hidden inside

Winesburg, Ohio- The Book of the Grotesque- Sherwood Anderson

On the outside we are whoever we are, but on the inside are we different? Perhaps hidden inside is a grotesque, an existence we may not even be aware of. But there is one man who is aware. A writer, created by Sherwood Anderson.

The writer is described as old, decorated with a white moustache. Wise with age, graced with the purity and wholesomeness that is encompassed by the color white. Yet inside of him lies not a soul shriveled with age, but a “youth.” The wisdom he has acquired through his years is accompanied by the vitality and innocence of the youth inside of him. Yet the youth isn’t just a youth. It’s described also as “a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight.” It’s motherly, comforting, gentle, yet at the same time, this youth is not one to back down from a fight. Like a knight, it will protect what is important to it.

And then there are the grotesques. Everyone, other than the writer that is, seems to be a grotesque. Inside of them, regardless of what they look like on the inside, is a distorted, abnormal figure. But, as the writer realizes, the distorted figures weren’t originally distorted, but made to be distorted not long after the world itself had been born. And what was is it that had twisted us humans into these unusual forms? Truths. Truths about everything. Yet the humans “snatched” these truths for themselves, calling them their own, stealing it, in a way, from their brothers and sisters. And this made them ugly. Not only them, but the truth itself lost its beauty. Somewhat like the apple in the Garden of Eden. Everything had been beautiful, perfect, the ideal world for man. But then the desire of humans invaded. It was the attempt of Adam and Eve to make knowledge their own by eating the fruit that God had expressly forbidden them from eating that changed the world around them. The fruit itself was not evil, just as the truths were not. In fact, they were both pure and good. However, the humans’ actions, snatching the truths and eating the apple for their own personal gain, took away the value from the truths and the apple and also changed the humans themselves. Adam and Eve were ashamed of themselves, infected with original sin that they passed down to all their descendants. And the humans that stole the truths, they became grotesques.

But this fact was not painted across their foreheads. It was only on the inside, and it was only the writer that was able to see them, much like a God, able to see the faults of all humans though they may not be obvious to others. It is also only the writer that is not a grotesque. It is the youth inside of him that saves him and also the youth inside of him that leads the grotesques before his eyes. So is the writer God? Or perhaps he’s a prophet occupied by the youth, the vitality and purity of God. Or then again, maybe he’s God and the youth inside of him that leads the grotesques before him is the Holy Spirit.

And then we have the carpenter. He is quite like the writer. Old. Possessing a white mustache. Wise, pure. The writer calls upon him to work for him, but ends up allowing the carpenter to resolve the issue as he saw fit. The carpenter is also a grotesque, but he is “the nearest thing to what is understandable and lovable of all the grotesques.” Perhaps….Jesus? Jesus was born a man, yet he was the son of God, just as the carpenter was a grotesque but the most perfect grotesque there was, if there can be such a thing as a perfect grotesque. It was also Jesus that worked for his Father to save mankind, just as the carpenter worked for the writer, although on a more ordinary task (or was it…).

But of course, not all of us can be the carpenter. All of us are left to find the grotesque within us and maybe change it, little by little, to find the truth that it originally was.

losing control

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress- Dai Sijie

Through Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie constantly reminds us that not everything in life is within our control. At times, as occurs several times in the novel, when a situation seems most within our control is when we realize that, in fact, we were never in control at all, quite a jarring realization.

The first example that Dai presents is the Chinese government, though perhaps it can’t be called a realization. It’s made quite clear to the audience that the Chinese government’s power is being evaded, yet the government itself never comes to this realization. But it is this secrecy that makes the government’s lack of control all the more enjoyable. The government has taken away both the narrator and his friend Luo from their parents and sent them to a mountain known as Phoenix of the Sky in order to be re-educated by the villagers. This program was usually reserved for young men and women who had attended high school, but the narrator and Luo were forced into the same program despite their lack of a high school education because of their parents’ poor relationship with the government. This situation, however, made it even harder for them to escape re-education. Stuck in a predicament forced upon them by a government they had little respect for, anything to go against that suffocating authority was welcome, and the two friends found just such an outlet in forbidden books that they were able to obtain and read. Not only was this going completely against the government’s wishes, but it was doing so while the government was trying to force them to follow the government’s wishes and it was right under the noses of the government’s minions. Such a controlled environment, yet, as the two young men showed, so little true control.

