontation with his old master, Obi Wan. While by this point it has already become clear that both Grendel and Anakin have been born again as a result of their selfish quests, for Anakin the idea is not solidified until the very end of the movie, as Anakin is literally reconstructed from what remains of his burnt body. And as the mask is slowly placed on top his charred face, the audience gets chills as the terrorizing villain slowly breathes through his mask for the very first time.

"A Dream"

While searching for a poem to write about for this week’s blog I could not help but think about our class discussion we had on Friday on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which philosophically explored the question of whether it is better to be enlightened with the knowledge of truth and light, or live out in blissful ignorance, never fully aware of the truth that lies beyond our own minds. This led me to try to find a poem that involves discussing the satisfaction of life in both our waking reality and the illusions of our dreams in Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream”. Poe drenches his short poem with a plethora of meaning, found first in the opening lines that state, “In vision of the dark night/I have dreamed of joy departed-/But a waking dream of life and light/Hath left me broken-hearted”. Poe details to the reader how his heart can find no place of happiness or joy in subconscious thought, the final possibility for him to find it. All other places that surround him throughout his waking moments only serve to remind him of the wretchedness of how his life has played out. If looking at this with respect to Plato, Poe is twisting the philosopher’s perspective to show that ultimately there is no escape to discover some enlightening truth of lives that can hope to change us into better people, but in fact both the disillusioned world of our lives and our dreams are both equally filled with pain and misery that no power can serve to alleviate. Poe’s commiserations of the bitter truth of the world continues as he says, “What is not a dream by day…turned back upon the past?” Again, Poe explores his own internal disillusionment and embracing of the bitter truth of the world by reflecting on his dreams. Dreams, by their own nature, are reflections of our own lives that play out into our subconscious thought. Thus, the reason that Poe’s dreams are full of misery and woe is because his dreams are simply a reflection of the world lodged in reality. There is no escape from the pain of our world, as the dream world we try so hard to create can only reflect the sad truth of our own lives. Anyone who deems otherwise that there is some glimmer of goodness left to find in the world is only ignoring the harsh truth of what each and every one of our lives has become. Poe makes his final point very clear, lamenting, “That holy dream-that holy dream…What could there be more purely bright/In Truth’s day-star”. The final lines of the poem reflect just how obvious the point that Poe is trying to make. The truth of how the world really is, full of only pain and sorrow, is something that so many people adamantly do not wish to accept and base their lives around avoiding it. Ironically, Poe portrays the dark and foreboding nature of the world to be like a light that shines brightly; one that encompasses all that it sees and spares no one. Such is the nature of the world, and not even the illusions and fantasies of dreams can spare a person from the truth.

  

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Edgar Allan Poe

 

Willard and Prufrock

The other day in class we analyzed T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, essentially reading through the poem and trying to figure what we thought to be the “so what” idea of both the seven separate sections that we split the poem up into and as a whole. At the same time, we have also been extensively studying Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and delving deep into so many of Anderson’s underlying themes in his “novel” of sorts. By now, it’s almost impossible not to see how many similar motifs, themes, and ideas that are present in Eliot’s poem appear also in Anderson’s work. One of the most introspective themes that is present between the two writings is that of the reflection of the passage of time. In Eliot’s poem, it is toward the end with the speaker reflecting back of his life and saying “And would it have been worth it, after all/would it have been worthwhile/after the sunsets and dooryard and the sprinkled streets/after the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-/and this, and so much more?” (lines 99-103). Here the aging speaker looks back on all the various aspects of his life, from the awe-inspiring sunsets to noticing what a girl was wearing, and wondering whether or not his life has had any true meaning to it. He ponders whether he spent all his long years to the fullest extent, or would it have been worth it to have done so much more instead. Likewise, a similar thought process pains George Willard, the young protagonist of Anderson’s work, who in “Sophistication” starts asking many of the same questions as J. Alfred Prufrock. Still recovering from the death of his mother, George traverses the street of the eponymous town of Ohio and ponders about his place in the world with the passing of time and, “for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing…countless figures of men who…disappeared into nothingness…with a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village” (239). In this moment George breaks free of the mold of childhood that he has been for the whole book and must finally face up to one of the harshest truths of adulthood.  He looks at everyone else that has born, lived, and died, and realizes he is no different than any of them and destined to suffer the same fate.  Like Prufrock in Eliot’s work, George must look at the progression of time, though not in retrospect and hindsight like the old man of the poem, but in fear in apprehension of how he is going to spend the rest of his life and what the future may have in store for him. He knows that unless he makes the right decisions throughout his life, then he will suffer the same fate of becoming a “grotesque”, one who is but a haunting shadow of who they once were as a result of discovering some inner truth about themselves that they embrace all too easily and quickly. Both George and Prufrock suffer from the same ailment of the progression of time, with J. Alfred Prufrock weary of how he has spent up his entire life and whether or not it has all been worth doing, and George Willard who is apprehensive about what the progression of time could possibly have in store for him.  

