O’Connor gets it, and I think I do too

For me, this class has been utterly mind-blowing. This class took me from a person who thought they knew what literature was all about and what “meanings” I was supposed to take from this class and these texts, to a person who understands that there is no one way to define literature, no one meaning to take from a class, no singular reading for a text. It took me from a person who thought I knew what I liked and why I liked it, to someone who now understands those things better than ever before. This class, I would say, has been transformative for me as a student, a reader, a writer, and a person.

From this class I have come to see that every author has one meaning and understanding of the text that they have written. That every person reads a text in a different way, bringing different things to the text that affect the way they think about it. That there is not (and cannot be) just one way of reading a text, viewing a text, and understanding a text. What I got out of the class is that whatever way I read the stories that I am presented, is not the one and only way to read it. Not everyone sees it that way though, and I think that is not only what makes this class beautiful, but also what makes this class difficult.

The struggle of this class has been that half of the class gets it—half of the class sees that there are many different readings of a text and ways of understanding a text—and half of the class can't quite wrap their heads around that—they need just one, specific, intended meaning for the text. The best part about this class is that both of the types of people are correct in their way of seeing it, and that’s totally okay! Flannery O’Connor so beautifully says everything that I have wanted to say to the class all along.

The point of the stories that we are reading, the point of the class that we are in, is to read a story. It is not to find some deeper, authorially intended meaning. It is not to understand the things that Dr. T understands and takes from, the story. It is not to take the text and turn it into “a kind of literary specimen to be dissected” (O’Connor, 108). The thing that I learned from this class was that each text is a story. I learned that the point of reading a text is to enjoy a story, and interpret it in my own way. I think that as a student, we often lose this along the way. We forget to enjoy the story and discover what the story means to us. I have learned from this class that each and every story is to be interpreted in whatever way each student reads and analyzes it.

More than discovering what literature really is and has the capability of being, I discovered more about myself in this class. This class opened me up to understanding things about myself that I had never really thought about before. This class allowed me to open doors about myself as a reader and really think about why I love to read and why I love reading the things that I choose to read.

We don’t always have to look at a story in an analytic way, sometimes we can read a story for enjoyment, and gain understanding through that enjoyment and I think that that’s what Flannery O’Connor is trying to get us to see. She is trying to get us to understand that we can understand a story purely through enjoying it, and through that enjoyment we can find deeper meaning. There doesn’t have to be a “right” meaning, nor can there be.

I think the point of this class was for each of us to expand our understanding of texts, literature, and stories, and in doing so to expand our understanding of ourselves and why we enjoy the texts that we enjoy.

YAY POST-MODERNISM!

Resurrection and Regeneration

In the spirit of the theme of this unit, I’m going to talk largely (and I mean very, very largely) about Doctor Who. The Doctor is an alien with two hearts who originates from the planet Gallifrey. He comes from a race of aliens called the Time Lords, of which he is the very last. The Doctor, whose real name we do not know, travels around in a blue box, which looks like a police call box from 1950’s ish England, called a TARDIS. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to travel through time and space, trying to correct intergalactic wrong-doings and save the world more times than we can count. So in order to talk about regeneration I’m going to give you a fairly basic yet descriptive depiction of what Doctor Who is really all about.

The word TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. This thing, the TARDIS, is really a sentient time travel device, in which the Doctor can move throughout different times and dimensions in space. There are many rules about moving through these times and dimensions in space, which complicate the story line and make things complicated for the characters within them. Anyways, as the Doctor travels through time and space, he meets many people, some of which who become is companions in this space travel. Companions come and go, yet The Doctor remains the same . . . Sort of.

See there are 12 Doctors, but really only one doctor. They are all one and the same, but all different. It’s the same Time Lord in many different shells. The life cycle of a Time Lord is such that he must go through multiple incarnations. This only occurs when the Time Lord suffers and injury that would be fatal for any other species. When The Doctor suffers such an injury he must regenerate, at which point he takes on a new face and new-ish personality. Hence why there have been 12 (well technically 13 but that’s complicated) Doctors. Each time The Doctor regenerates the inside of the TARDIS does too, so it transforms just as he does in order to suit the newest Doctor. Additionally, The Doctor carries around this little tool called a sonic screwdriver. This tool is kind of his failsafe. It allows The Doctor to fix and solve things. The sonic regenerates with The Doctor as well. So each Doctor has a sonic screwdriver that is specific to his regeneration of himself. So my biggest experience with resurrection is in the regeneration of The Doctor throughout Doctor Who.

