Author: karen

For the last post, I find myself almost at a loss for what to write about.  I found it interesting to examine In the Shadow of No Towers, which took a surprisingly long time to thoroughly peruse.  The first thing I contemplated was the title.  Spiegelman’s use of “no towers” indicates that the significance in his work is found in the lack of what was once there.  It makes me consider briefly the use of absence in Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (as opposed to the road less-traveled, which the poem describes throughout it) – why make the title emphasize the path that the speaker did not choose?  The seeming contradiction of the lack of towers causing a shadow is a tremendous paradox that somehow becomes possible through Spiegelman’s text – the aftermath of the fallen towers creates a shadow over New York City and America (including possible toxic conditions for the physical surroundings, the changes found within the surrounding neighborhoods, and possible multiple agendas of the government and the media).

As Verna did, I initially found the comic medium for dealing with the events of 9/11 a bit unusual; however, as Spiegelman demonstrated with his “The Comic Supplement,” from the introduction of the comic strip medium, it has been used as a way to critique.  As most of our class has already acknowledged, Spiegelman is clearly making a critique on the way America reacted to and dealt with the events of 9/11 and what took place after 9/11.  My only problem was that for such a limiting medium, I feel that his big idea(s), what he is really trying to say, never quite gets across.  I feel that there is so much going on and such a mixture of his favorite and quite diverse predecessors that his true message perhaps gets lost.  Each “page” and in many cases multiple times within a single page, his techniques and foci seem to shift so drastically, that I found myself scrambling to “make sense” of the whole thing.  I also felt that there were dozens of tiny, subtle details that lacked enough background or connection to get across their full meaning.  Page 6 is one of such pages with Spiegelman (as 3^rd person narrator) falling down the panel along the left side but ending in a pile of trash which hosts a Happy Hooligan-like tin hat-wearing character, while the majority of the page is taken up by the Crazy Lady scene (which is interrupted in the middle with a grotesque image of the Crazy Lady as a demon taking over a hellish version of the “shared reality” of Spiegelman and the Crazy Lady.  The page also contains a single panel at the bottom right in which a child mouse has fallen out of bed and discusses a dream (or reality?) with a gas-masked parent mouse.  The interesting thing for me is that even though Spiegelman’s use of so many different images confuses me, I find it an appropriate choice of medium for its flexibility in allowing for so many different images – as he says himself in the opening section “The Sky is Falling,” this medium best captures the chaos and influx of images and memories (some true memories and some planted by the media or distorted by time):  “I wanted to sort out the fragments of what I’d experienced from the media images that threatened to engulf what I actually saw, and the collagelike nature of the newspaper page encouraged my impulse to juxtapose my fragmentary thoughts in different styles” (no page numbers in this introductory section to reference, but this is from the second page of it).

Where to start…where to start?  Well, one thing I can start with is that Fight Club once again brings us to dreaming/sleeping and escaping problems.  Part of the narrator’s (Tyler’s?) problem is his insomnia, which is actually a product of the commercial/consumer-related job he has.  He is a bi-product of a consumer market that requires a job that assesses the damage of careless production.  His inability to sleep either creates or is created by the world he is a part of that has shaped him into someone he hates (a nice cinematic touch with "I hate myself" graffitied over and over again on the brick wall behind the two Tylers, as they discuss how "it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.")  Interestingly, he has created an alter-ego who covers the night shift of his life, which we are led to believe he is not aware is himself until later in the story.  When he is trying to hunt down "Tyler" after Bob’s death (and keeps "missing" him everywhere he goes), he says, "Was I asleep?  Am I asleep?  Was Tyler my bad dream?  Or was I his?"  The narrator seems to struggle (as we have repeatedly witnessed this semester) with reality.  At the start of chapter 18, he says, "This Friday night, I fall asleep at my desk at work.  When I wake up with my face and my crossed arms on my desktop, the telephone is ringing, and everyone is gone.  A telephone was ringing in my dream, and it’s not clear if reality slipped into my dream o[r] if my dream is slopping over into reality" (129). And of course, he explains, "with insomnia, you’re never really asleep, you’re never really awake" – is it really a surprise that he is not aware of his full identity and actions?  Ironically, too, when Marla shows up at his support groups, he thinks, "This is the one real thing in my life, and you’re wrecking it" (14) – possibly exchanging his real (and hated) life for his fake life of support groups, or even – and more likely – acknowledging the realness of people dealing with terminal diseases and with issues that genuinely matter and involve true personal interaction (much more so than his worthless, mass-produced actual life).