Subdivisions

Well, after having worked on my Winesburg, Ohio essay outline and explored several different themes of the book, such as coming-of-age, lust, and the idea of truth, one theme really stood out me, which was loneliness. Obviously Sherwood Anderson knew that it was something worth mentioning considering he centered an entire story around Enoch Robinson and his struggle with isolation and being understood and accepted by everyone else around him. Thinking about Enoch’s struggle with loneliness even when surrounded by so many people made me realize that these struggles are the same exact ones high school kids like myself face every single day in suburbanized society, a topic which is the center of “Subdivisions” by Rush. The song, in brief summary, describes the natural way of conformity that kids must face in high school, how the identical houses that line the streets of the suburbs that they live in leave no room for individuality or uniqueness, and those who cannot live up to this formatted expectation are ostracized from society. The song opens with detailing how identical all the suburban houses look, “In geometric order/an insulated border/in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown”. Already, the song is delving into the suburban culture that is spread out across the country, one where people have lost a sense of identity and individuality and mold their living based on a standard set by someone else. There is no room to explore different paths in life since the suburbs have eradicated all other paths beside the one in which they want people to follow. In this place, “opinions [are] all provided/the future pre-decided”, everyone is blinded to the fact that they are destined to suffer the same fate, regardless of how different or better they may feel their lives our from others. Those who dare to step outside the pre-determined mold of society, whether they want to go beyond what has been placed before them or simply want to fit the mold, can find no peace, since “nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone”. With the song’s progression into the chorus, we get a glimpse of the true demographic that lyricist Neil Peart is talking about, the “uncool” kids of high school. It is easy to fit ourselves into the shoes of the kid who sees all the popular kids go by as they are left alone. Suburban high school is a vicious world, one must “conform or be cast out…any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth/but the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dream of youth”. Outcast kids are displaced from the world of social acceptance, forced to withdraw from the world of social gathering and instead take comfort in the few things in life that help them forget about the harsh terms that their peers have set for them. Whether it is reading books, playing video games, or anything else, these are the kids who haven’t let the suburbs compromise who they are as people, and for that they are forced to suffer. On the other side, even if they may not realize it, the “popular” kids are destined to suffer too, as in life they will be the ones who, “sell their dreams for small desires or lose their rose to rats/get caught in ticking traps/and start to dream of somewhere to relax their restless flight”. Ultimately isolation plagues both the popular and the outcast; it’s just that those who aren’t accepted already know that they are alone while those who are accepted hide amongst people to their escape their own internal loneliness.