For me, the hardest part with this is that I get attached to characters far too easily. I have a hard time dealing with the regeneration of The Doctor, especially after I’ve developed an attachment to that Doctor. The first regeneration that I’d witnessed, from the ninth Doctor to the tenth Doctor, was a little odd to me at first. It had been my first introduction to the idea that the character dies but only to come back anew, and it was a little disorienting. The regeneration of the tenth Doctor to the eleventh Doctor, was painful—devastatingly painful.

Like I said, I get attached. Ten is unequivocally and irrevocably my favorite Doctor. So his regeneration was less like a rebirth and recreation of the character, and more like a complete and utter death of everything I loved about Doctor Who. And it took me a long time to start enjoying the eleventh Doctor. The transition felt sudden and abrasive. That might have something to do with the fact that I was binge watching the entire series on Netflix, and didn’t get the between seasons break that most watchers would get. So I went from the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing “death” of my favorite Doctor (the devastatingly gorgeous David Tennant) to this new, goofy, weird eleventh doctor who was cheery and ready to go and save the world. Eventually, I grew to love eleven too, in his own right. And then they regenerated him too! Now we have twelve, and I still haven’t grown to like him. I’ve watched a fair bit of this first season with Capaldi as The Doctor and he has yet to grow on me. All of this makes me terrified that this is the Doctor’s last regeneration. I mean he is a Time Lord after all, and there are 12 marks on a clock, and I fear that the twelfth Doctor is the final Doctor, and that this final Time Lord is upon his final hour. That’s terrifying mostly because I don’t want Doctor Who to end!

And on that same note, the show as it stands now is a resurrection in and of itself. The show originally started in 1963 and ran for 20 years. Then it took about a 20 year hiatus before making its reappearance to cable TV. With this, not only did the eighth Doctor regenerate to launch the ninth Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston) but it regenerated a show that had been a BBC Classic and brought it back to life for the enjoyment of another generation. Within the show, not only do we see the resurrection of the Doctor, but we also see multiple different foes make their reappearances on the regular. Even foes that started out in Classic Who have started appearing in New Who, and villains that began in early New Who have made reappearances later on in New Who—the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ood, The Master (another Time Lord! GASP!), the Sontarans, the Slitheen, the Weeping Angels, the Silence, the Silurians, the list goes on. The show is a resurrection on its own, and is full of resurrections.

In the same way that Doctor Who is full of resurrections, so is the show Supernatural. I know I’ve talked about this show before, but I can’t help but relate all of the things that I love back to each other. So in Supernatural, there are resurrections as well. The two main characters have died and made their way back to life more times than I think I can count. The two lovely Winchester brothers simply won’t die (not that I would ever want them to!) For example, Sam died in season two, and Dean made a deal with a demon in order to save Sam. In season nine, Dean died bearing the Mark of Cain (long story, don’t ask) and the Mark brought him back to life. Every time the boys have made it up to Heaven, or down Hell, or even into Purgatory they somehow make their way back to the world of the living.

Not only do our two main heroes come back to life every time they are stripped of it, there are resurrections of different types of villains and other characters throughout the show. You think the boys have ultimately defeated a villain, only to see that darn thing come back to seasons later. There are plenty of recurring villain species, as well, which could be looked at as a resurrection. Take, for example, the character Bobby. He is Sam and Dean’s adoptive father, for all intents and purposes, and he dies sometime in season 7 (I think) and the next thing you know he comes back as a ghost and continues on as a character in the show for a while. It’s as if you've accepted the loss of a character only to find them back again. Much like Doctor Who, in Supernatural we are often introduced to a minor character for one episode. That character might play a large role within the episode, but overall they really aren’t a big deal and you pretty much forget about them. Then, a few seasons down the road, that character resurfaces and you learn that they are actually a wayyyy bigger deal than you ever would have anticipated from just that one episode. So the show has a way of resurrecting a character’s story line and bringing new life to them.