I also wanted to mention how much I liked the narrative style of Fight Club.  Even though some of the narrator’s/Tyler’s thoughts were a bit over-metaphorical/allusive, I appreciated their placement within the unfolding of events – I believe that the Tylers would really think of such things during their daily experiences, perhaps as a result of such a clichéd, mass-produced society.  I particularly appreciate the "I am Joe’s/Jack’s ____" interjections.  I particularly like "I am Joe’s/Jack’s wasted life" once they get "corporate sponsorship" for the Fight Club via the narrator getting his boss to pay him to remain quiet about what they do with the recall situations, rather than doing his assigned job.  Is this a reflection of his once wasted life now serving a purpose by funding a (in his eyes) meaningful mission?

Then, there is the whole deal with "changeovers."  I loved this dual-meaning and oh-so-subtle self-awareness within the film and then the book (I watched the film first and actually appreciated searching the text for hints of Tyler’s identity once I knew it from the film!)  The key with a changeover, as the narrator explains it, is "The movie goes on.  Nobody in the audience has any idea" (18).  This is obviously more effective in the film version, as the audience of the film falls victim to the very occurrence the narrator describes!  Without having any idea, a changeover happens before our very eyes!  And even better, as my husband couldn’t WAIT to point out after we watched the film (and which most people probably already know) is that there is a scene toward the beginning of the film when the narrator is photocopying things at work where a spliced mili-second of film flashes an image of Tyler next to the copier.  If you didn’t catch it, go back and take a look (reminiscent of the sneaky insane asylum scene in Memento).

Well, I’m a little surprised that no one has mentioned it yet, but Donnie Darko’s character distinctly reminds me of Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (which perhaps is ironic in and of itself since in the movie The Good Girl, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a guy who has renamed himself Holden after Holden in The Catcher in the Rye).  Both Donnie and Holden are on a mission to save the children of the world from pain.  In Catcher, Holden is a jaded teenager who has lived a life of self-inflicted and world-around-him-inflicted failure.  He continually finds ways to fail at school and at relationships (perhaps out of fear of failing at them), and he resolves that the whole (adult) world is “phony.”  He has one absolute love, though, for which he seems to live, no matter what else the world dishes up for him (including expulsion from yet another school) – his younger sister Phoebe.  The entire premise of the book is that Holden has this vision of being a “catcher in the rye” – someone who stands at the cliff at the edge of a rye field and catches all of the children from falling off (that is, losing their innocence and having to experience the pain and problems of adult life).  He talks about how he wants to watch out for his sister and protect her from falling off the carousel horse in attempt to reach for the golden ring above her horse.  Ultimately, he accepts the fact that he has to let her fall when the time comes. 

Donnie reminds me of Holden throughout several parts of the film; however, the especially strong parallel occurs when Donnie reads his poem to his English class on Poetry Day.  His poem reads, “A storm is coming, Frank says / A storm that will swallow the children / And I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain / I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps / And send the monsters back to the underground / I’ll send them back to a place where no-one else can see them / Except for me / Because I am Donnie Darko.”  This poem reveals that Donnie’s biggest concern is in saving the children from pain, pain which is caused by their fear (another HUGE topic from this film that no one has really addressed).  Donnie sees himself as the superhero (as noticed when Gretchen says his name sounds like a superhero and he replies, “Who says I’m not?”) in charge of saving the children.  Gretchen and Donnie invent the IMGs to give infants peaceful images instead of what the (scary) darkness gives them.  Contrary to (or perhaps similar to) Holden’s ultimate fate (allowing his sister and other children to grow up and experience life/pain), Donnie is able to sacrifice himself to spare Gretchen, Frank, and his sister from their painful deaths…though really, he is ensuring that they experience more pain (and fear) merely through living their daily lives.

Other big ideas to discuss in class?  How about the fear rampant in the world of Donnie Darko and in Donnie Darko’s world?  Also, there are the eye images everywhere, Donnie’s struggle with a belief in God or following God’s chosen path, and all of the dialectical images/montages that are so clear through the use of a visual medium like film.