The acquiring of the books itself was yet another example of a perception of control that comes tumbling down, though this time the person that loses control is very much aware of it. Originally, the books that the narrator and Luo wanted were in the possession of their friend, who they called Four-Eyes, another young man that had been sent to be re-educated because of his parents. Upon discovering their friend’s stash of books, they offer to do various chores for him in order to read the books, and Four-Eyes begins to look upon the books as a way of using the narrator and Luo. He dangles the promise of a book in front of them in order to get them to find mountain songs for him that he can send to be published, possibly securing him a job that will allow him to escape re-education. In order to get the job, Four-Eyes edits the songs to support the government which angers the narrator and Luo, but Four-Eyes cares very little about their opinions when he finds his efforts successful. Leaving the mountain and re-education behind and heading towards a new job, Four-Eyes has every reason to believe that he is in control of his destiny. However, this completely changes when he discovers that his entire suitcase of forbidden books has been stolen. Of course he knows it is the narrator and Luo that have stolen the books. No one else knows about them. Yet he’s absolutely powerless to do anything about it. Accusing them of the theft would mean admitting to the fact that he possessed books banned by the government. In such a way, Four-Eyes was controlled by the very objects that he had thought he was using to control the narrator and Luo.

But the two protagonists, who relished the helplessness caused by their actions, find themselves faced with a similar situation. Soon after they arrived on the mountain, they met a girl they fondly called the Little Seamstress. It wasn't long before she became Luo’s girlfriend, but Luo didn't consider a “simple mountain girl” to be good enough for him. After first meeting her, he even commented, “She’s not civilised, at least not enough for me!” However, using the books they stole from Four-Eyes, Luo thought that he, the superior city boy, would be able to fix his simple mountain girl. As he read to her book after book, he always considered himself in the process of bettering the Little Seamstress for himself, as if he owned her. However, the Little Seamstress showed him how little he truly controlled her by leaving to go to the city, ironically enough inspired by the books Luo had read to her. In the end, it was not the Little Seamstress who had been controlled, but Luo, left chasing after her and upset to the point of burning the books he treasured so much, the books that had represented control over their own lives. The narrator and Luo had so many times seen others trapped in the perception of their own power and control, yet, in the end, they too fell victim to that perception.

fire and ice

Frankenstein- Mary Shelley

Throughout Frankenstein, there’s a constant battle between fire and ice, both in the environment around the characters and within the characters themselves.

Frankenstein’s creature first encounters fire in the woods during his confusion following Frankenstein’s escape and abandonment. In that moment, he not only receives the warmth of the fire, but he also symbolically receives knowledge. In a similar way, the creature itself is fire, created by a spark of life initiated by, once again, knowledge, this time the forbidden knowledge discovered by Victor Frankenstein. This fire is constantly at odds with the ice in the story. As the creature ventures into the world for the first time, he travels through devilishly cold terrain, defenseless against the climate. As he recounts to Frankenstein, “Before I had quitted your apartment, on a sensation of cold, I had covered myself with some clothes; but these were insufficient […] feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept”. The creature also has to deal with the icy coldness of the human society he encounters. Their hearts refuse to melt at the warmth of the creature’s efforts to help them and instead seek to extinguish his life by attacking him violently and driving him away from human society. Frankenstein, the creator himself, is also included in the ice of the story, as he abandoned the creature he created and later attempted to end him. As the story comes to a close, we once again see fire and ice seeking to destroy. The creature decides to take his own life, stating that he will burn himself. The fire, the last remnants of the life given to him by Frankenstein, is swallowed up by the ice of the Arctic, leaving only the cold.

This begs the question: Was the fire the evil plaguing the earth, or was it the ice? When spark of life created by forbidden knowledge was vanquished, was the ice a savior, or was it simply a murderer? Perhaps what Mary Shelley wished to say was that it was neither. The fire was not evil, nor was the ice. They were both a confusing mix of both good and bad. The fire was introduced as warmth and saving, a lifeline to the creature that had no other protection from the cod. Yet at the same time, only pages later, it became the cause of destruction, reducing the cottage of the De Laceys to ashes. The creature described the scene saying, “[W]ith a loud scream, I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped in flames, which clung to it, and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues”. The force was capable of salvation and destruction. Ice was no different. Throughout the story, icy climates eat at the well being of the characters. The creature realized this from the moment he was “born.” Yet at the same time, it was ice that saved Watson. Although his ship was originally trapped by ice, not only did he and his crew survive, but it was because of the danger encountered that Watson realized and was able to avoid even greater dangers had the voyage been continued.

Similarly, the creature and the human society he hates so completely cannot be easily categorized into good or evil, but are composed of a mix of both. The creature at first refrains from injuring anyone, even saving a girl from death at the hands of a river, but once he’s experienced the rejection of human society so many times, he turns to the murder of innocent people (William, Clerval, Elizabeth) as a way of seeking revenge against his creator and human society in general. Human society, on the other hand, was good in its determination to catch the murder, yet even before the murders, it subjected the creature to complete rejection due to fear. Both sides were at times on the side of justice and at times the one causing harm, though for their own reasons. Just like fire and ice, Shelley shows us that nothing is definite when it comes to human nature.