I think the greatest part of these shows is not the reintroduction and resurrection of characters. The real beauty of these shows is the consistent resurrection of a few of the same themes. Both of these shows speak heavily of love, loss, bravery, friendship, loneliness, being human and being less than human and occasionally being a bit more than human. These shows very regularly resurrect these themes. Sometimes they stray away from them, or even embed them so deeply that a viewer doesn’t notice them, but at the end of the day these are the things that always prevail in these shows. I find it utterly beautiful that these shows can always, always come back to these themes and strike people in a totally life changing way. And no matter how many times I fall away from these shows, I always come back to them and resurrect my love for them, and that in and of itself is a beautiful resurrection.

Meaningful Connections

So after Wednesday’s discussion, I discovered that most of the class is trying to put together the idea of what the class is actually about. Basically, it seemed like everyone was tossing around the question, “What the hell is the point?” That’s really what sparked this post. I think that the point is to find a point! So I guess I’m going to delve into my own thoughts and questions about the roller coaster ride we’ve been on in this class thus far.

Let me elucidate for here

Are there any borders anymore? Are there still boundaries left to break? Or is it simply that we have some perception that there are boundaries, when really there is nothing at all? I used to think that we could slap a definition, a hard definition, on just about anything and everything. Now, I’m just not so sure.

I actually wrote a post about this for my digital rhetorics class the other day (follow the link to read the full post), so I’m just going to steal a few points from that before I delve into the rest of this post. I looked at the rules and conventions of writing and compared them to a boa constrictor. Having hard and fast rules about writing, have a way of restricting what we can do with our writing. We place ourselves within some set of rules depending on what we are writing for, or who we are writing for, or how we think something is supposed to be written. From there, those very rules that are supposed to give us a structure and guide to follow for our writing actually begin to choke us out and constrict out ability for fully delve into the piece. If we strictly define the way that writing is supposed to be done, we cut ourselves off from deepening and improving our writing.

I think that this same point can be carried over to this class. We like to put labels on things. Boa constrictor. We like to place everything in its proper box. Boa constrictor. We put names on things like “genre,” “literature,” “action,” and “medium” but those labels only serve to inhibit our ability to more deeply look at a text (in whatever form it may come). Boa constrictor. If we label everything, if we limit the text to a singular definition, we bind that text and our minds to only one pathway of thought. I feel that we can’t open our minds to the many different ways of interpreting something if we stick it inside a small metal box and don’t allow it any room to expand, grow, or change. BOA CONSTRICTOR.

Let’s go back to the very beginning of the semester. Probably on day one, Dr. T asked us to define, or rather try to define, literature. I spent some time thinking about what I considered “literature” and what I didn’t consider “literature,” and really thought I had a pretty good understanding of what “literature” was to me (which, by the way, was a pretty rigid definition). Then Dr. T said something that basically shattered my entire understanding of “literature.” She stated, “In this class, literature is anything that tells a story.” Immediately I found myself ready to push back against her, ready to say, “HELL NO! NO NO NO! Some really shitty song written by Justin Bieber cannot and will not be deemed even a little bit equivalent to a beautifully written Jane Austen novel! JUST NO DR.T!” I panicked, I honestly freaked out. I wasn’t ready to break out of the box. I wasn’t equipped to shake off the labels and let literature be anything that tells a story. I wasn’t prepared to defeat my literature boa constrictor. Yet the more the idea sunk in, and the more I read in my other classes, the more my definition of literature started to soften, and the borders started to blur, and I started to see why we were “reading” the “texts” that we are, and what “the point” of the class was.

The problem with slapping labels on things, with giving them definitions and names, is that we are not just one. To quote Bernard from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, “. . . then it becomes clear that I am not one and simple, but complex and many” (Woolf, 76). I feel like this quote can easily be translated to talk about genre, mediums, action, etc. We can’t use one definition or one label for everything we cover in class. Each of us is going to view literature differently. We are each going to have a different definition of genre. No two people will have the same view on medium. You see, there is a unique definition for everything we have covered in class for every different person in class. There is not just one singular, overarching definition for anything, but rather there are 30-40 definitions for any different topic. Trying to reconcile these different definitions and get each other to understand them is where the discussions come from.