As I read White Noise, I couldn’t help but become consumed (pardon the pun) by the presence of noise.  I found myself circling every time the word “noise” literally was used – surprisingly frequently, considering that (at least to me) the word never seemed overused.  Additionally, the noise created by various appliances, machines, people, and events caught my attention and left me searching for meaning in the noise – what is DeLillo trying to say in each noisy scene/situation?  In chapter 17, the noise created by the family unit is responsible for “the world’s misinformation” (81), and this is demonstrated in several scenes with Jack’s family, where one person begins a conversation and before the topic can be resolved or even addressed, each person in the family has contributed his or her thought and has gotten the conversation completely away from the original topic.  In the scene in chapter 17, Denise has brought up the name of the drug Dylar (which she suspects Babette of taking secretly), and before a page has gone by, the family has discussed Africa, movies, cars, camels, alligators, Bolivia, copper and iron, and of course, Babette has never had to answer to whether or not she uses Dylar.

As Josh did, I, too, found tremendous interest in the background “noise” provided by television, radio, and other appliances/products of technology.  It seems to me that these blurbs of noise occur to highlight, often through juxtaposition, the experiences and thoughts of the characters, or perhaps, to point out things the characters are missing.  In chapter 8, for example, Denise runs the trash compactor, where “whining metal, exploding bottles, plastic smashed flat” are the sounds for which Denise listens “carefully, making sure the mangling din contained the correct sonic elements, which meant the machine was operating properly,” which is followed directly by Heinrich on the phone saying, “‘Animals commit incest all the time.  So how unnatural can it be?’” (34)  Perhaps Heinrich’s reference to incest and the acceptability of something unacceptable is designed to be a statement about the previous situation with Denise and the noise produced by the trash compactor – something unnatural, but made acceptable by this consuming/disposing society.  During the “Airborne Toxic Event, as symptoms of exposure are being updated and upgraded, Heinrich says about the neighbor’s daughters having sweaty palms, “‘There’s been a correction….Tell them they ought to be throwing up,’” after which a voice on the radio says, “‘Available for a limited time only with optical megabyte hard disk’” (112).  For a limited time only, the current symptoms will be recognized as proof of exposure, but after the period of “buying into” theses symptoms, new ones will replace the old, and you will need to upgrade your symptoms.

Truth and reality obviously factor into this novel also. “‘Just because it’s on the radio doesn’t mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses,’” Jack says on page 22, when discussing with Heinrich the occurrence or nonoccurrence of rain on the windshield of his car.  This brings into question the whole truth and reality concept we’ve been tossing around all semester.  In trying to get his son to answer the “truth” about the rain falling, he puts him in a man-holding-a-gun-to-your-head scenario, to which Heinrich replies, “‘What truth does he want?  Does he want the truth of someone traveling at almost the speed of light in another galaxy?…Maybe…it might be raining yesterday instead of today’” (23).  Upon arrival and settling in at the Boy Scout Camp, various people have crowds gathering around them as they relate information, some possibly true, some not.  But, as the narrator (Jack?) reveals, because of the extreme nature of their situation, being able to establish what is true/real and what is not may not be important – in fact, maybe the seriousness of their situation allows them to accept the false for true.  “True, false and other kinds of news radiated through the dormitory from these dense clusters . . . . Remarks existed in a state of permanent flotation.  No one thing was either more or less plausible than any other thing.  As people jolted out of reality, we were released from the need to distinguish” (129).

Man!  There’s so much to discuss in this book!! We’ve barely chipped away the tip of the iceberg!

 

I found both Hejirascope and Pax interesting, but in different ways.  Jarrod mentioned how limiting print/book literature is in comparison, and I agree.  These hypertexts sort of made me think of Choose Your Own Adventure books on speed or something!  I initially found the effort to untangle Hejirascope frustrating – I couldn’t figure out what all of the different pieces meant (individually or together), and I couldn’t find a tangible “beginning” to try to create “sense” out of the confusion.  Then, I had a desperate need to follow a specific track, so I could have some semblance of cohesive images because I found the attempt to hold five or six pieces of different stories separate and in tact, waiting for a continuation of one of the five or six, to be mind-boggling. As I followed the different tracks, I ended up trying to link to the next page in the sequence or waiting for the page to automatically advance to the (hopefully) next page in the sequence.  The difficult part for me was accepting that there was not a necessary sequence and that there was not necessarily a beginning or an end to a piece.  I found myself sometimes searching through every link possible to find the next piece of the whole, sometimes to no avail!  One aspect of Hejirascope that I appreciated, though, was my ability to go back to a page if the time lapsed or if the link I selected did not take me to one of the tracks I was trying to pursue.