"Respectability"

For homework this weekend, we were assigned to read “Respectability” from Winesburg, Ohio and to read and annotate the story in preparation for an in-class assessment tomorrow in class. The story itself was very intriguing and felt like this would be a good way to informally talk about the story. In short summary, “Respectability” is about Wash Williams, a man infamously known for being a rather dirty and ugly person. As the best telegraph writer in town, everyone sets aside their thoughts about how dirty and smelly he is and can’t help to respect him. George Willard sees him while with Belle Carpenter one night and he then tells about how much he hates all women. He then tells the story of how he was once in love with a beautiful young blonde girl whom he married. After being married a few years he learns that he has been cheating on him and sends her off, but goes to her house after some time hoping to get her back. But when he goes to see her, the woman’s mother sends her in naked, to which he responds by attacking her mother and since then has hated women. There are certainly a lot of analytical points that can be taken from this story, the first of which is Anderson physically showing what it means to become a grotesque being, which Wash has become. Not only that, but he overtly shows it in describing monkey being similar to Wash, with the monkey being “a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes…a true monster” (Anderson…113). It is very clear from the start that Wash, just like most all other characters in the novel, have lost their beauty and exchanged it for a new grotesque form. But also like the others, Wash also wishes to tell others about what his life has become, and this desire plays out perfectly with his occupation: a man who uses his hands to write telegraphs. “There was something sensitive and shapely in the hand that lay on the table by the instrument in the telegraph office” (Anderson. 114). Of course, hands are a critical element of this section, in that Anderson again emphasizes the hands as being the method in which characters can convey their truths to others, in this case with Wash being able to send messages to people. Not long after this it is revealed what Wash’s truth is: his hatred for women. He abhors them as “a living-dead thing, walking in the sight of men and making the earth foul by her presence” (Anderson. 116).  In Wash’s eyes, he sees women as those who bring out the grotesque nature of life, taking that which is good and wholesome and transforming it into an abomination. Wash seems to be both a physical and internal victim to having become grotesque with his interaction with women, as it was his marriage to the woman who cheated on him that allowed him to discovery his essential truth of the nature of women, and ultimately that truth which transformed him into a grotesque. Finally, I feel it very important to note one of the lines that Wash says to George: “Already you may be having dreams in your head. I want you to destroy them” (Anderson. 117).  Hear Wash seems to echoes Tom Willard in “Mother” who said something very similar to George by telling him to wake up out of his dreams. Clearly, Anderson is using these two mirroring ideas to get a key point across, which is that people like George Willard who seem to have so many aspiring dreams and goals for how their life ought to be and how perfect others are need to wake up and get a real taste of what the world is like. Anderson gives a harsh reminder that not all women are the perfect angels that they are constantly described as and how most dream of them being, but in fact simply play an equal role with man in leaving all whom they encounter as horrible grotesque shadows of who they once were.

"Alone"

After having read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and spent a few days discussing some of the individual stories in class, I realized that one of the major thematic elements of the “novel” was that of loneliness and isolation. At the same time, I also decided to write another blog dealing with a poem and felt that Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone” would be perfect to discuss as Poe relates the same feeling that each and every one of the characters of Winesburg struggles with. “Alone” essentially describes Poe’s inability to fit in as a child and ultimately the culminating loneliness he must face over the course of his life as a result of who he is. He opens the poem by describing just how different he is, saying, “From childhood’s hour I have not been/As others were-I have not seen/As others saw-I could not bring” (lines 1-4). It should be noted, that Poe’s upbringing not the smoothest of childhoods, as his mother died at an early age and his father abandoned him when he was only a year old, leaving the orphan to be taken in by Allan family to be foster parents to him. In the opening lines, Poe is reflecting on the turmoil of his early youth, citing the absence of his parents during his childhood as being the start of his loneliness, a feeling that even with him being taken in by the Allan family was ever subsided. He continues to describe his isolation from others around him, alluding to his difference from others by saying “My passions from a common spring-/From the same source I have not taken” (lines 4-5). Here Poe is able to note that the misery that is constantly engulfing his isolation is not the same as what everyone else around him is experiencing, as they are drawing from the spring source of jubilation and delight, while he draws from the spring of desolation in his loneliness. As both the poem and Poe’s life progress, he is still searching for the purpose that his wretched life must have, “The mystery which binds me still” (line 12). His spirit’s thirst for what his lonely life must mean is not quenched, and in response, he continues over the course of his life to find the hidden treasure that must be the point to his existence. There is heavy imagery describing the passing years, as “In its autumn tint of gold/From the lightning in the sky/As it pass’d me flying by” (lines 17-19). Poe restless searches for his purpose and in the midst of a great and furious storm, looks up to the sky for what he hopes could be the answer to the driving question of his life. And when he looks up to find rest for his disillusioned mind, he is answered with an image “When the rest of Heaven was blue/Of a demon in my view” (lines 22-23). In this moment Poe’s journey has finally ended after years of searching, though not with the results that he would have liked to receive. Instead of acquiring knowledge in his gaze up to Heaven, where all other people find beauty and the empowerment of God’s glory, he finds the opposite, a hideous demon, blocking his view of wondrous blue sky. Poe is aware that everyone else in his life has been able to gaze up at the wondrous blue sky to find their purpose among the stars of Heaven, but he now realizes that his purpose lies with the demon that shall forever deny him of any satisfaction or relieve him of his eternal solitude.