It seems to me that the one thing we are struggling with the most is that we have this notion that there is a point to it all—that there is something Dr. T wants us to get out of this class. But it seems to me, that the point of the class is really to find meaningful connections between the class texts and the “texts” of our lives and find meaning out of those connections for ourselves. Dr. T can’t tell us what to take from these texts, from this class, it is our job to discover what this class means to us and what we can learn from it. For ourselves. We cannot expect the answers to be given to us, we cannot hope that Dr. T will tell us where the texts should take us, we just need let the texts take us wherever they take us.

We’ve got to shake the boa constrictors. We have to step outside of the box, and break the labels. The sooner we allow ourselves to just read the texts and not put hard labels on them, is the moment, I think that the point of the class becomes the most clear. Let the texts teach you what you value. When you are talking about the things that you like and why you like them, you are learning about why you value the texts and what you value in them. You have to learn what you like, and understand why you like them so that you can truly discover what you don’t like and understand why you don’t like them. Talking about those things, discovering what makes you passionate and why can take you down whole new roads of thinking.

Woolf, Virginia. The Waves. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Print.

The Netherworld

Genre: Young Adult

Story: Suspenseful love

Characters: Supernatural

The two most basic things that you need to know about me and my favorite things is that they tend to fall within the genre of young adult, and they tend to tell a suspenseful love story. Within these parameters I can find almost all of my favorite things. I love all things supernatural, all things that reside within the world apart from ours. Demons, angels, Timelord, Nephilim, vampires, Dalek, witches, werewolves, Ood. If it isn't human, and you can name it, it lives within this world, and within this world my heart also lays. I call it the Netherworld. A world that exists within our own but is hidden from all of those who are not a part of it.

I’m going to piss you off when I say this (and please don't stop reading right here because of it) but it’s the honest truth for me: Twilight is where all of this fascination really began. I was 15 years old when one of my good friends started reading Twilight in our biology class. I read the back of the book, and thought “Hmm, maybe I should give this one a chance. It could be good.” To me, it was radical. It was almost earth-shattering. I know the critiques of this series are vast, but for 15 year old Megan this series really sparked an interest in the genre that is now the home of so many of my favorite things. Stephanie Meyer wrote in such a way that I could relate to as an adolescent, and frankly can still fully delve myself into as an adult. The story was intriguing, the characters were detailed enough that I liked them, yet vague enough that I could fill them with my own personality. I was deep into the Twilight fandom. I was a Twihard, and not even a little bit ashamed to admit it. To this day I am still proud of my connection to the series, because not only did it bring me to some of my very best friends, but it has allowed me to live so many different lives through the world of young adult supernatural fiction.

In the same way that Twilight fascinated me, it lead me down a quick and winding road of other avenues of supernatural fiction. I think most prevalently, it has led me to vampire novels and shows. Right after I finished the Twilight series, I jumped right into just about any novel that had vampires in it. I started reading The Vampire Diaries, a long standing series about vampires, humans, other worlds, and everything that comes with it. I read the Vampire Academy series, the House of Night series, the Vampire Kisses series, the Bloodlines series, the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and the Nightworld series. These were only the beginning for me. The fascination with vampires and the Netherworld only served to spark a deeper interest in all things supernatural. I then launched myself into the world of angels, demons, and Nephilim. For those of you who don’t know, Nephilim are the children of angels and humans, and they tend to be basically a superhuman. This fascination went deep, I started reading the Fallen series, and then the Mortal Instruments series, the Hush Hush series, the Infernal Devices, the Immortal City series, the Immortals series, the Unearthly series, and The Goddess Test series. This has just kept on spiraling and spiraling and half of my world revolves around the Netherworld and all of its inhabitants. I think what I liked most about these, when I started reading them, was that there was an element of mystery, love, and suspense in each one. I was learning more and more about the Netherworld and the dark and twisted things that go with it, but also the beautiful things that come with the territory as well. I’m also a huge fan of characters that I can connect with, and find myself within—and within this genre I have found that there is almost always a character that does that for me.