 

Pax seemed to do the opposite, however, leaving me with a feeling of loss – like I missed out on something irrecoverable if I passed up one of the characters.  One aspect of print material in which I find tremendous value is its tangibility – the fact that I can hold it and keep it and remember it the way it was.  I was distressed by the fact that once the session had used the full cycle of allotted hours and phases and once I left the screen, what I (and the characters) had created would be lost forever in the great void.  What if I found the perfect combination of words, thoughts, and views? (I will add, though, that after discovering that I could copy and paste the sequence into Word, I felt a little better about the “permanence” of the words I had put together – and that, in and of itself, probably goes against the design and purpose of the text!)  I also didn’t like that if what the character added didn’t seem to fit with the poetic quality of how the other characters’ thoughts had been unfolding or if I just didn’t like what they said, I couldn’t erase it from the pattern.  Once the character contributed, it was there for good.

 
One last thought…I liked the description in the “About” section that described the ideas that prompted the creation of Pax.  In it, the author quotes John Cayley’s idea of creating “textual instruments.”  That description gives me a poetic and peaceful image of all of the things technology has to offer.  Often it seems that the feeling and emotion in people decreases with all of the technological advancements we go through (the writing of an email or IM is so much less personal and more anonymous, it seems to me, than a handwritten letter, or an e-text less tangible and malleable than an actual book, etc.), but the idea of technology making an instrument of the text seems to bring back some of the human touch.  When I think of instruments, I think of how any given sequence of notes can be played by an infinite number of people and can express different sounds, tones, or moods with each one.  The same idea then transfers to the idea of the text through the Pax hypertext medium – the same characters with the same thoughts to share convey different sounds, tones, and moods depending on the author/clicker.

Similar to Kira’s idea of escaping family, perhaps in a post-modern world, there is a tremendous need to escape reality.  Granted, throughout the semester, we have been discussing what "reality" is or even if "reality" exists or can be defined (especially given the variety of time and space concepts of Harvey); however, regardless of our meaning of "reality," it seems to me that our characters are continually seeking to escape whatever they envision reality to be.  We had, of course, George Orr who escaped the original reality of the destruction of his world by dreaming a new reality into existence, from which he spends the remainder of the novel dreaming further adaptations to this reality.  He initially was escaping the catastrophic annihilation of the world, but he goes on to try to escape the negative aspects of the reality that remain once he has altered it (for example, the "color"/race problem and the wars that take place throughout the world).  We also have Leonard (and even the other characters of Memento) "dealing with" reality by intentionally changing it or causing it to be remembered differently (by Leonard).  Leonard perhaps has created the entire murder case about his wife in order to escape his reality of not being able to create new memories.  He also tattoos himself in an attempt to preserve "reality" and how far he has gotten in the case.  We do know, however, that he changes reality by purposefully creating a false tattoo to maintain his need to hunt down a killer (and maintain purpose in his reality he must face constantly).  Other characters use Leonard, too, to change the progression of reality or to find a way of dealing with it.  Natalie, in an attempt to escape the reality of her boyfriend’s murder, uses Leonard to get revenge, not altering what happened in the past, but altering the future and finding a way of accepting the loss.

And on to Dream Jungle, the title of which sparked my thoughts along this line.  As I got a little ways into the book, I began searching for the meaning of the title, and I ended up, sort of subconsciously, looking for meanings of "dream" and how dreams factor into the story.  I was thinking of the meanings of "dream" – literally, to have sleeping dreams, but also to have hope-type dreams of what will come of life, and the idea of something being ideal or "a dream."  All of those ideas factor into the escaping reality trend I’ve been on in this post.  Parts of the novel make me think that the real dream-like/ideal place to live and exist might be in the jungle, as the Taobos live.  They seem to be without some of the horrors that wealth, class distinctions, and post-modern ways of life tend to lead society into believing/valuing.  Though "savage," perhaps they have the better life.  Even more pointedly, I see the examples where literal dreams (like with George Orr) help characters escape reality.  Rizalina escapes the sexual abuse of her father by dreaming him dead – in fact, dreaming that she stabbed and gutted him (20).  Then, when her father and brothers really do die, on the way to Zamora’s house, Rizalina fades in and out of sleep/dreaming, and it is unclear if she actually dreams the scene or if her confusion and loss are distorting the reality that she sees (the sights and sounds of which are new and foreign to her anyway) (26).  That, of course, is just the start of the "dream" moments in Dream Jungle, but I find the recurring idea of escaping reality an interesting one for post modern possibilities.