“Alone”
By Edgar Allan Poe 
 

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

  

"Tintern Abbey" in Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein never ceases to amaze me and surpass all my previous expectations of what her writing has to offer. Whether it’s the compelling and heart-wrenching story, the underlying themes dealing with isolation, morality, and the human condition, or simply the chilling thought of man bestowing life to that which had none, this story should under no circumstances be clichéd or underestimated. Now, after looking back over the book and having spent a few days in class reading William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” I found that Shelley quotes the poem directly in the novel, seamlessly weaving it into the context of the story and adding yet another layer to the analytical thoughts that can be extracted from her work. The quote is found in Chapter 18, pg 135. Everything else in the chapter leading up to this point is essentially describing Victor and Henry Clerval’s journey across different countries and cities in Europe, with Henry delighting in all the amazing sights and wonders that are befalling his eyes while Victor does his best to hide his internal dread, guilt, and weary anticipation of the pact he made with his creature: to create for him a bride, the very reason that Victor decided to make the journey in the first place to England to further his studies. Now, Victor and Clerval have returned to their native mountains of Switzerland and Victor notes his friend’s “wild and enthusiastic imagination…chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination” (Shelley. 135). Following this description is the direct quotation of lines 77-84 of “Tintern Abbey” In my opinion, there are multiple reasons that Shelley decided to pull from Wordsworth immortal work of poetry and directly cite it in this particular spot, all of which can be derived from a single word: contrast, an element that is constantly playing itself out over the course of the novel. Shelley takes no shortcuts in describing the wondrous settings throughout the book, whether it’s the icy waters of the Arctic Circle, the beauty of Geneva, and now with Henry and Victor’s travels across Europe. In the Romantic tradition, Shelley puts a heavy emphasis on the beauty that nature has to offer. In doing this, Shelley is making a direct contrast within the novel, describing these magnificent and awe-inspiring scenes of nature in a Gothic horror novel centered around an abhorred creature who is a terror to everyone he encounters, including his own creator. The contrast also expands out to include Victor, using Wordsworth’s pre-transcendental descriptions of nature in all its natural glory to serve as proof that nothing Victor, or any man for that matter, ever creates can ever stand up the handiwork of the ultimate and perfect Creator. Shelley also uses Wordsworth’s words to physically contrast Victor and Henry, in that Victor realizes he is now no longer able to appreciate the physical beauty of the natural world like Henry can because of what he has done. Victor wonders this, asking, “Has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory?” (Shelley. 135). Not now, but Victor will soon realize the truth of his prediction, in that the world surrounding him that God intended for him to enjoy so much in life can never mean anything more to him than a simple memory of what was a beautiful part of his life, but shall be no more.