This overall fascination with the supernatural managed to continue culminating for me in the tv shows I then began to watch. Supernatural was the first show that I really got into that involved the same Netherworld as the books that I read. Supernatural is basically a tale of two brothers who travel around in a 1967 Chevy Impala and hunt all things supernatural that plague the world. This is where I got my exposure to the many different types of creatures—aside from demons and angels, vampires and werewolves, and ghosts—that could dwell in the supernatural world. I would give you some examples, except there are really too many to give. I would advise watching a few episodes, if you haven’t already, and you’ll see what I mean. This show is kind of a thriller. It’s got a lot of moments where you’ll scream or jump or press your back as hard as you can against the wall, because the show kind of has a frightening tone to it (especially during the first two seasons). This would not have normally fallen within the range of things that I watch (I don’t do scary . . . ever!), but somehow it got me hooked—honestly it might have been the beauty of the brothers that kept me watching at first!

All of this enthrallment with the Netherworld eventually, years and years later, bled into my love from Doctor Who. It took me a while to get into this one(like maybe a full season), as it’s just so far off the wall at the beginning, but once I started, I simply couldn't stop. This show took everything I thought I knew about the supernatural and the Netherworld and threw it out the window. Doctor Who is essentially about a man who travels around in a blue police box saving the world from eminent destruction. This show takes the supernatural to a whole new level—again, if you want some examples just watch a few episodes because there’s just too much to explain. This one didn't really have beautiful men (at least until David Tenant became the Doctor, and then it was like, “Oh, hell-lo!”) it just had a weird and captivating story. Doctor Who isn't terribly suspenseful (it is sometimes but not always) and there isn't too much of a deep love story (I mean there is, but it’s not the sole focus). What really got me excited was the weirdness of the story, and the intrigue I had for the characters and creatures the show brought into existence in the Netherworld. And even then, maybe these creatures don’t even reside in the Netherworld. Most of the things that come into Doctor Who are from outer space. They come from different worlds, planets, and universes so maybe they aren't even from this world at all. If those that reside in the Netherworld, dwell upon Earth and simply live in a state of alternate existence from the human world, then maybe the things in Doctor Who are something else. Maybe they aren't even from the Netherworld. And I could go on for ages about what that could possibly mean for me in relation to what I like and what gets me interested in the stories that I love. 

In all reality, I think that the final photo on this blog post really describes exactly why I love the stories that I hold so dear to me. It's not even the story itself that gets me, it's what is underneath each story, that deeper part of myself that I access only when I am connecting to these pieces of literature (whatever medium they may come in). It's this that I love about the pieces of literature that I love. These pieces of literature aren't really about the content of their stories but the deeper lessons that are embedded within the stories--and those are the things that I really love. 

The Sherlock Effect

So, I can’t really explain quite why I see it this way, but I see this novel in the terms of the BBC show Sherlock. I’m going to do my best to explain this so that it can at least somewhat easily be understood by anyone. Now, if you’ve never seen the show, I would really suggest that you do because it is quite amazing! It follows Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s very famous and eclectic character Sherlock Holmes and his adventures as a genius who sees details that no one else does and solves crimes that no one else can.

In my reading of The Talented Mr. Ripley I saw Tom and immediately found myself comparing him back to Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock describes himself as a “high functioning sociopath” in one episode of the show. I see this as funny, because as you go through the series, you learn that Sherlock does have the capability of empathizing, he simply chooses not to most of the time. I view Sherlock as a man who actually feels, and yet does not seem as if he cares. Tom, well Tom might also be in the same boat . . . Sort of. Tom eventually commits a well thought out, calculated, yet spontaneous murder due to the fact that he feels so much. One might assume that a calculated murder of one’s best friend would have to come with either a surge of extreme feeling or an entire lack thereof. It would seem that committing murder means that Tom does not care at all for Dickie, however, the act was spurred by an extreme feeling of loss and dejection. I think that Sherlock is the same way, I think that he solves crimes not only because he has the intelligence and the cold calculation to do it, but also because he inherently cares. Maybe I’m not quite explaining this right and if so I’m sorry I don’t know how to quite articulate it so that someone who has never seen Sherlock can understand it.