    Julie G’s post made me think, too, of how Benjamin would view the latest advancements in computer graphic technology in film, such as recent films completely animated by computer.  No longer do the “cartoon” versions of film rely on artists sketching multiple copies and versions of characters to imitate (reproduce?) human features, expressions, movements, etc.  Now, entire feature-length films are created without the need for a pencil-to-paper artist (think Shrek, Shark Tale, and all of the dozens of other similarly constructed movies in the last five years or so).  Going from people on stage to people in films created enough of a difference in “art”ness.  I wonder what his take would be on the original animated films – I picture Disney’s original Sleeping Beauty or Snow White – (imitations of people in films) as a form of art (they were, after all, paintings on cells) and then what his take would be on the new technological move to digital graphics (computer-generated versions of imitations of people in films).  I assume he would maintain his film-is-not-(as much)-art stance; however, would he now find films starring people more art-like than animated films?  And what about the original animated film versus the digitally produced animation of today?  Going even further, what about the animated films that have been digitally enhanced from their original versions (copies/reproductions of imitations of people – one’s head could really get spinning here!)?

     The part of Benjamin’s article that I find most interesting in regards to his film/acting discussion is the part that discusses the actor’s part/participation in the film experience.  Benjamin quotes Pirandello about the void an actor feels with his “performance”:  “ ‘The film actor . . . feels as if in exile – exiled not only from the stage but also from himself . . . his body loses its corporeality, it evaporates, it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence’” (229).  I found this description to be (ironically) quite artistic and poetic.  The idea that removing the actor from the true, genuine atmosphere of a stage performance (with reactions and interpersonal connections) causes the actor to lose a part of himself (and thus, a part of his art/artfulness) is intriguing.  I am sure a great debate exists between film and stage actors over which is the truer form of the profession; though, really, we frequently see film/TV actors dipping their toes into stage acting, and similarly, probably most film actors got their start on the stage of their high school auditorium.  I found Benjamin’s discussion of writer/author also interesting (especially in light of the internet age – everyone is now capable of being a published and read author by simply posting a blog!), though I felt that he did not develop that idea nearly as thoroughly as he did his film analysis and would have been interested in reading more along that line.

(PS: Sorry if this posts in two different sizes or fonts – I can’t seem to fix it!)

Well, it seems that everyone has covered a large variety of topics, which, as Ada pointed out, is part of Song of Solomon – the vast array of possibilities.  So much is going on that it is difficult to just choose one area on which to focus.  I also agree with “skjeldaa” about the uncertainty of this text’s place within the course organization.  I, too, found this novel one of the most accessible in terms of understanding, and I appreciate Morrison’s poetic use of language; yet, for those reasons and for the ones “skjeldaa” mentions (chronological unfolding of storyline – which Morrison tells us she found necessary-, firm placement in and search for historical place and time), this text does not seem to fit into “postmodernism” as we have been discussing (though I know that labeling or not labeling postmodern texts is not our goal here).  One thing I have considered before, which may be one factor is the intense use of symbolism.  Song of Solomon is saturated with symbolism, which, unlike some of the other texts we’ve studied so far, I find to be more natural in the unfolding of the story.  Morrison’s inclusion of symbolism and metaphor seem to be a fluid part of her storytelling, not as harsh or blatant as, say,  Pynchon’s in The Crying of Lot 49.  All of that being said, I am going to focus on Morrison’s writing style, which not many have yet addressed.