I also read the novel in such a way that it felt like I was watching a single episode of Sherlock. But I’m not talking about just any episode of Sherlock. This novel brought me back to one particular episode of the show. SPOILER ALERT! If you are a fan of Sherlock, and have not finished the second season of the show, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT READ THIS NEXT PART! When you read the end of the novel and Dickie is dead and the novel just sort of . . . ends, it’s as if Tom kills Dickie, the credits roll, and the audience is left thinking, “Wait! What? That’s it? That’s all there is?” There is this whole novel of internal action, of nothing really going on apart from hanging about Italy. Then, the action finally comes and as a reader you’re thinking, “HELL YEAH! There’s something happening! WOOHOO!” Then the climax (at the end of the novel no less) hits and you flip the page and there’s nothing left to read. As a reader you’re left wondering what on earth is going to happen next, and you aren’t given any answers. You are just left marveling. The end of the second season of Sherlock is the same way. The conflict between Moriarty and Sherlock comes to a climax—it comes to a do or die moment. As a viewer you spend the entire episode thinking that Sherlock is going to come out on top, because he is Sherlock after all and he is never out-witted. You wonder how Moriarty’s game is going to come to an end, how exactly Sherlock will solve the puzzle set before him. Then you see Sherlock and Moriarty duking it out on the top of a building. You think to yourself, “This is it, this is where Sherlock goes in for the kill, takes the victory!” And then, you are shocked—wholly and utterly shocked—when you see Sherlock step off of the building and fall to his untimely death. Watson runs up to his broken and bleeding body, and the episode, ends with a scene of Sherlock’s grave stone. As a viewer, at this point, you are FREAKING OUT! Thoughts are almost non-existent as you attempt to grasp the idea that Sherlock lost, that Sherlock is dead! You basically have that same feeling as with The Talented Mr. Ripley, “Wait! What? That’s it? That’s all there is?”

Final thoughts on Zombies.

Going into this section of the class I was not thrilled to begin on The Walking Dead. I was a huge resistor of the zombie fad. I had seen the first episode of The Walking Dead and hadn’t enjoyed it, and zombie paraphernalia had inundated pop culture. I was not impressed by any of it. Then, we got into analyzing it for class. Suddenly, I started seeing it in another light and I started to get into the plot and the story and the characters. I got hooked on this thing that I had considered simply a stupid fad.

Once The Walking Dead sunk its teeth into me, I was thrilled to come to class every day and see what new thoughts and ideas I would have about this story. After watching the first two episodes of the show, reading the graphic novel, beginning to understand comics better, and then finally playing The Walking Dead game in class, I began to really understand the pull of zombie literature. Usually, I wouldn’t say that playing a game was my favorite way of engaging the text, yet in this case, it was. I wouldn’t say that any text was better than the other (see my previous post for details on that) but I would say that the text that engaged me the most was the computer game. It felt like writing to me, and I liked that.

When watching the show, it was like I was sitting around a campfire, listening to the story being told by an omnipotent narrator. I was an observer of a story, I was a person sitting in the clouds watching the tale unfold.

Then, when reading the graphic novel, it was as if I was looking at the story and starting to fill it in with my own imagination—it was as if I was truly reading the story and forming my own content into it. In fact, I often paid very little attention to the graphics in the novel and went strictly from bubble to bubble reading the characters thoughts and conversations without acknowledging the depictions associated with them. I was reading the story that was written, but I was also adding my own imaginative flare.

Finally, when playing the game it was as if I was writing the story myself. It was as if I was sitting at my desk with my headphones in, putting pen to paper and writing my thoughts down as they flowed. The game made me the author of the story, the game gave me the control to create a story that was uniquely mine. The game gave me the power of authorship that the graphic novel and show did not, and boy did I like that (there’s a reason creative writing is my favorite thing and that writing is my major!) I made the decisions, I decided the path of the character. Playing it as a class was an absolute hoot! Everyone had the path that they wanted to take, but in the end it was the loudest voices who were heard, and their path was the one that we took. It was interesting to hear the way other people wanted the story to play out, and then see the way it would actually go. It gave us, as a class, a sense of authorship that was not only fun but funny to see play out.