Toni Morrison is often known for her poetic use of language, and as I mentioned, I found her writing style refreshing.  I don’t need a standard shape or sound to a story (and through the selections for this class, I have learned to appreciate the variety of styles available to authors); yet, I enjoyed being able to appreciate the words Morrison chose and the sounds and images they evoked because I was not so preoccupied untangling the storyline (or that one is lacking, as in some of the texts we’ve read!)  Not saying that Song of Solomon was easy to completely understand or resolve – I am sure there are many nuances I missed in my first reading – but I was not so confused about the events taking place that I couldn’t also appreciate the language.  I got to thinking about Morrison’s specific choice of words throughout the story primarily because of her remarks in the Foreword.  The detail to which she describes the intention and unfolding of the first sentence of the text (from its mockery of journalistic style to its containment of “important signs and crucial information” (xiii) – the significance of “life,” “mutual,” “fly,” “mercy,” and even the geographic locations chosen for their representations of various journeys) got me thinking about just how much thought she put into the 337 pages she created for us.  If that much thought went into one line, how much effort and time went into the rest?  As I came across scenes that I felt seemed unnecessary, I tried searching for a greater purpose they might serve in the grand scheme of the entire novel.  Many have already addressed her use of names (symbolic or alluding in design, though we collectively do not seem to have uncovered all of their meanings), so I will instead point out some of her artistically crafted metaphors.  One that especially grabbed my attention toward the beginning involves Macon’s desire for ownership.  Once Milkman has started working for him (during which scene Macon is delighted over his son’s “belonging” to him), Macon sees opportunities to expand his business:  “He knew as a Negro he wasn’t going to get a big slice of the pie.  But there were properties nobody wanted yet, or little edges of property somebody didn’t want Jew to have, or Catholics to have, or properties nobody knew were of any value yet.  There was quite a bit of pie filling oozing around the edge of the crust in 1945.  Filling that could be his” (63).  The “piece of the pie” metaphor certainly is not original; however, Morrison takes it a step further by embellishing Macon’s desires – he may not get the pie (which whites only have access to), but the filling and edges of the pie are still up for grabs.  Morrison paints an image of the messy, unconventional way for Macon to acquire or get closer to acquiring what the white businessmen have/own.  I also loved the allusion to (and disillusionment of) the building of the pyramids (representing the disillusionment of his father as patriarch and awe-inspiring power figure?) in Milkman’s view once he initiates the search for his own control and his own place in his life by hitting his father:  “There was the pain and shame of seeing his father crumple before a man – even himself.  Sorrow in discovering that the pyramid was not a five-thousand-year wonder of the civilized world, mysteriously and permanently constructed by generation after generation of hardy men who had died in order to perfect it, but that it in fact had been made in the back room at Sears, by a clever window-dresser, of papier-mache, guaranteed to last for a mere lifetime” (68).  The symbolic possibilities of this comparison are almost overwhelming.  To what, exactly, is Morrison comparing the pyramids?  Is it Macon as a power figure in the family and in Milkman’s life?  Is it more?  And how does that comparison hold up as the rest of the story develops and we find out the other events that unfold between these two men whose roles continue to shift in each others’ lives after this point?  There are, of course, countless more, but I have long overrun my word limit by now.  I look forward to our discussions in class today!

Rather than attempt to untangle the mysteries of gender or lack of gender in The Female Man, I have decided to post this week on the use of names in postmodern literature.  I am interested in knowing if an attribute of postmodern literature is the symbolic (and often overtly so) naming of characters.  The prosecution offers the the generic women in The Female Man as Exhibit A:  Spossisa (“three times divorced”), Eglantissa (“thinks only of clothes”), Aphrodissa (“cannot keep her eyes open because of her false eyelashes”), Clarissa (“will commit suicide”), Lucrissa (“strained forehead shows that she’s making more money than her husband”), Wailissa (“engaged in a game of ain’t-it-awful”), Lamentissa (Wailissa’s partner for the “ain’t-it-awful” game), Travailissa (“usually only works”), Saccharissa (“naughty” and “playing a round of His Little Girl across the bar with the host”), Amicissa (“the Good Sport”), Ludicrissa (“too plain to be invited”), Amphibissa (“never invited…for obvious reasons”), Domicissa (“never opens her mouth in public”), Dulcississa (“whose standard line is, ‘Oh, you’re so wonderful!’”). . .(34)

 