Last week, and this week, on campus the game of Humans vs. Zombies is taking place (for a history and details on this game follow the following link: http://humansvszombies.org/) It’s just funny how as soon as we finish up reading, watching, playing, and analyzing a whole bunch of texts on zombies, the real life game of a zombie apocalypse takes place on campus. It would have been an interesting thing to ask the class to take part in the game and see how that plays into our analysis of the texts. I would have loved to hear how our class experienced the real life game in comparison to the texts we’ve already encountered. Alas, that isn’t the case, but it is food for thought!

Two Different Mediums, Two Different Stories

I love books. I love movies. I love movies/tv shows based upon books (even if those books are graphic novels). I am a huge fan of reading the books before taking the time to watch the movie or tv show. I do this because I like my mind to develop its own way of telling the story, creating the setting, and developing the characters before I see Hollywood’s depiction of these settings, the characters, the story as a whole. In terms of The Walking Dead, we’ve now examined two different mediums in which the story has been presented to us. We’ve spent a little time discussing which medium is better, and which tells the story more effectively for us, but I kind of see the argument as pointless. No form of the storytelling, to me, seems better than the other, and each of these two stories are exactly that—two different stories. Let me explain.

When I watched the show I was thrilled by everything it presented to me. I think the show picked on all of my senses. The music, the visuals, the story as a whole, intrigued me and pulled me in. It started off as a story about Rick, but even within those two first episodes it developed into a story about the whole group of human survivors left living within a universe in which a zombie apocalypse has taken place. In the tv show, Rick has been depicted as an upstanding, Western hero. He is the man who takes charge and has looked at the new situation he has been placed in and is going to live with his morals in-tact and strive to be a good and hard-working man in this new apocalyptic world.

When I read the graphic novel, I really got the story of Rick Grimes making his way in a world that has been overcome by a zombie apocalypse. In this story he has been depicted as a much more confused and struggling man who happens to be a Sheriff and is just trying to do what’s best for him, his family, and the rest of the survivors. The graphic novel grabbed my attention by presenting the story in a new and different way. It allowed my imagination to fill the scenes and characters with their own personalities that my mind developed for them. The graphic novel leaves the characters and scenes vague enough that my mind can take what has been given to me and run with them. I love that.

These two different depictions of the same general tale are alike and different in so any ways. The differences between the two texts are so large that I see them as two separate stories. Neither text tells the exact same story. One has an entire tank scene that the other does not have. One has Shane dying where the other one hasn’t gotten to that yet (even after the first season comes to a close). I can say the same thing of many of my favorite book series that have been turned into movies, movie franchises, or tv shows. The transition from text to the big screen changes so many of the elements of the story that I no longer see them as the same thing. If you want some examples you should take a look at The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, The Mortal Instruments, or True Blood. This is something that as a class we are overlooking. We are looking at these two texts as if they are the exact same, and I see them as two separate texts telling two separate stories. In fact, it was extremely well-put by Craig the other day in class—the graphic novel tells the story of Rick Grimes while the show tells the story of a whole group of survivors set in the same universe.

Zombies, Zombies, Everywhere

There are different types of zombies that one might experience in literature, and by our definition that includes movies and tv shows. You might encounter the same zombies we are seeing in The Walking Dead—slow-walking, brain eating, mindless undead humans. These zombies might have some part of human left in them, but you really don’t know. All you know is that these pseudo-living creatures of death are wandering around the world, looking for living things to eat. Walking Dead zombies were once humans who have been infected with the zombie virus, and now are these undead creatures who are in some form of decomposition who wander the earth simply looking for brains to chomp on. But then, you might encounter some different types of zombies, or zombie-like creatures, and how do these play into the overall zombie culture and literature? Well, I’m just going to try to explore that here.

Now let’s take the White Walkers of Game of Thrones into consideration. These creatures, whose origination is unknown, descended upon Westeros and killed all in their path. Those that they killed could be reanimated after death to do the White Walkers’ bidding. Eventually the people of Westeros defeated the White Walkers and drove them back to the farthest North, and built a wall between the North and Westeros to keep the White Walkers at bay. I digress; these characters are essentially the living dead as well. These creatures were never, and will never be human (although the people that they kill do become mindless zombies that the White Walkers can control). White Walkers have a humanoid figure, and act zombie-like, but are entirely different from anything we’ve seen in zombie culture before.  They have long white hair, gray, wrinkled, skin pulled taut over their bodies and seem to have a mummified appearance. I consider the White Walkers to be zombies for all intents and purposes.