According to my trusty 1995 Webster’s New World Dictionary, here are the meanings of words similar in spelling:

spouse = husband or wife

eglantine = a European rose with sweet-scented leaves and pink flowers

aphrodisiac = arousing sexual desire

clarity (?) = clearness

lucre = riches; money

wail = to make a long, loud, sad cry, as in grief or pain

lament = to mourn

travail = very hard work OR intense pain; agony

saccharine = of or like sugar OR too sweet

amicable (?) = friendly; peaceable

OR amiss (?) = astray OR improper

ludicrous = causing laughter because absurd or ridiculous

amphibious = [living a double life] that can live or operate on land or water

domestic = of the home or family OR tame; said of animals

dulcet = soothing or pleasant to hear

Some of the connections seem rather blatant and, in The Female Man, seem to clearly reinforce the existence of female stereotypes [Aphrodissa, for example, attempts to arouse sexual desire with the stereotypical girl-maker, that is, make-up (the pinnacle of which may be the false eyelashes, associated clearly with a female eye-batting approach to winning a male’s attention)]; however, some I find surprisingly intriguing (Domicissa, for example, who never speaks in public, matching with the “tame” meaning for domestic, and even furthermore, tame in a way to be “said of animals,” perhaps indicating that Domicissa falls into an animal-like silence in public – due to repeated male domination?)

 

As Exhibits B and C in the symbolic name trial, I offer the names from Crying [Oedipa, of course, (with an Oedipus correlation), but also “Mucho” Maas (“much more”), Dr. Hilarius, San Narciso [name of a place, but comparable to narcissism – self-love – or Narcissus, Manny Di Presso (manic depression?), Metzger’s “actor/lawyer friend,” and the list goes on…] and from Lathe (the obvious George Orr – noticeably similar to George Orwell).

Is it an attribute of postmodernism to make heavy symbolic use of character names, or does it just happen to work out in these cases?  Also, is the symbolism/meaning/comparison always so blatant, or are these authors trying to ridicule a "need" (of their readers) to make such obvious connections?  Lastly, are the meanings of the names as obvious as we/I think they are, or is there more to them?

            Our various discussions on the possibility of ultimate "truth" or "reality" definitely weigh heavily on my mind with Memento.  After a third full viewing of it over the years (and many discussions of it), I feel like I can grasp what really happens in the story.  I feel as if I can rearrange the events in the correct beginning-to-end sequence in my mind…and then I realize that I am still stuck in a world where there must be order!  I need for the events in the story to make logical sense, for there to be a motivation to each action and for cause and effect to work cooperatively.  And then I force myself to step back and consider that logical sense maybe does not need to be made.

            As I untangle and tangle what "really" happens/happened in Memento, my thinking leads to the possibility that postmodernism is about trying to find a way to deal with everything that ails people and society.  I’m not sure how to explain it except that characters seem to keep needing to heal.  About the loss of his wife, Leonard says, "How am I supposed to heal if I can’t feel time?"  When he attempts to justify his continual search for her killer (is he really searching for himself?), he says, "She’s gone and the present is trivial," and one of the few times we actually get an emotional response from him is when he is trying to "forget" his wife by getting rid of her stuff.  Through tears he says, "I can’t remember to forget you."  He seems to be searching (perpetually) for a way to make the pain of whatever really did happen go away.  Part of him seems to want to forget about his wife, to avoid feeling the loss or guilt or whatever else he is feeling, but the other part seems to recognize the purposelessness of a his life without that motivation.  Because of his inability to create new memories, if he lets go of the past and the past memories, he will not have any sense of existing really (in that he wouldn’t be able to remember any of his existence since the "incident").  He needs purpose to make his actions and life matter; yet, his purpose survives on the pain he is trying to escape.  All of this reminds me of other recent ventures into the need to heal what ails people.  Vanilla Sky, too, delves into running away from the pain of a real life physical deformity, when the main character enters into a cryogenically frozen dream state with an alternate version of life for him to experience to avoid dealing with the pain he experiences daily.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind also involves characters escaping emotional pain – the trials of real life relationships – by erasing the memories of others (who are at the root of their pain) from their minds completely.  Even George Orr has used his dreams (when drugs didn’t work) to escape a reality of pain, physical pain, from his war-ridden, radiation-filled world in Lathe.  All of the psychological aspects of all of these stories truly fascinate me – the ways the human mind invents to heal or protect itself, how it finds ways for "reality" to work, even if that means altering its perception of "reality."