Next, let’s take a look at the zombies of the novel, and movie, Warm Bodies. In this particular piece of work, the people who become infected with the zombie virus, become zombies. They stumble around, seemingly mindlessly, looking for brains to eat—sounds like a typical zombie movie, right? The difference between these zombies is that the movie is set up so that the audience gets a peek inside of the zombies’ minds. It shows us that zombies are not mindless. So while these zombies share the basic characteristics of the stereotypical and often played-out zombie, the zombies of Warm Bodies are just a little different. These zombies have thoughts, but they have no recollection of being human. Another odd thing about these zombies is that in order to feel human, in order to have human memories, they must eat a human’s brains. When a zombie from this movie eats a human’s brains, they acquire that human’s memories and they get (if only for a moment) to feel human again. SPOILERT ALERT! These zombies become human again through finding love. This is a concept that I don’t think any other zombie literature has ever explored before, which makes it infinitely more interesting to me. In addition to these zombies that can get their humanity back, there are zombies that can descend into a darker and more gruesome type of creature than your original zombie. In the movie, these are referred to as Bonies. These creatures are what a zombie becomes once their skin has completely decayed. These creatures have no skin, no eyes, no ears, and are extremely fast. In addition to these twists, Bonies will eat absolutely anything with a heartbeat, and have no humanity left, and are therefore irredeemable. Again, and interesting twist on the average zombie tale. 

So no matter where we turn, we might find zombies in the literature we are reading/watching. And no matter where we turn, we might just find a new twist on these old characters. It intrigues me to think about how/why/when these characters became the object of popular culture obsession, and how/why/when these undead creatures shifted from simply mindless brain chompers to the different types of zombies we see them portrayed as in more recent popular culture. Their story has changed over the course of the decades and that's an interesting thing to think about in terms of how stories are told and what literature is. I am excited to see how the graphic novel plays into this whole storytelling of the zombies and even the human element of the tales. 

Literature and Zombies

Literature and Zombies

What is literature? When posed with that question what first comes to mind is a picture of a leather bound book with gold-edged paper. I immediately think of Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, and the like. After thinking a little more abstractly about literature, I broaden my view out to more modern literature. I bring my view of literature up into the current century when it comes to authors, books, and everything else, however that is about as far as my view on "what literature is" has extended--until now. When Dr. T said that in this class, anything that tells a story is going to be considered literature, I really had to argue with myself and decided what my view on literature is. So what is it? I just I agree that anything that tells a story has the potential to be literature, but is it actually literature? I've always had, what I consider, a fairly rigid view on what is to be deemed literature, yet somehow, when Dr. T said that all things that tell a story are literature, I found myself agreeing with it. So for the purpose of this class (and who knows, maybe the rest of my life) I agree that all things that tell a story can and should be considered literature.

Now, onto the zombies. After watching the first episode of The Walking Dead, I was curious about what on Earth we would be talking about when we got to class the next day. To me, there didn’t seem to be anything that was literature related that we could talk about in class after just watching an episode of this TV show; however, when we got to class and got to talking, I was shocked to find out that we had a lot to say! In our small group discussion we moved away from talking about the episode itself, and more toward how the episode was playing on some of the same themes as other literature we’ve read. Our group realized that literature is always trying to explore the idea of life after death. In fact, it is something that humanity itself has obsessed over for eons, and will likely continue to obsess over until the mystery is solved (which I don’t think it ever will be). There is heaven, hell, purgatory, ghosts, vampires, zombies—you name it. Somehow, we always come up with another concept of what kind of life there is after one dies. This is what fuels a series like The Walking Dead. The idea and obsession with what lies beyond life is what essentially fuels this interest in stories that deal with the undead, and zombies are just another part of this puzzle. We know that zombies are not real, just as we know that vampires and werewolves are not real, but it doesn’t stop us from being curious about what life would be like if they were real. Needless to say, the idea that there is something out there beyond the lives we live is an intriguing idea for all, and even something as farfetched as zombies still pulls you into the story (no matter your hesitance to like the story).